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

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.

Product details

• Authors: Lindsay Steenberg, Steenberg Lindsay
• Assisted by: Claire Nally (Editor), Angela Smith (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.11.2020
• EAN: 9781350120075
• ISBN: 978-1-350-12007-5
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 142 mm x 218 mm x 20 mm
• Series: Library of Gender and Popular Culture; Library of Gender and Popular
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > General, dictionaries; Popular Culture, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Violence in Society, Gender studies, gender groups, Violence in society, Violence and abuse in society