In both the Masters of the Universe toy line and gay clone culture, group mentality is most obviously displayed in the construction of the male form. Gay clones strive to create a form that is both idealized and homogenized; He-Man literally shares his body with the other actions figures in his line. This reciprocal nature of the male form has an interesting effect: it works to lessen the impact of the physique overall. In some ways, this is through sheer numbers; the more something extraordinary is seen, the more common it becomes, and thus the more ordinary it also becomes. This commonality of form also lessens the value of the physique: can He-Man truly be “the most powerful man in the universe”
if every other male toy in his line, even those not noted for their physical prowess, reflect the same dimensions? Are we truly to believe the “most powerful man in the universe” has the same bicep size as his chief foe, whose underdevelopment is so emphasized that his face is literally all bone (and no skin)?
Howard was always careful to ensure that Conan had few equals in size and strength in his world; indeed, in his works he is prudent to ensure that no human being is ever described as being more powerful than Conan, though a few may be taller or of larger bulk. For Howard, Conan’s strength is unique, and it thus becomes an important part of his fashioning. Conan’s character definition begins with his strength; that is why only he is allowed it.
Unlike Conan, a dynamic figure with other facets to his characterization, He-Man’s entire identity is based on his strength; he exists only when summoned by his alter ego Prince Adam, and only to use his strength to repel the forces of evil. The fact that He-Man must share his physique with the other Masters thus not only works to negate his uniqueness, but also his entire fashioned identity. The same is true of the clone; in embracing the group identity, the individual is subsumed. As Reddy notes, gay masculinity is a response to heterosexuality and “heterosexism” (65). He continues: “Gay masculinity challenges the dominant view of masculinity not by opposing it, but in the way it allows gay people to mediate relationships between individuals” (70). Yet in its desire to allow for social mediation between individuals, clone culture denies the individual being the right of his own individuality. In many ways, denying
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the phallus denies not only the cynosure of the male sexual act (whether heterosexual, homosexual, or masturbatory), but also the individuality of the male himself. The body can be fashioned; the penis (before the advent of recent surgeries) cannot. Thus we have clones, who Green so aptly labels “cookie-cutter masculine style and affect” (534). The appellative “clone” is no accident here; they are easily replicable, one form — one man — swiftly transmuted into another. Like the Masters of the Universe figures, they share but one or two molds; interchangeable, they abjure individuality, embracing a group mentality and all that it entails while eschewing individuality and the self-fashioning that must result from acknowledging one’s own nature. Yukio Mishima’s line quoted in the epigraph to this section becomes relevant here: sameness disrupts individuality and identity. Achieving a group ethos can come at the loss of the singular fashioned entity; in the world of both He-Man and the gay clone, as Mishima notes, achieving the perfect male form has come at the loss of individuality. Thus the lack of individuality among these physiques— the very sameness of these forms— obtunds their meaning. Both their power and potential are lessened as their numbers grow. In sharing his musculature with the other Masters of the Universe, in literally sharing his parts, He-Man diminishes his own sense of masterfulness; rather than being viewed as a singular creation, as a whole entity, He-Man is rendered into a gazing subject that is ultimately only about his parts. Far from unique, his body parts are (literally) interchangeable with the other men in his world. This makes him less a man and more a construction whose building materials happen to be muscles. Gay clones suffer from a similar fate; in taking on the trappings of “traditional” masculinity, they ultimately displace notions not only of their individuality but even their own sexual presentation. In becoming more overly erotic, they become more covertly sexual. In fashioning such a group mentality and physicality for themselves, they have worked to both fetishize and diminish the value of their own forms.
Hall writes that the body can be a “symbolic replica of the social forces at play” during the period of its fashioning and construction (35). In this case, both the Masters of the Universe toys and gay clone culture represent a reaction to changing tropes of masculinity and masculine signification. Fascinatingly, despite their demonstrative performativity of man and muscle, they are ultimately both conservative in their representation of old-fashioned and outmoded models of what it is to be a man. And yet both He-Man and the gay clone present rich depictions of the male form in similar and quite different ways. In representing and presenting the hyperdeveloped male physique as they did, both create new notions of masculinity out of old forms and traditional ideas. In crafting such exaggeratedly muscular physiques, both alleviate concerns over the male homogendered gaze and the representation of the phallus as well. In fashioning such replicable bodies, both the Masters of the Universe and gay clone culture diminish the threat of the erotic male by making him more common and relieving heteronormative anxieties over the development
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and beauty of the male itself. In his study, Levine, paraphrasing Marx, writes as a type of conclusion, “We may create our own identities ... but we do not do it just as we please, but rather we do it from the materials we find around us” (56). For both He-Man and the other Masters of the Universe and gay clone culture, those “materials” just happen to be muscles, and while those muscles may become the cynosure of each groups’ individual worlds (for good and for ill), there is no denying the attraction to what Schehr has already pointed out: when it comes to muscles or masculinity, bigger is better.
NOTES
1. Later figures occasionally had a full plastic chest plate that did cover their entire torso and upper body; however, these plates were easily removed, thus revealing the toy in its full, thewy glory.
