NOTES
1. Given the network of practices and convergent mediums that underpin contemporary digital filmmaking, it is necessary to define precisely how the term animation will be used within this chapter. As Lev Manovich states, “Digital film = live action material + painting + image processing + compositing + 2D computer animation + 3D
computer animation” (254 –55). This equation remains relevant and applicable to the
“live-action” sword and sandal movies identified in this chapter. This quiet, yet common, interpolation of the animated into the live-action should not, however, stop animated filmmaking from being understood in terms of its own formal conditions and artistic devices. Animation, in this chapter, will therefore be used to refer to a moving image that is “artificially created and not recorded from the real world,” and which, to varying degrees, foregrounds its very artificiality (Wells Fundamentals 7).
2. Disney’s animation actually constitutes an incredibly diverse body of work. As I highlight in Demystifying Disney: A History of Disney Feature Animation, the studio’s animation has adopted many forms over the years, including metamorphic and minimalist shorts of the late 1920s, the surrealist Destino, and the highly detailed yet playfully
Developments in Peplum Filmmaking (Pallant) 185
cartoonish features of recent Disney. On a superficial level, for example, consider the differences in visual style between Hercules and the films which immediately precede and follow it in Disney’s animated feature canon ( The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Mulan, respectively).
3. All box office data used in this chapter is obtained from www.boxofficemojo.com.
4. Reflecting the sense of malaise felt by the next generation of filmmakers in Hollywood at the end of the 1970s, many of the young animators at Disney, alienated during the production of The Fox and the Hound, chose to walk out on the studio in 1979. Bluth, who had wanted the studio to return to the standards of the late 1930s and early 1940s, headed this walkout and established Don Bluth Productions, which subsequently went on to produce animation inspired by Disney’s Golden Era (such as An American Tale and The Land Before Time).
5. While the notion of an animated character connoting sexual maturity may seem like something of a paradox, given the medium’s obvious artificiallity, American hand-drawn animation has a history in this respect, with Betty Boop and Jessica Rabbit being the medium’s most famous sex symbols. In fact, because the perceived chemistry between Jessica Rabbit and Bob Hoskins’ character Eddie Valiant in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was so strong, certain scenes had to be reanimated to reassure anxious parents that the cartoon character was, in fact, wearing underwear (Clemens and Pettman 66).
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Aladdin. Dirs. Ron Clements and John Musker. USA. Walt Disney Pictures, 1992.
Anastasia. Dirs. Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. USA. Twentieth Century–Fox, 1997.
Ben Hur. Dir. William R. Kowalchuk Jr. USA. Agamemnon Films, 2003.
Cabiria. Dir. Giovanni Pastrone. ITA. Itala Film, 1914.
Clash of the Titans. Dir. Louis Leterrier. UK/USA. Warner Bros., 2010.
Clemens, Justin, and Dominic Pettman. Avoiding the Subject: Media, Culture, and the Object. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004.
Dumbo. Dir. Ben Sharpsteen. USA. Walt Disney Productions, 1941.
Dyer, Richard. White. London: Routledge, 1997.
Eisenstein, Sergei. Eisenstein on Disney. Ed. Jay Leyda. Trans. Alan Upchurch. London: Methuen, 1986.
Griffin, Sean. Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company from the Inside Out. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Television series. USA. Filmation, 1983 –85.
Hercules. Dirs. Ron Clements and John Musker. USA. Walt Disney Pictures, 1997.
“Hercules and the Arabian Night.” Dir. Phil Weinstein. USA. Walt Disney Television, 1999.
“Hercules and the Golden Touch.” Dir. Phil Weinstein. USA. Walt Disney Television, 1998.
Hercules: The Animated Series. Television series. USA. Walt Disney Television, 1998 –
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Hunchback of Notre Dame. Dirs. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. USA. Walt Disney Pictures, 1996.
The Lion King. Dirs. Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. USA. Walt Disney Pictures, 1994.
