Coda

Abstract

It is interesting to speculate what Geraid Mast would have made of 300 (Snyder, 2007), This classically-inflected parade of gleaming muscular bodies has much in common with the peplum, a genre Mast dismissed as a betrayal of Italian cinema’s more culturally worthy products. Though not especially cheap by peplum standards, 300 would probably qualify as equally trashy on Mast’s criteria, its spectacle just as empty. I would argue that 300’s monotonous, if distinctive visual palette, and equally monofaceted valorisation and demonization of white and black male bodies, lacks the visual and thematic interest of many pepla. For example, The Amazon Women (Leonviola, 1963) is a second division peplum starring not Steve Reeves but Joe Robinson, a British actor and stuntman best known for fighting Sean Connery in a lift in Diamonds Are forever (Guy Hamilton, 1971). It was produced towards the tail end of the cycle and can be read as reactionary in both its gender and racial politics. For all the film’s limitations, it features at least two notable scenes. During a combat sequence, two female gladiators drop their weapons, weep and embrace, and take their own lives rather than kill each other. Furthermore, their actions connote defiance, strength and friendship rather than stereotypical feminine weakness. The hero’s muscular black sidekick, Ubaratutu, is captured and placed on a revolving dais for covert inspection by the villainous Black Queen, striking bodybuilding poses at her command.