Are You Not Entertained?

Mapping the Gladiator Across Visual Media

Are You Not Entertained?

Mapping the Gladiator Across Visual Media

Lindsay Steenberg (Author)

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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.

List of Figures, Tables and Illustrations
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Millennial Masculinity and the Gladiators of Y2k - “Are You Not Entertained?”
1. A Gladiatorial Genealogy: “My Name Is Gladiator”
2. Genre Play: “Playthings of the Crowd”
3. The Arena Fight: “Two Men Enter. One Man Leaves”
4. Nostalgia: “Is Rome Worth One Good Man's Life?”
5. The Gladiatorial Burlesque: “Do You Like Movies About Gladiators?”
6. Celebrity: “Win the Crowd”
Conclusion: We Were Entertained
Bibliography
Filmography
Appendix: Arena Fight Analysis

Product details

Published	26 Nov 2020
Format	Hardback
Edition	1st
Extent	320
ISBN	9781350120075
Imprint	Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions	216 x 138 mm
Series	Library of Gender and Popular Culture
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Author

Lindsay Steenberg

Lindsay Steenberg is Senior Lecturer in Film Studi…

Steenberg moves deftly across time, space, media and story type, interrogating the gladiator as a powerful archetype of joyous nostalgic violence. This definitive study maps cinema, genre histories and masculinity in new and thought-provoking ways: a truly spectacular achievement.

Yvonne Tasker, Professor of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, UK
Are You Not Entertained offers a comprehensive and meticulously researched account of the figure of the gladiator across visual media. From Ancient Rome to The Hunger Games and The Bachelor, the volume carefully traces the contested place of the gladiator.

Frances Smith, Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sussex, UK
Are You Not Entertained is a brilliant, engaging, and innovative examination of the archetypal gladiator character, from its origins in Ancient Rome to its depictions in movies and other popular media, and brings timely attention to the complex intersections between gladiatorial masculinity, violence, nostalgia, and eroticism.

Cynthia Felando, Lecturer, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA