Are You Not Entertained? Mapping the Gladiator Across Visual Media |
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| Author:
| Steenberg, Lindsay |
| Series title: | Library of Gender and Popular Culture Ser. |
| ISBN: | 978-1-350-12007-5 |
| Publication Date: | Nov 2020 |
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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| Imprint: | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Book Format: | Hardback |
| List Price: | AUD $200.00AUD $181.82 |
Book Description:
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Anglo-American culture is marked by a gladiatorial impulse: a deep cultural fascination in watching men fight each other. The gladiator is an archetypal character embodying this impulse and his brand of violent and eroticised masculinity has become a cultural shorthand that signals a transhistorical version of heroic masculinity. Frequently the gladiator or celebrity fighter - from the amphitheatres of Rome to the octagon of the Ultimate Fighting Championships - is used as a way of...
More DescriptionAnglo-American culture is marked by a gladiatorial impulse: a deep cultural fascination in watching men fight each other. The gladiator is an archetypal character embodying this impulse and his brand of violent and eroticised masculinity has become a cultural shorthand that signals a transhistorical version of heroic masculinity. Frequently the gladiator or celebrity fighter - from the amphitheatres of Rome to the octagon of the Ultimate Fighting Championships - is used as a way of insisting that a desire to fight, and to watch men fighting, is simply a part of our human nature. This book traces a cultural interest in stories about gladiators through twentieth and twenty-first-century film, television and videogames.