As a result of this, in the New Epic subgenre (characterized — if not inaugurated — by Ridley Scott’s Gladiator) the muscular epic hero stands at the end of a complex evolution of the hero and his relationship through violence.
Filtered through an entire generation’s ambivalent (and sometimes contradictory) attitudes towards violence, political hostilities, and an increasingly complex relationship with masculinity, the New Epic hero found himself instantly on difficult grounds. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, as the muscular hero became hijacked by the action genre (with box-office stars like Stallone and Schwarzenegger epitomizing the shirtless muscleman), the body became harnessed once again as an ideological construct, who is in equal parts passive spectacle and active aggressor against corrupt regimes (see Arroyo and Takser, Bodies). In an article discussing the shift in representations of the action body over two decades, Christina Lee observes that “in the 1970s and 1980s the residual after-shocks of the Cold War and Vietnam paved the way for a generation of hulking heroes whose bodies seemed as indomitable as their spirits”
(560). This emphasis on spectacular bodies and their political significance was to lead to films like Rocky and The Terminator, which proposed an ideal body “iconic of brute strength, industrialisation and the colonisation of public space” (Lee 560). In the wake of these films, and along with the long-overdue backlash against male domination of the genre, Lee notes that “within the last decade, there has been a shift away from the bulky towards the lithe and compact action figure,” which places Gladiator’s Maximus, like Livius of the Fall of the Roman Empire, at a critical point in the evolution of the hero figure (560).
Taking into account the general dissatisfaction with overly and overtly
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masculine heroes through the action genre, it became clear that the New Epic must turn its attention elsewhere for a new heroic ideal. Harking back to the historical epics of the 1950s and 1960s was no longer an option, since the centrality of the political concerns of the 1950s which infused these earlier epics led eventually to an ideological overdetermination of the hero; placing too much emphasis on the prevailing ideology had (somewhat paradoxically) fixed the hero not in Ancient Rome or Greece, but firmly within the confines of the mid-twentieth century and its political concerns. Nevertheless, to claim that the New Epic hero was to be free from ideology altogether would be a naïve —
if not outright misleading — proposition, since the parallels which director Ridley Scott would later draw between the Crusades and the Gulf War (in Kingdom of Heaven), along with the clear influence of modern ideals of freedom incorporated into the apolitical hero, set Maximus firmly into the same mold as his Hollywood forebears.
Re-framing the issue in the terms of ego-ideals and narcissism outlined above, the problem emerges more clearly. With the demise of the muscular hero and audiences’ general ambivalence toward unchecked aggression, Scott was no longer able to rely on an automatic narcissistic identification with the forzuto, since the kind of innocent, apolitical strongman so popular in the peplum was no longer the ideal to which a given spectator would aspire. In fact, over-emphasizing the hero’s musculature or physical power would risk a return to the increasingly niche subgenres of violent 1990s action films of sculpted martial artists like Jean-Claude Van Damme, or else recall certain ultra-violent cult films like Chopper (2000) or Crowe’s former skinhead in Romper Stomper (1992). This was precisely the kind of characterization Scott was obliged to avoid if he was to court sufficient audience numbers to recoup the huge production budget. The narrative necessity for action rather than spectacle (exemplified by Maximus’ intra-diegetic rejection of his role as pure spectacle in his famous cry of “Are you not entertained?”) equally precludes the use of built body as spectacle, obliging the hero instead to earn his place as a hero by his moral leadership ( Gladiator). This leadership, however, must not be so prominent as to make of him an ideal ruler, since it embodies precisely the kind of narcissistic ego-ideal which, to repeat Hark, “undermines the tyrant’s hold on political power through physical rebellion until a proper enunciator of the law of the father can replace him” (163). This dual evolution means that Maximus emerges as a new kind of epic hero at a critical juncture in which he must embody a wide range of contradictory values: he must be hard but forgiving, built but agile, exposed but impermeably armored, sensitive but hard-hearted, violent but not aggressive.
Given this exhaustive, and at times mutually exclusive, laundry list of conflicting values required from the New Epic hero in order to appeal to a wide audience base, these fissiparous demands have led, I argue, to a fundamental fragmentation of the heroic role. Rather than attempt to make one hero demon-
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strate this impossible mix in its entirety, my argument here is that the hero tends to be judged less by his ability to conform to such (contradictory) values, and more by the company he keeps, forging new character types into a loose-knit group designed to appeal to this broad spectrum of audience expectations.
To some extent, this fragmentation is already visible in the characterization of Spartacus, in which Spartacus’ role as rebel is supported by the traditional musclemen of the gladiator school; yet in Kubrick’s film the protagonist nevertheless bears a clear resemblance to the muscular hero in his exposed torso and visualized capacity for violence, as Hark has demonstrated. What is interesting about a film like Gladiator, then, is the extent to which these supporting character typologies assume many of the characteristics traditionally expected of the forzuto (if not his Hollywood equivalent). The secondary roles of Draba and Crixus (Woody Strode and John Ireland) in Spartacus contribute to generic convention by providing a loose framework for Scott’s film in which Maximus’
“heavies,” Juba and Hagen (Djimon Hounsou and Ralf Moeller), rework the legacy of the exposed male body so prominent in the peplum. Traces of the muscular forzuto can, in fact, be discerned in the characterization of the “gentle giant” Hagen. His function within the narrative of the film seems predominantly to provide heavyweight back-up to Maximus and foreground his leadership skills (the insinuation here is that if a captured Teutonic warrior can become a devoted follower of Maximus, anyone can).
By invoking a split in the characterization of the epic hero, Scott is able to have his cake and eat it, too: with subsidiary characters absorbing the spectacle which is “required” of the genre, Maximus is free to play a more active role in fighting tyranny on the politico-ideological level. Gladiator’s hero accordingly embodies the requisite elements of leadership and the promulgation of the law in the absence of an ideal ruler, yet without the fundamentally violent aspect which mars the action hero to such a great extent. Since he is clearly no weakling, the covered-up body raises new questions for masculinity, since it represents the potential for violent action without necessarily foregrounding those capabilities (in some respects it is a visual representation of the “kind words and a gun” diplomacy). Such a conception of the New Epic hero, alongside new masculine ideals which call into question the reign of the musclebound heroes of the previous decade, inaugurates a new kind of hero, one who is no longer the lone warrior of Conan the Barbarian, Rambo, or Terminator, but is instead the head of a heroic unit, assembled ad-hoc to depose tyrannous regimes. As a whole, the team comes to embody an ideal balance of qualities which negotiates the disparate and conflicting requirements of the New Epic hero.
A more obvious instance of this fragmentation occurs in the recent adaptation to the screen of The Last Legion (2007), based on Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s novel L’Ultima Legione. With the accession and immediate downfall of the emperor Romulus in the late fifth century A.D., the remnants of the destroyed
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Ninth Legion, led by deposed general Aurelius, must shepherd the young emperor to safety in Britain.6 The “army,” therefore, rather than embo
dying the State with its concomitant legitimacy, is instead relegated to the status of outsider, placing the hero into the position of narcissistic ego-ideal. Yet the film takes a rather different turn, combining a group of disparate character types (drawn, like the Alamo-style plot itself, from the Western and Vietnam War film genres) into the collective hero. The various issues facing the New Epic outlined above — gender theory, the politico-ideological framework, and the civilization of the violent forzuto— are resolved by precisely this fragmentation in which a range of perceived audience expectations are met by a variety of character types. Gender debates and the problems of occidental bias are met by the inclusion of exotic Other in the form of an Indian princess, Mira; the exposed male body comes in the form of Nonso Anozie’s Batiatus, a heavily-built warrior who fulfills a remarkably similar role to Gladiator’s Hagen; the problem of politico-ideological legitimacy is countered by the druid/priest Ambrosinus, who lends the team the otherworldly wisdom and counsel which, as a representative of a venerable and “worthy” institution, replaces the questionable legitimacy of the state. As a result, the heroic group is able to uphold the law of the father (by protecting the boy-emperor Romulus) and defending against the tyrant’s hold on power by physical rebellion without seizing power itself.
