Are You Not Entertained?: Mapping the Gladiator Across Visual Media

Description

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 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. Cover Contents List of images List of figures List of tables Series editors’ foreword Acknowledgements Introduction Millennial masculinity and the gladiators of Y2K ‘Are you not entertained?’ I A gladiatorial genealogy ‘My name is Gladiator’ II Genre play ‘Playthings of the crowd’ III The arena fight ‘Two men enter. One man leaves’ IV Nostalgia ‘Is Rome worth one good man’s life?’ V The gladiatorial burlesque ‘Do you like movies about gladiators?’ VI Celebrity ‘Win the crowd’ Conclusion We were entertained Appendix Notes Bibliography Filmography Index