Introduction

Abstract

The muscular male body has enjoyed a privileged, if contentious, status in mainstream Western cinema since the early days of the medium, most notably in forms linked to classical Greco-Roman culture. Examples include muscle-bound heroes of Italian silent film, the peplum cycle launched by Le fatiche di Ercole / Hercules (Pietro Francisci, 1958), Hollywood epics such as Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960) and the 1980s sword-and-sorcery cycle and post-millennial epics such as Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004). Focusing on the peplum and its influence, I argue that these classically-inflected action films constitute a major cinematic form which has often been marginalised in the fields of media and cultural studies. Through a series of case studies, i provide an analysis and reassessment of their representations of heroic masculinity that, in my view, transcend such reductive labels as ‘camp’ or ‘kitsch’. I also explore how previous scholarship has frequently characterised these heroic male bodies as endorsing the value of white male physical strength, invoking racist and fascist subtexts, in the context of a reactionary patriarchal status quo. I argue that the depiction of masculinity in these films is more varied, problematic and contradictory than this over-generalised reading would suggest, especially in relation to femininity and non-whiteness.