Descended from Hercules

Biopolitics and the Muscled Male Body on Screen

Robert A Rushing author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Indiana University Press

Published:15th Oct '16

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Descended from Hercules cover

Winner, 2017 American Association for Italian Studies Book Award in Film and Media Studies

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.

"One of the most unappreciated and oft-mocked genres of the 1960s, the Italian sword-and-sandal films are generally given the short shrift by critics, historians, and film fans alike. Therefore, anytime an entire book is devoted to the films of Hercules and his godlike brethren it is cause for celebration. [... Rushing] presents a fascinating historical overview of the genre."

* Cinema Retro *

Despite the broad swath of the cultural terrain covered, the book presents a meaningful analysis of the peplum genre's longitudinal engagement with nationalist ideologies.

* Choi

ISBN: 9780253022509

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 295g

224 pages