Delivery included to the United States

Descended from Hercules

Descended from Hercules Biopolitics and the Muscled Male Body on Screen - New Directions in National Cinemas

Paperback (15 Oct 2016)

  • $29.61
Add to basket

Includes delivery to the United States

10+ copies available online - Usually dispatched within two working days

Other formats & editions

New
Hardback (15 Oct 2016) $89.00

Publisher's Synopsis

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.

About the Publisher

Indiana University Press

Book information

ISBN: 9780253022509
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Imprint: Indiana University Press
Pub date:
DEWEY: 791.4365211
DEWEY edition: 23
Language: English
Number of pages: 224
Weight: 340g
Height: 232mm
Width: 155mm
Spine width: 13mm