2. The gaze, of course, can have as its objective a sensation other than desire; for example, the object of the gaze can be grotesque, in which case the gaze acts as a mirror of fascination or revulsion (or both). However, critics have long noted that these types of gaze differs from the limited type of gaze being discussed here and, for the purposes of this essay, is not currently under consideration.
3. While these groups are male-centric, they work as units to aid individuals to conform to groupthink and to reflect Pleck’s “modern male role.”
WORKS CITED
Anderson, Sam. “By the Power of Grayskull! Rediscovering the Heroic Cartoon Beefcake of My Youth.” Slate 11 May 2006. < www.slate.com/id/2141626/>.
Atwood, Margaret. “Alien Territory.” In Good Bones. Toronto: Coach House, 1992.
Bondanella, Peter. A History of Italian Cinema. New York: Continuum, 2009.
Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993.
Fan, J., W. Dai, F. Lui, and J. Wu. “Visual Perception of Male Body Attractiveness.” Proceedings: Biological Sciences 272.1260 (2005): 219 –226.
Green, Adam Isaiah. “Gay But Not Queer: Toward a Post-Queer Study of Sexuality.”
Theory and Society 31.4 (2002): 521–545.
Hall, Karen J. “A Soldier’s Body: GI Joe, Hasbro’s Great American Hero, and the Symptoms of Empire.” The Journal of Popular Culture 38.1 (2004): 34 –54.
Howard, Robert E. “The Hour of the Dragon.” In The Bloody Crown of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2005.
_____. “Queen of the Black Coast.” Weird Tales. May 1934. Online. Many Books.
Mishima, Yukio. Sun and Steel. Trans. John Bester. Tokyo: Ko
dansha, 1970.
Pleck, Joseph H. The Myth of Masculinity. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981.
Preston, John. Mr. Benson. San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1983.
Reddy, Vasu. “Negotiating Gay Masculinities.” Agenda 37 (1998): 65 –70.
Schehr, Lawrence R. Parts of an Andrology: On Representations of Men’s Bodies. Stanford: Stanford Universtiy Press, 1997.
Schor, Naomi. Bad Objects: Essays Popular and Unpopular. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.
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Schwenger, Peter. “The Masculine Mode.” Critical Inquiry 5.4 (1979): 621–633.
Sheffield, Tricia. “Cover Girls: Toward a Theory of Divine Female Embodiment.” Journal of Religion & Society 4 (2002): 1–16.
Wade, Jay C., and Chris Brittain-Powell. “Male Reference Group Identity Dependence: Support for Construct Validity.” Sex Roles 43.5/6 (2000): 323 –340.
Developments in
Peplum Filmmaking
Disney’s Hercules
CHRIS PALLANT
Many of the trailers released to promote the recent re-imagining of Clash of the Titans (2010) made ubiquitous use of one sequence from the movie in particular: the giant scorpion battle. While its inclusion suggested a degree of continuity with the 1981 movie of the same name, which also saw Perseus battle a nest of scorpions, it also revealed that animation would again play a central role in helping to realize the movie’s mythological world.1 In the 1981 version, Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation provided the basis for much of the fantastical action, while in the 2010 edition, computer generated animation proffers the technological bridge into more fantastical realms. In fact, the recent sword and sandal renaissance could not have scaled such epic visual heights had it not been for the contributions made by the many legions of CGI special effects animators. Gladiator (2000), Alexander (2004), Troy (2004), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), and 300 (2006) all rely on a multitude of animated components such as synthetic performers, enhanced locations, and three-dimensionally modeled monsters to provide much of their spectacle.
While the use of computer generated animation in these movies is hardly surprising, what is unexpected is the lack of extant scholarship directly concerned with this intersection between animation and sword and sandal filmmaking. Animation shares a longstanding relationship with sword and sandal filmmaking, with Harryhausen being perhaps the most prominent figure in this respect, having produced the iconic stop-motion set-pieces for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), and the original Clash of the Titans. Paul Wells rightly asserts that none of the movies “Harryhausen was instrumental in creating were ‘star’ vehicles, nor did they enjoy the possibility of being sought after because of their directorial credit” ( Genre and Authorship 175
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92). Rather, they were “vehicles for the spectacle Harryhausen created” ( Genre and Authorship 92). This, Wells argues,
elevates Harryhausen above the normal rigours of live-action film-making, and out of the ghetto of an effects tradition that often refuses to acknowledge the primacy of animation as a form at its heart; a situation echoed in contemporary “blockbuster”
film-making where much of the huge spectacle is in some way facilitated by traditional, and more progressive, applications in animation [ Genre and Authorship 94].
Harryhausen’s involvement with sword and sandal filmmaking, however, can be best attributed to the simple but undeniable fact that he was a master of the special affect. In his day, Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation was cutting edge, advanced for the time and refined in its ability to create fantastic beasts and beings on the screen. His connection to sword and sandal films is almost accidental then, since he achieved peak productivity and fame during the 1950s and 1960s, when the sword and sandal genre also exploded in popularity.
Creating worlds is key to understanding the role of animation in an affects-driven movie, including those films for which Harryhausen is most famous.
