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phrase, “a new ideal of muscular manhood” (50). In particular, Blanshard identifies Sandow as the first professional strongman to emphasize muscular definition over sheer size or bulk (153). Only a body built according to a prescribed regime could achieve a sculpted look rather than mere muscle mass. The first major bodybuilding contest was held in 1901, in the United Kingdom, and the movement continued to grow throughout the first half of the twentieth century.
In 1921, Italian-born champion bodybuilder Angelo Siciliano, better known as
“Charles Atlas,” launched his “dynamic tension” system of bodybuilding, enjoying international success with his mail order business (Cashmore 141). In 1946
the International Federation of Bodybuilding (IFBB) was founded in America by brothers Joe and Ben Weider.
John F. Kasson notes that Sandow’s American debut took place at a time of economic depression and an associated loss of masculine independence and control (23). Those contending with financial and social adversity could at least demonstrate publicly a mastery of their own body, reaffirming their masculinity in the most visible form possible. This attitude chimed with widely shared perceptions of manliness, as R.J. Connell asserts: “True masculinity is almost always thought to proceed from men’s bodies— to be inherent in a male body or to express something about a male body” (45). If the muscular body is promoted and accepted as a signifier of strength, power, dominance, and virility, it can withstand any outside threat and maintain its integrity. Kasson argues that, as the early twentieth century progressed, “perceptions of manliness were drastically altered by the new dynamics created by vast corporate power and immense concentrations of wealth” (11). Characterizing manhood in terms of autonomy and independence became problematic, if not impossible, under such conditions, unless an individual could redefine power and status in corporeal terms unrelated to economic realities.
By the 1950s, the American male also had to contend with an unfamiliar threat to his masculine potency. Steven Cohan suggests “the postwar ‘free man’
had to depend upon the state to preserve his independence in the face of the communist threat, thereby calling into question the myth of rugged, rebellious, and masculine American individuality” (134). Once again, the male body served as the unassailable site of masculine independence and self-sufficiency, reflected in the continuing popularity of bodybuilding during this period. As with the strongman acts of previous eras, 1950s bodybuilding culture often referenced classical iconography for purposes of inspiration and legitimization. The term
“Herculean” was employed frequently in specialist magazines, and cover stars were referred to as modern incarnations of Hercules himself. Gideon Nisbet suggests: “To become a bodybuilder was already to emulate Hercules, within a discipline that had always consciously modeled itself on the hero’s feats of strength” (48 –49). From this perspective, the casting of Steve Reeves in the 1958 film was both a logical progression for the champion and the ultimate endorsement of bodybuilding as a heroizing discipline.
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The financial success of Hercules in America (and worldwide) indicates its representation of heroic masculinity had resonance for a large number of people. Several commentators on the peplum genre suggest this new form of mythical manliness acted as a salve against traumatic social and economic transformation. Dyer states: “The peplum celebrates a type of male body for an audience to whom it had until now been a source of economic self-worth”
( White 169). The physical strength and stamina associated with unskilled manual labor had declined steadily in economic value as industrialization increased.
Maggie Günsberg suggests the genre promoted “the fantasy that traditional physical prowess was still valuable and even heroic” (181). Faced with numerous social, economic, and political anxieties, consumers of Hercules and its successors were reassured of the enduring worth located in their own bodies. In terms of the political situation, Wyke draws an explicit and specific Cold War parallel:
“The resulting modern Hercules symbolized the victory of Beauty, Virility, and the American Way ... a seemingly natural link was forged between muscularity, masculinity, justice, and the supremacy of the West” (370). While this direct linkage can be criticized as simplistic, the image of the powerful hero defending freedom from oppressive alien aggressors equates the muscular male body with manliness, virtue, democracy, and spirit. The Three Stooges Meet Hercules appears to question and subvert this equation through the villainy of Hercules; however, this heroic value is upheld and validated in the form of Schuyler, who must first remodel his body into a truly Herculean form. While most peplum protagonists emerge on screen as fully-formed exemplars of heroic virtue, Schuyler transforms himself into a modern Hercules before the viewers’ eyes.
Schuyler is represented initially as an exaggerated contrast to Hercules, a scientist and inventor who values brain over brawn. The objects most associated with him are not a lion skin and a club but a pencil and the rolled blueprint for his space-time machine. He wears thick-rimmed glasses, underlining a lack of physical perfection, and dresses in a dark coat that conceals his upper body.
Tall yet awkward, he tends to stoop and bow his head. This lack of physical dominance and assertiveness is equated with a corresponding lack of spirit and courage, demonstrated by Schuyler backing down from a confrontation with Ralph Dimsal, the middle-aged pharmacy owner. Diane regards Schuyler’s passivity and unwillingness to engage in physical conflict with Dimsal as an impair-ment to his masculinity and, consequently, a threat to their potential heterosexual relationship. She reacts to his humiliation at Dimsal’s hands with impatience and frustration rather than sympathy. Diane refers to Schuyler as a
“jellyfish,” evoking a limp, undefined form far removed from the hard, built, and shaped body of the peplum hero ( The Three Stooges Meet Hercules).
In Ancient Greece, Schuyler does not protest when King Odius places Diane in his chariot, his inaction a tacit acceptance of Odius’ superior position in the patriarchal order, even when the prize femininity represented by Diane is at stake. When Odius condemns the Stooges to be galley slaves, Diane exhorts
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Schuyler to be a man and intervene. He protests to Odius and is slapped to the ground by the latter, a middle-aged man of unexceptional strength. This illustration of Schuyler’s masculine inadequacy echoes in exaggerated form contemporaneous advertisements for bodybuilding courses, where the skinny hero gets sand kicked in his face by a larger, more powerful bully. Indeed, Odius dismisses Schuyler as a “weakling,” a term employed widely in the promotion of physique culture, prompting the latter to transform himself according to the prescribed and aggressively marketed methods of the modern bodybuilder.
As a galley slave, Schuyler exchanges his effeminizing Greek robes for rags and grows a beard, a traditional symbol of male maturity and authority. Literally chained to his training apparatus— a wooden bench and an oar — he undergoes a regime of bodybuilding through enslavement, an extreme manifestation of the confinement, repetition and physical duress— bordering on punishment —
associated with body culture.4 This involuntary fitness program produces extreme muscle growth, emphasized by a low angle medium shot, and a ship-wreck results in the loss of Schuyler’s glasses, the last remaining physical signifier of his “weakling” identity. In one key shot, the camera tracks in on Schuyler’s left bicep, accompanied by a trumpet fanfare, an established, if clichéd, signifier of a dramatic or spectacular moment, though here employed for humorous effect. This is followed by a dissolve to a low angle close-up of the bicep, an extreme highlighting of the male physique even by the standards of the peplum, reducing the body to flexed and straining muscle. To emphasize further in parodic form Schuyler’s newly acquired strength and masculine potency, he is shown rowing by himself on the left side of the ship, while the other oarsmen sit
on the right, struggling to match his pace. Schuyler’s newly developed heroic physique becomes the film’s main site of spectacle in forms that both reference and parody the peplum genre’s highlighting of the built male body. Moe and Curly Joe strip him to the waist to show off his body to King Theseus, a female companion, and the extra-diegetic spectator, acknowledging openly their participation in a “muscle show.” This super-masculinity is demonstrated further with a series of bodybuilding poses, leading Schuyler to be taken for Hercules. Thus his change in appearance is accompanied by a shift in identity.
Schuyler’s transformation from weakling to super-man is linked not only to the name Hercules but also to objects previously associated with Herculean strength. Early in the film, King Odius states, “No man alive can move those boulders except Hercules” ( The Three Stooges Meet Hercules). In shifting these same boulders, Schuyler asserts his status as an equal to Hercules in an appropriately physical fashion; if Herculean identity is determined purely in terms of strength, then Schuyler has become Hercules. On a narrative level, he poses as Hercules, defeating a series of opponents for commercial gain. In inter-textual terms, Schuyler’s exploits are given a more spectacular representation in the comic book issued to accompany the film’s American release. On
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the most obvious level, unlike the black and white film, these images are in color, as are the pepla, yet the relative freedom from budgetary constraints also means the comic strip version can feature scenes absent from the film.
Both the press book and the film mention but do not show a hydra, a creature associated with the labors of Hercules (press book 3). The comic book includes an illustration of Schuyler battling and vanquishing the hydra, underlining both his heroic masculinity and his association with the “good” Hercules of legend (28).
Schuyler’s new masculinity is qualified, to an extent, by his perceived lack of fighting spirit. In accordance with bodybuilding literature, male perfection requires strength of mind as well as body, or, as Moe comments, “Now we gotta work on the gumption department” ( The Three Stooges Meet Hercules). The crucial element in Schuyler achieving full super-masculine potency is Diane, his heterosexual object of desire, who is about to be incorporated into Odius’
patriarchal order through the institution of marriage. Led captive into an arena, Schuyler breaks his chains, referencing both Hercules and Hercules Unchained, his super-masculinity now expressed in body and spirit. Furthermore, this new manifestation of the mythical hero trounces the original in hand-to-hand combat, much as the Prodican Hercules superseded previous representations of the demigod. The built body that was previously undermined and brought into question by association with the bad Hercules is now endorsed and valorized through linkage with a new hero whose truly Herculean potential has been both realized and unleashed.
Conclusion
The representation of Herculean masculinity in The Three Stooges Meet Hercules can be characterized in terms of parody, differentiation, and emulation.
This depiction is, I argue, a conscious, strategic, and acknowledged reaction to Hercules and Steve Reeves’ incarnation of the title character. The box-office success of The Three Stooges Meet Hercules suggests that, in terms of commercial appeal, Herculean masculinity could be challenged, distorted, subverted, and indeed parodied, so long as this representation reverted to a form familiar from the peplum genre. The Three Stooges Meet Hercules ridicules the term “Herculean” only to reaffirm its currency through association with the rebuilt Schuyler and bodybuilding culture in general. The film mocks peplum masculine values, notes itself as different from them, and then recreates them in a pre-existing image. Yet in the end, by mocking Herculean masculinity, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules reaffirms it; though the admirable masculine form is given a modern American twist (thanks to the American fascination with bodybuilding culture), the values the film asserts are as ancient as the depiction of the Prodican Hercules himself. By taking on not only Hercules’ legendary
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strength but also the intellectual and moral composition associated with Hercules in both Prodicus’ work and the peplum tradition, Schuyler has not only become Hercules in form, but Hercules in deed, as well.
NOTES
1. It should be noted that, in terms of contemporary reception, this parody was not necessarily considered successful. The British journal Monthly Film Bulletin both acknowledged and dismissed the film’s intent: “The script has one or two glimmerings of ideas for parody, but the production is tawdry, the comedy very tired indeed” (121).
These perceived deficiencies may undermine the desired effect, yet the attempt itself is of interest.
2. For example, Dracula: Dead and Loving It is dependent to varying degrees not only on audience familiarity with the immediate source text, Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but also the previous parodic work of Mel Brooks and star Leslie Nielsen, the Stoker novel, vampire folklore in western culture, and earlier film adaptations of Dracula. The title itself only makes sense if the receiver recognizes the name Dracula, knows that Dracula is a vampire, and understands that vampires are living corpses with some level of both self-awareness and emotion and therefore capable of appreciating their “undead” status from a negative or positive perspective.
3. The Samson in the Old Testament is a man of exceptional strength, if questionable moral judgment. He was featured in the influential Hollywood biblical epic Samson and Delilah, played by “beefcake” star Victor Mature. Samson reappeared as a character in a handful of peplum and adventure films, notably Samson; Hercules, Samson and Ulysses; and Samson and the Mighty Challenge. Samson Burke went on to have a modest career in pepla, including starring in another peplum parody, Toto contro Maciste.
4. Ratifying the film’s connection to this larger body culture, Larry at one point even refers to Vic Tanny, an American bodybuilder and a pioneer of the modern health club.
Tanny’s business empire was at its peak during the 1950s and early 1960s.
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Blanshard, Alastair. Hercules: A Heroic Life. London: Granta Books, 2005.
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Cashmore, Ellis. Making Sense of Sports, 3d ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
Cohan, Steven. Masked Men: Masculinity and the Movies in the Fifties. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
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Uhlenbrock, Jaimee Pugliese. Herakles: Passage of the Hero Through 1000 Years of Classical Art. New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1986.
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About the Contributors
Michael G. Cornelius is the author or editor of eleven books, including Nancy Drew and Her Sister Sleuths: Essays on the Fiction of Girl Detectives (co-edited with Melanie E. Gregg; McFarland, 2008) and The Boy Detectives: Essays on the Hardy Boys and Others (McFarland, 2010). For Chelsea House, he has written books on Geoffrey Chaucer, John Donne and other Metaphysical poets, and Much Ado About Nothing. Also a novelist ( Creating Man, Vineyard Press, 2001, and The Ascension, Variance, 2007), he is the chair of the Department of English and Mass Communications at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
Maria Elena D’Amelio holds a degree in literature and film studies from the Catholic University of Milan and a doctorate in film history from the University of San Marino. A graduate teaching assistant at Stony Brook University in New York State, her areas of interest focus on Italian cinema, relations between mythology and popular culture, film theory and history, and gender and genre.
She is currently researching Italian peplum and Italian and American melodramas and has published essays in Non solo Dive: Pioniere del cinema Italiano (Cineteca di Bologna) and Metamorfosi del mito classico nel cinema (Istituto Veneto).
John Elia is an associate professor and Thérèse Murray Goodwin ’49 Chair in Philosophy at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. His scholarship is focused on moral virtues such as transparency, self-control, and integrity; he has published on these topics in both academic and popular venues. Some of his favorite recent work has addressed the virtues in popular culture, including, now, the virtue of reverence in the sword and sandal film genre. Besides teaching and writing about philosophy, Elia directs the Wilson Scholars Program at Wilson College.
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