The Little Mermaid. Dirs. Ron Clements and John Musker. USA. Walt Disney Pictures, 1989.
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT, 2001.
McCallum, Robyn. “Masculinity as Social Semiotic: Identity Politics and Gender in Disney Animated Films.” In Ways of Being Male: Representing Masculinities in Children’s Literature and Film. Ed. John Stephens. London: Routledge, 2002. 116 –132.
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Pallant, Chris. Demystifying Disney: A History of Disney Feature Animation. New York: Continuum, 2011.
Pocahontas. Dirs. Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg. USA. Walt Disney Pictures, 1995.
Price, David A. The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
Prince of Egypt. Dirs. Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells. USA. Dream-Works SKG, 1998.
Rebello, Stephen, and Jane Healy. The Art of Hercules: The Chaos of Creation. New York: Hyperion, 1997.
“Roman Legion-Hare.” Dir. Friz Freleng. USA. Warner Bros., 1955.
Rushing, Robert A. “Memory and Masculinity in the Italian Peplum Film and Zach Snyder’s 300.” In Culture et Mémoire: Représentations Contemporaines de la Mémoire dans les Espaces Mémoriels, les Arts du Visuel, la Littérature et le Théâtre. Eds. Carola Häh-nel-Mesnard, Marie Liénard-Yeterian and Cristina Marinas. Paris: Ecole Polytech-nique, 2008. 239 –246.
“See You Later Gladiator.” Dir. Alex Lovy. USA. Warner Bros., 1968.
Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp.’” In Against Interpretation: and Other Essays. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1967. 275 –292.
Tengler, Nancy. New Era Value Investing: A Disciplined Approach to Buying Value and Growth Stocks. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2003.
Toy Story. Dir. John Lasseter. USA. Buena Vista Pictures, 1995.
Wells, Paul. Animation and America. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002.
_____. Animation: Genre and Authorship. London: Wallflower, 2002.
_____. The Fundamentals of Animation. Lausanne: AVA, 2006.
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Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Dir. Robert Zemeckis. USA. Amblin Entertainment / Touch-stone Pictures, 1988.
Hercules Diminished?
Parody, Differentiation, and Emulation in
The Three Stooges Meet Hercules
DANIEL O’BRIEN
Greco-Roman culture offers many different representations of Hercules, variations on the theme of a super-man or demigod centered on his large muscular body and associated strength. As with other mythological or legendary figures, Hercules was remolded over successive generations, subject to new interpretations that ensured his continuing relevance to different cultures and consequent popularity (Galinsky 2). Jaimee Pugliese Uhlenbrock suggests that the artistic representation of Hercules may date back to the eighth century B.C.E. (7). At various points since its inception, the figure has been depicted as tragic or comic, a lecher or a glutton, an embodiment of metaphysical struggle or a doomed romantic. Hercules could embody extraordinary yet purely physical strength or stand as “an exemplar of virtue ... as a divine mediator, and as the incarnation of rhetoric, intelligence, and wisdom” (Uhlenbrock 19). Hence from this historicized perspective, the common descriptor “Herculean” becomes vague, as the figure himself moves towards varying notions and constructs reflecting the classical imagination, unless the term is understood within a particular and often highly specific context.
Over time, however, the adjective “Herculean” acquired a more standardized meaning, or series of associations, at least in terms of popular currency.
&n
bsp; In Greco-Roman cultures, representations of Hercules often had negligible connection with notions of morality or ethical behavior. Alastair Blanshard suggests that in Ancient Greece, “people believed that size and heroism went together;”
to be a hero meant to be larger than life in the most literal way possible (92).
Thus Hercules could employ his strength in ways amoral or immoral without undermining his status. Yet around the fifth century B.C.E., this began to change.