In one particularly revealing scene, the spatial compositions of the frame reflect precisely this loss of legitimacy, when Aurelius (Colin Firth) shields the young emperor from the attacking “barbarians” who are, quite literally, at the gate. Standing in the foreground of the shot, Aurelius stands in front of a wall of shields formed by the emperor’s guard with only his sword to protect himself; the defenseless Romulus stands behind the row of shields, in the doorway of the palace. Such an arrangement places both Romulus and Aurelius outside of the security of the imperial guard (state protection), recreating precisely the narrative situation seen in Battaglia di Maratona and The Fall of the Roman Empire, in which the weakened state (Callimaco, Lucilla, Romulus) is defended by a narcissistic ego-ideal who undermines the tyrant in order to restore power to the legitimate ruler (Philippides, Livius, Aurelius). In the sequence which follows, as Romulus tries to escape the barbarian invasion, he drops the crown to the floor. When his pursuer arrives on the scene, instead of seizing the crown (in other words, usurping rightful power), he instead crushes it underfoot. If the crown — as traditionally metonymic symbol of rightful authority and just law — is destroyed, then the legitimacy of the status quo can only be restored by an assimilation of its various constituent parts: Romulus (dynastic ruler), Aurelius (democratic leader), Batiatus (armed force), Ambrosinus (wisdom and statecraft), Mira (Otherness), and so on. Given that individually each of these character types is flawed, the film seems to suggest that they can only function collectively to undermine the tyrant’s hold on the throne. In the case of The Last Legion, then, the sum of the parts is far greater than the whole.
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A similar reflection of the fragmented hero can be found in the 2010 television series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, in which the hero works from the very outset to renounce the mantle of Kubrick’s intertextual legacy. In some cases, this renunciation takes place quite literally, such as when the Thracian hero rejects his Latinized name by repeating, more and forcefully, “My name is not Spartacus”; elsewhere, his total disregard for the political ideal of freedom is underscored by his nonchalance and refusal to form bonds with his fellow warriors, a direct reversal of Douglas’ ideological drive for freedom ( Spartacus: Blood and Sand). Nevertheless, even by the close of the first episode of the series, it becomes patently clear that Spartacus is by no means an amiable, inspirational hero, and the producers of the show make few attempts to disguise his outright misanthropy; he is no leader, he is apolitical, and — aside from his unchecked aggression when provoked — he is not much of a warrior either. One of the critical moments for the series occurs at the end of episode two, in which Spartacus realizes that there is only one way to guarantee his survival: by banding together with the other gladiators of the school, even pledging allegiance to the owner, Batiatus (again), in order to guarantee his freedom. In this respect, the secondary characters of the school embody the various values required to overthrow the corrupt rulers of Rome: Crixus (Manu Bennett) represents the perfect warrior; the Doctore (played by 300’ s messenger, Peter Mensah), imparts the requisite sense of leadership and authority over the gladiators; and Varro (Jai Courtney) serves an ideological function as a free man voluntarily entering the arena to clear his debts and return to his family, leaving the entire political domain to Batiatus (played by John Hannah, in a role reprised from The Last Legion). It is, as Varro consistently reminds the audience, only by uniting under the same banner that their individual agendas may adequately be served.
