Descended from Hercules : biopolitics and the muscled male body on screen / Robert A. Rushing.

By:

Rushing, Robert A [author.]

Material type: Text

TextSeries: New directions in national cinemasPublisher: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, [2016]Description: 1 online resourceContent type:

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

9780253022585
0253022584

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: Descended from Hercules.DDC classification:

791.43/65211 23

LOC classification:

PN1995.9.M34

Online resources:

Click here to access online

Contents:

Introduction: a peplum genealogy -- Nos morituri: time in the peplum -- Pre/post: sexuality in the peplum -- Skin flicks: the haptic peplum -- Immune systems: the peplum as biopolitical genre -- Conclusion: biopolitical fantasy -- Filmography.

Summary: Muscles, six-pack abs, skin, and sweat fill the screen in the tawdry and tantalizing peplum films associated with epic Italian cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. Using techniques like slow motion and stopped time, these films instill the hero's vitality with timeless admiration and immerse the hero's body in a world that is lavishly eroticized but without sexual desire. These"sword and sandal" films represent a century-long cinematic biopolitical intervention that offers the spectator an imagined form of the male body'one free of illness, degeneracy, and the burdens of poverty'that defends goodness with brute strength and perseverance, and serves as a model of ideal citizenry. Robert A. Rushing traces these epic heroes from Maciste in Cabiria in the early silent era to contemporary transnational figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian, and to films such as Zach Snyder's 300. Rushing explores how the very tactile modes of representation cement the genre's ideological grip on the viewer.

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Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Muscles, six-pack abs, skin, and sweat fill the screen in the tawdry and tantalizing peplum films associated with epic Italian cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. Using techniques like slow motion and stopped time, these films instill the hero's vitality with timeless admiration and immerse the hero's body in a world that is lavishly eroticized but without sexual desire. These"sword and sandal" films represent a century-long cinematic biopolitical intervention that offers the spectator an imagined form of the male body'one free of illness, degeneracy, and the burdens of poverty'that defends goodness with brute strength and perseverance, and serves as a model of ideal citizenry. Robert A. Rushing traces these epic heroes from Maciste in Cabiria in the early silent era to contemporary transnational figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian, and to films such as Zach Snyder's 300. Rushing explores how the very tactile modes of representation cement the genre's ideological grip on the viewer.

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