G. Karl Galinsky identifies Aeschylus’s play Prometheus Unbound as marking a significant transformation of Hercules “from the arbitrary perpetrator of exces-187
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sive force to an ideally motivated and awesome advocate of justice” (42). This new, explicitly moral version of the hero can be characterized as the “Prodican Hercules,” from Prodicus’ The Choice of Herakles, where the latter opts for a life of toil and duty rather than ease and pleasure (Allen and Schwarz 750).
Furthermore, the essential act of choosing gave Hercules a new intellectual status, “and intelligence thus became one of the hero’s attributes” (Galinsky 102).
Thus while the figure of Hercules continued to undergo numerous, and occasionally contradictory, permutations, it is reasonable to observe that the heroic figure associated with super-human strength — in body and mind — as well as a foundation of moral certitude has generally been long established and widely recognized in both classical and post-classical tradition. It is this prevalent version of the mythic hero that gives rise to the construct of Herculean masculinity, whereas the qualities and aspects associated with the figure of the Prodican Hercules are ascribed to other, usually exaggeratedly masculine, forms and personages who reflect and imbue the same qualities as the legendary Hercules himself. Thus in the common parlance, describing an individual as Herculean brings to mind those three core characteristics— impressive strength and physique; a strategic sense of intelligence; and a moral probity reflected in a desire to “do” and “be” good — all developed in the individual beyond that of regular men. This form of Herculean masculinity becomes a simulacrum, then, one represented in the flesh by overt muscular development and reflected in the character of the so-ascribed individual through the nobility of both his actions and his sense of what is right and just.
One of the best known depictions, at least in terms of twentieth-century popular culture, of this form of Herculean masculinity is found in the popular 1958 movie Hercules, produced in Italy, and the subsequent peplum films that followed its commercial success. The 1958 Hercules depicts its title character in a form that valorizes male strength and physical perfection, as embodied by hulking star Steve Reeves, a champion bodybuilder. The majority of peplum films emulated this representation of heroic or super-masculinity with minimal variation, let alone any critical or subversive intent. However, an alternative depiction of Hercules, and by extension his Herculean masculinity, is found in the American-produced film The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, released in 1962.
This more subversive example of Herculean masculinity was crafted in response to the international success of Hercules, its sequel Hercules Unchained, and the peplum cycle as a whole. The Three Stooges Meet Hercules addresses the standard peplum representation of heroic masculinity through parody, differentiation, and emulation. A parodic interpretation of the peplum has the potential to alter, subvert, and re-encode conceptions of masculinity associated with the genre. The Three Stooges Meet Hercules reconfigures Hercules’ familiar status, transforming the morally upright hero into a dim-witted thug at odds with his popular filmic representation. At the same time, the positive values associated with the term “Herculean” are transposed to the juvenile male lead, who builds
Hercules Diminished? (O’Brien) 189
his physique — and character — in accordance with the prescriptions of the American-based bodybuilding culture which influenced the peplum cycle and supplied most of its stars. Thus while The Three Stooges Meet Hercules employs parody to invert the values of the peplum and its form of Herculean masculinity, it also simultaneously reaffirms them, mocking that which it likewise endorses.
Ultimately, the film demonstrates both the inherent absurdity and irrationality of Herculean masculinity in a contemporary milieu while also confirming society’s desire to possess and reflect such figures, to represent not only the ideal virtues of the male, but to evince those values that society believes best reflects on itself as well.
The Three Stooges Meet Hercules is linked to the Italian-produced peplum films on various levels: chronological, thematic, industrial, and economic. It was financed and distributed by Hollywood major Columbia Pictures and filmed in 1961, the mid-point of the peplum cycle and shortly after the American release of Hercules Unchained in 1960. The Three Stooges Meet Hercules is primarily a star vehicle for its titular trio of comedians, Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and “Curly” Joe De Rita. Howard and Fine, in partnership with, successively, Jerry “Curly” Howard, Samuel “Shemp” Howard, and Joe Besser, starred in 190
short films for Columbia Pictures released between 1934 and 1959. De Rita joined the act in 1958, after Columbia closed down its short subjects department. When the Three Stooges won a new generation of fans— predominantly children — through exposure of their old films on television, Columbia responded to this lucrative market with the feature film Have Rocket, Will Travel, a modestly budgeted production that proved a commercial success (Howard 165). Thus the Three Stooges continued to make films until the mid–1960s, mostly for Columbia, and mostly profitable.