A final example to be adduced here in support of the fragmented hero theory comes in the form of the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans, which allows for a direct comparison with the earlier version. Given that very little of the original plot has been revised, the team’s relationship with the hero intimates that a sea change has taken place over the course of the three decades which separate the two films. In the 1981 version, the narrative focus is on Perseus and his quest to win the hand of Andromeda (of which main plot point the secondary quests form a part); though he initially sets out with a handful of soldiers who might be identified as a fragmented heroic grouping, as the film draws on it becomes clear where our sympathies are designed to lie. As each quest is completed, one by one the group is thinned down by circumstances (climbing the mountain, entering Medusa’s lair, fighting the giant scorpions, etc.) which force the hero to carry on without any support. In the final showdown, Perseus is unambiguously constructed as a solitary hero, who alone possesses the courage and skill to complete the quest, and to whose muscular arms alone Andromeda’s safety is indebted. The ad-hoc group of soldiers in the 2010 remake, however, reflects a distinctly different grouping, one which recognizes the value of diver-
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sity, embraces the Other, and from whom Perseus draws the courage to stand against the dark forces of the gods that are pitted against him. While it is again Perseus alone who stands to face the Kraken in the final showdown, the earlier quests of the film draw influence from such a range of other New Epics ( Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, and most of all Kingdom of Heaven) that the film can be seen as a kind of mythological road movie, whose power comes from the support of the team, a team which was all but invisible in the 1981 original. To allow one example to speak for many, it is noteworthy that it is only the later version which tries to accommodate any of the monsters— the Djinn warriors who play an integral part in the heroes’ journey. The space of only thirty years, then, has been enough to testify to a sea change in audience expectations and generic conventions of the epic hero.
Conclusions
Is this fragmentation, then, symptomatic of a wider pattern in recent invocations of the Epic hero? Certainly it is insufficient to speculate on the basis of a handful of examples drawn from the genre, and especially when these examples have been consciously chosen as the most obvious demonstrations of this fragmentary style. Much more difficult questions are raised, for example, by the adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, whose filmic influences can to some degree be traced both vertically in time to the sword and sorcery genre (itself a spin-off from the sword and sandal) and horizontally in context to generic conventions of the road movie/buddy movie, literary adaptations, and the evolution of New Zealand’s national cinema. However, the motley group who form the focus of Peter Jackson’s film does allow for a similar range of character archetypes (the sagacious elder, the powerful “heavy,” the lightning fast weapons expert, etc.), which could easily be seen as a strong influence on recent recreations of Classical Antiquity. On a similar level, it must be conceded that the notion of a group rather than the solitary hero is by no means new to the genre, traceable b
ack as far as the beginnings of the sword and sandal film in the silent era, where in a film like Cabiria the forzuto Ursus is backed up by a group which collectively aims to depose the unjust and tyrannical rule.
Yet, even taking into account such objections, there is clear evidence that there has been a fundamental change in the ways in which we imagine and characterize the epic hero in the last decade. Films like Gladiator, The Last Legion, and Clash of the Titans, three of the more successful films of the New Epic cycle, demonstrate to great effect that the role of the epic hero has been subject to a fundamental change in the wake of post-classical cinema, the changing tastes of audiences, and developments in masculinity studies in the perception of the ideal-ego. These later offerings try to establish an ideal hero not by a potentially limiting return to male ideals (which are not only outmoded,
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but also complex and at times contradictory), but instead by demonstrating a much greater and far more democratic fragmentation of heroic virtues. What remains to be seen, however, is the effect that such fragmentary heroes will have on the accuracy (or authenticity) of these historical films, for although it may be necessary to court the much more democratic modern audiences (to whom feudal hierarchies are distinctly unpalatable), there can be no doubt that these groups fundamentally alter the social structures of the past. By devolving the muscular, politico-ideological and gender roles to a group of followers, for instance, these subordinates are being elevated to a broadly equal footing with the hero, which erodes the hierarchy of governance that properly belongs to the Late Roman era, and most certainly would be out of place in a general’s relationship with/to his emperor. Beowulf alone, for example, would present an interesting opportunity to explore the recreation of these hierarchical relationships over the course of time, and even a surface comparison between Beowulf (2007) and Beowulf and Grendel (2005) would reveal a strikingly different relationship between the group and the hero; neither, it scarcely needs to be said, bears any real relationship with the strictly vertical feudalism of the original poem.
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