Though sword and sandal films are not necessarily as dependent upon the creation of a wholly differentiated terrene as, say, fantasy films are, the use of animation to fabricate and fashion amazing creatures and fantastic feats within the fabric of the sword and sandal film is well documented. In this regard, animation allows the viewer to transcend the dictates of filmic reality, which, in turn, creates the conditions in which the unnatural strongman (usually played by an actor who already possesses an unnatural — or, to be more precise, hyper-natural — physique) can perform his various acts of astonishing muscularity.
Thus animation is the conduit through which reality can be suspended just enough to create the onscreen conditions necessary for the development and function of the strongman figure and the genre as a whole.
Understanding the role of animation in the sword and sandal film is key to understanding the inherent possibilities of the films themselves to fashion figures and schemas that are, quite literally, otherworldly. Thus it stands to reason that feature-length animation would offer filmmakers the most potential and diverse range for fashioning sword and sandal movies. This has not, however, quite proven to be the case. Although a handful of recent feature-length animated productions, such as Prince of Egypt (1998), Joseph: King of Dreams (2000), and Ben Hur (2003), have engaged with aspects of the sword and sandal tradition, their progenitors remain biblical narratives, and their tradition owes more to The Ten Commandments (1956) than to Spartacus (1960) or even the original Ben Hur (1959). In shorter, serialized formats, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983 –85) and Hercules: The Animated Series (1998 –1999) represent the longest running and most consistent extensions of the sword and sandal tradition for children’s television, though each is—for various reasons—
somewhat far removed from the peplumic tradition. Some themed Looney Tunes shorts, such as Roman Legion-Hare (1955) and See Ya Later Gladiator
Developments in Peplum Filmmaking (Pallant) 177
(1968), have likewise made occasional use of the genre’s identificatory framework. Nonetheless, there has been little opportunity, especially recently, for this genre to develop within feature–length animation. Despite the inherent possibilities feature–length animation proffers the sword and sandal movie, and despite the recent growth, popularity, and seeming box office reliability of the contemporary sword and sandal film, the genre remains largely underdeveloped in this form.
In this context, the 1997 Walt Disney animated feature Hercules represents the clearest example of sword and sandal animated filmmaking. Interestingly, unlike many of its animated predecessors, Hercules constitutes a surprising renewal of the peplumic filmmaking tradition, embracing both its sword and sandal roots and many key peplumic conventions, including a focus on body culture and the use of camp in interpreting varying aspects of the classical Herculean legend. Despite this use of peplumic motif, or, more precisely, because the film so readily embraces the sword and sandal tradition, a tension is created within the film, a tension focused on the intersection of the dueling genres—
Disney animated feature and sword and sandal movie — that inform the making and shaping of Hercules. This is an important tension, given the infrequency with which sword and sandal filmmaking, particularly in the peplum tradition, merges with other genres, but it is a tension that the film ultimately leaves unre-solved. This generic opposition will ultimately manifest in the film’s spin-off, Hercules: The Animated Series, whose use of generic hybridity will ultimately inhibit the extension of peplumic tradition found in the original film. Nonetheless, Hercules remains a significant achievement in both peplumic and animated filmmaking, an initial foray between two worlds and conventions that seem ideally configured for the other and yet, somehow, have never quite managed to come together in a manner that ultimately proves fruitful to both genres.
Hercules : Happily After “Ever After”
For many, the Disney name signifies a realm of children’s entertainment predicated on the manufacture of fantasy. Furthermore, this body of work is likely perceived as being aesthetically inflexible, operating, for the most part, within a hyperrealist register that privileges a form of “realism” dependent upon “verisimilitude in ... characters, contexts and narratives” (Wells Understanding Animation 23). In fact, Disney’s hyperrealism is frequently seen “as the yardstick by which other kinds of animation may be measured for its relative degree of ‘realism’” (Wells Understanding Animation 25). This aesthetic condition, coupled with the fact that the protagonists in Disney’s animated features are, with little deviation, pre-adolescent innocent children, heroines, or anthro-pomorphic alternatives, has established a generic paradigm that is taken to represent Disney animation in toto. However, Disney animation is far more
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heterogeneous than popular notions of Disney allow for, and Hercules, with its peplumic subject matter, serves as a useful illustration of this.2
Hercules, the thirty-fifth animated feature to be released theatrically by Disney, chronicles the eponymous hero’s early years, relating how, as part of Hades’ plot to usurp Zeus (king of the gods and father to Hercules), the young protagonist is rendered mortal. Early in the film, however, Zeus visits his son, telling him that if he can become a true hero he will regain his godly immortality. After a series of failed attempts to assassinate Hercules (unsuccessful because the youthful protagonist has retained his godly strength), Hades is ultimately thwarted by Hercules’ selflessness, with Hercules regaining his godly status after sacrificing himself to save the woman he loves.
Released towards the end of Disney’s 1990s renaissance, Hercules followed a period of box office unpredictability. After Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin had established a positive trend, taking $351 million and $504 million in worldwide receipts respectively, The Lion King became the high watermark of hand-drawn animation, grossing an unprecedented $768 million worldwide.3
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