The plot of The Three Stooges Meet Hercules can be summarized as follows: Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe work at the Ithaca Pharmacy in Ithaca, New York, alongside their friend Diane Quigley (Vicki Trickett). Their boss is the mean-spirited Ralph Dimsal (George N. Neise), who is jealous of Diane’s relationship with mild-mannered scientist Schuyler Davis (Quinn Redeker). Schuyler has invented a time machine, which transports him, Diane, and the Stooges back to Ithaca in Ancient Greece, where they encounter the evil King Odius (Neise) and his henchman Hercules (Samson Burke). Odius claims Diane for himself, sentencing Schuyler and the Stooges to become galley slaves. When Schuyler builds his muscles through rowing, the Stooges win their freedom from King Theseus of Rhodes (Hal Smith) by claiming that Schuyler is Hercules and vanquishing the Siamese Cyclops (Marlin and Mike McKeever). After a series of contests, Schuyler defeats Hercules in the arena and makes him promise to reform. Schuyler and the Stooges rescue Diane and take off in the time machine, still pursued by Odius, who is deposited in the Wild West. They return to present-day Ithaca, where Schuyler asserts himself over Dimsal, who enjoys a brief taste of time travel that leaves him punished and humiliated.
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As the above outline suggests, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules relocates the veteran comedians from a contemporary urban American locale to a classical setting with which audiences would have been familiar, in cinematic terms, from earlier Hollywood epics and the ongoing peplum cycle launched by Hercules. Even before the introduction of Hercules as a character, the film plays with ideas of masculinity that link to the Prodican Hercules and the associated physical, intellectual, and moral strength. In these terms, the good-natured yet timid Schuyler falls far short of conforming to an ideal or, indeed, Herculean manliness, and is consequently denied the success, respect, status, and heterosexual relationship that are the province of the fully formed man. The spatial-temporal displacement of the Stooges and their friends to Ancient Greece brings them into direct contact with the real Hercules, which could have facilitated a narrative whereby Schuyler is instructed in the acquisition of true masculinity by the legendary hero himself. However, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules con-founds this not unreasonable expectation on several levels. While Hercules’
physical appearance is similar to the cinematic representation epitomized by Steve Reeves, it soon becomes clear that he is by no means f
ormed from the Prodican mold. Furthermore, this Hercules is amoral, lacking in intelligence, and an outright villain, presenting a parodic form of Herculean masculinity that seems to question the values embodied by the peplum genre and the Greco-Roman hero himself.
Parody Peplum
In The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, the latter character is presented initially as conforming to the standard peplum representation of the hero in terms of size, physique, strength, and prowess in combat. Having established a familiar Hercules, the film then subverts this depiction of the character, reconfiguring him as both malevolent and dim-witted. This inversion of Herculean masculinity, which would be a radical, potentially disturbing transformation in a peplum film, sits more comfortably within the comedy genre, where humorous reversals of audience expectations are a familiar device, particularly when referencing another popular genre. The Three Stooges Meet Hercules thus operates on the level of parody, which depends on audience recognition of and familiarity with the original text — or texts— being parodied.
There is little doubt that The Three Stooges Meet Hercules was made in direct response to the American success of Hercules and Hercules Unchained.
Stooges front-man Moe Howard writes in his autobiography, “The Hercules movies were big hits at the time,” a clear commercial incentive for a humorous exploitation of the peplum cycle, allied with an established comedy team whose audience appeal had recently received a considerable boost through television exposure (167). The American promotion for Hercules featured such lines as
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