In December 2017, The New Peplum: Essays on Sword and Sandal Films and Television Programs since the 1990s, was published by McFarland, becoming the first academic text that focuses exclusively on the neo-peplum genre of films and television shows. The purpose of this book was to lay the foundational work for other scholars to look at sword and sandal media (be it film, television, comics, video games, etc.) that have been created in the 1990s and into the new millennium while at the same time highlighting scholarship of other academics who have written about the genre.
Table of Contents
Foreword – David R. Coon
Introduction – Nicholas Diak
Part One – Crossing the Rubicon: Expanding the Neo- Peplum Boundaries
Adapting to New Spaces: Swords and Planets and the Neo-Peplum – Paul Johnson
Hercules: Transmedia Superhero Mythology – Djoymi Baker
From Crowds to Swarms: Movement and Bodies in Neo- Peplum Films – Kevin M. Flanagan
Part Two – Wisdom from the Gods: Mythological Adaptations
There are no boundaries for our Boats: Vikings and the Westernization of the Norse Saga – Steve Nash
Sounds of Swords and Sandals: Music in Neo-Peplum BBC Television Docudramas – Nick Poulakis
Hercules, Xena and Genre: The Methodology Behind the Mashup – Valerie Estelle Frankel
Part Three – The “Glory” of Rome: Depictions of the Empire
Male Nudity, Violence and the Disruption of Voyeuristic Pleasure in Starz’s Spartacus – Hannah Mueller
Sex, Lies and Denarii: Roman Depravity and Oppression in Starz’s Spartacus – Jerry B. Pierce
In the Green Zone with the Ninth Legion: The Post-Iraq Roman Film – Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
Part Four – Sculpted in Marble: Gender and Representation
Laughing at the Body: The Imitation of Masculinity in Peplum Parody Films – Tatiana Prorokova
Queering the Quest: Neo-Peplum and the Neo-Femme in Xena: Warrior Princess – Haydee Smith
Afterword – Steven L. Sears
Reviews of The New Peplum
Bible Films Blog
The Journal of American Culture: Vol 42, Issue 2
The Journal of Popular Film and Television: Vol 42, Issue 4
Citations
List of texts that have cited The New Peplum and the essays within.
Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames: Representation, Play, Transmedia by Dr. Ross Clare
Cites Baker, Diak, Flanagan, Frankel, Johnson, Mueller, Nash, and Pierce.
Ancient Rome on the Silver Screen: Myth vs. Reality by Gregory S. Aldrete and Graham Sumner.
Cites Diak and Wetmore.
“Atalanta as Celluloid Warrior in Jason and the Argonauts (2000) and Hercules (2014)” by Patricia Salzman-Mitchell in Brill’s Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film edited by Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos.
Unknown citation.
“Brad’s Biceps and Dwayne’s Delts: Stardom as Physicality and Digital Spectacle in Troy (2004) and Hercules (2014)” by Djoymi Baker in Brill’s Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film edited by Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos.
Unknown citation.
Classical Antiquity in Video Games Playing with the Ancient World, edited by Christian Rollinger.
Cites Diak.
“Construire ses propres models: le cas des bandes sonores post-Gladiator” by Arnaud Saura-Ziegelmeyer in Thersites vol 13 2021.
Cites Diak.
“Crazy Man-Killing Monsters: The Inimical Portrayal of the Amazons in Supernatural‘s ‘Slice Girls’” by Connie Skibinski in Thersites vol 17, 2023.
Cites Frankel.
“Dance or Dēcēdere: Gladiator and Industrial Music Sampling” by Nicholas Diak in A Hero Will Endure: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiator edited by Rachel L. Carazo.
Cites Diak (Yup! I totally cite myself).
“Defendiendo el limes desde Britannia hasta Irak: Nuevos enfoques belicos en el cine de ramos del siglo XXI” by Oskar Cantabrana in Pantalla en guerra.
Cites Wetmore.
“The Depiction of Slavery in Ancient World Television Drama: Politics, Culture and Society” – PhD thesis by Dr. Claire Elizabeth Greenhalgh.
Cites Diak, Mueller, and Pierce.
“De série monde à série phénomène: Analyse diégétique et de la réception de Xena la guerrière (1995-2001)” – Masters thesis by Chloé Glangeaud.
Cites Diak.
“From Female Stereotypes to Women with Agency: Elite Women and Slave Women in Howard Fast’s 1951 Novel, Spartacus (1960), and Starz Spartacus (2010–13)” by Amanda Potter in Gender, Power, and Identity in the Films of Stanley Kubrick, edited by Karen A. Ritzenhoff, Dijana Metlić, and Jeremi Szaniawski.
Cites Mueller.
Goliath as Gentle Giant: Sympathetic Portrayals in Popular Culture by Jonathan L. Friedman.
Cites Frankel.
“Hercules’ Self-fashioning on Screen: Millennial Concerns and Political Dimensions” by Jean Alvares and Patricia Salzman-Mitchell in The Modern Hercules: Images of the Hero from the Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century edited by Alastair J.L. Blanshard and Emma Stafford.
Unknown Citation.
Heroes Masked and Mythic: Echoes of Ancient Archetypes in Comic Book Characters by Christopher Wood.
Cites Diak.
“Introduction: On Comets, Cakes, and Toys – Marking ‘Gladiator Days’ doe (More than) Two Decades” by Rachel L. Carazo in A Hero Will Endure: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiator edited by Carazo.
Cites Diak.
“Iocaste’s Daughters in Modernity: Anita Berber and Valeska Gert” by Nicole Haitzinger in Ancient Violence in the Modern Imagination: The Fear and the Fury, edited by Irene Berti, Carla Scilabra, Maria G. Castello.
Cites Wetmore.
“La recepción de la guerra en la antigua Roma a través del cine: un estado de la cuestión” by Oskar Aguado Cantabrana in La guerra de la Antigüedad en el cine edited by Borja Antela-Bernárdez & Jordi Vidal.
Cites Diak and Wetmore.
La Strada: The Cinema and Cinematographers of Italy, edited by Alexander A. Sinitsyn. Unknown citation.
“Maximus – The Twenty-First-Century Hybrid Hero: the Bridge Between Traditional and Counterculture Hero Archetypes in Gladiator” by Kristen Leer in A Hero Will Endure: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiator edited by Carazo.
Cites Diak.
“Olympos, gladiátorok, krémesség és Britney Spears: Az antikvitás megjelenése a kortárs reklámiparban” by Gábriel Nóra and Marton Máté
Cites Diak.
“The Performance of Plasticity: Method Acting, Prosthetics, and the Virtuosity of Embodied Transformation” by David LaRocca in Plastics, Environment, Culture, and the Politics of Waste, edited by Tatiana Konrad.
Unknown citation.
Provocauteurs and Provocations: Screening Sex in 21st Century Media by Dr. Maria San Filippo
Cites Mueller.
“Redirecting the Gaze: The Woman & the Gladiator on Television in the Twenty-First Century” by doctors Fiona Hobden & Amanda Potter. Cites Mueller.
Researching the Archaeological Past through Imagined Narratives: A Necessary Fiction, edited by Daniël van Helden and Robert Witcher
Cites Mueller and Pierce.
“Rockules’ Revenge: The Portrayal of the Veteran Warrior in Brett Ratner’s Hercules” by Owen Reese in Brill’s Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film edited by Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos.
Unknown citation.
“Roman Religious Figurines that “hear you […] in the afterlife”: Maximus’ Lares, His Vilica, and the Pomerium of Elysium in Gladiator” by Rachel L. Carazo in A Hero Will Endure: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiator edited by Carazo.
Cites Coon, Diak, and Johnson.
“Romans and Zealots in the Global War on Terror: Asymmetric Warfare and Counterinsurgency in Risen (2016) and Ben-Hur (2016)” by Oskar Aguado-Cantabrana in Brill’s Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film edited by Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos.
Unknown citation.
“The Secularization of Cesar Borgia and the American Motion Picture Production Code” by Jennifer Mara DeSilva in The Borgia Family: Rumor and Representation edited by Jennifer Mara DeSilva
Cites Diak.
“Swords Made of Rubber: Cinematic Antiquity through the Lens of War” by Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos” in Brill’s Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film edited by Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos.
Unknown citation.
Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture by Liz Gloyn.
Cites Diak.
“Warriors, Murderers, Savages: Violence in Steve Moore’s Hercules: The Thracian Wars” by Katherine Lu Hsu in The Modern Hercules: Images of the Hero from the Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century edited by Alastair J.L. Blanshard and Emma Stafford.
Unknown citation.
“What We Do in Life, Echoes in Eternity”: An Ecocritical Reading of the Scenery and Landscapes in Gladiator” by Stefano Rozzoni in A Hero Will Endure: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiator edited by Carazo.
Cites Flanagan.
“Why is he there? Male presence in a sexually explicit magazine geared towards heterosexual men” by James K. Beggan in Porn Studies Journal, Vol 10, issue 4, 2023.
“Xena: Warrior Princess – The Giant Killer (1996)” – Article by Matt Page at the Bible Films Blog.
Cites Frankel.
Errata
The following mistakes are in The New Peplum. For transparency, they are listed below:
Page 4 – Pointlessly gendered with “he or she.” Should be a “they.”
Page 12 – Xena.com beginning its operation in 2008 is incorrect. It is 1998. The text is in error, however the citation (end note 12) is correct. The wrong date simply slipped by my editing.
Page 199 – 201 – Dom DeLuise plays Emperor Nero but the text refers to him as Caesar. However, “Caesar” is also a title, and part of Nero’s title and name. The character is also addressed in the formal “Hail, Caesar!” salutation while residing in Caesar’s Palace. The end result is the character, regardless of name/title, is parody of Roman decadence taken to its extreme. Nero/Caesar can go either way – the scholarship and analysis of History of the World, Part 1 is still sound.
Purchase
The New Peplum can be readily bought at the following websites:
- McFarland (preferred place to purchase)
- Amazon
- Barnes and Noble