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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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780253022585
Publisert
2016
Utgiver
Vendor
Indiana University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter