THE MELODRAMATIC AND THE VICTIM

The melodramatic and the victim

The melodramatic and the victim

Introduction

Linda Williams looks at what she calls the three "film body" genres (horror and melodrama) in the article Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess in order to "get beyond the mere fact of sensation to explore its system and structure as well as its effect on the bodies of spectators" (Williams, 208). One genre that is not applied in her article that fits the mold is the Italian Sword and Sandal films. This essay will look at a few different "peplum" films and show how they fit along side the other "body genres" by dissecting the structures of perversion and fantasy apparent throughout the genre. Looking at the Italian Sword and Sandal films from the late 1950s and early 1960s will illustrate how the "peplum" fits in as another "film body" genre.

In order to connect the "peplum" with the three genres Williams writes about, it is important to find out what makes a genre a "film body" genre. She writes that the excess shared by all three are "the spectacle of a body caught in the grip of intense sensation or emotion" and also that "another pertinent feature is the focus on what could probably best be called a form of ecstasy" (Williams, 209). "As the "excess is marked by recourse not to the coded articulations of language but to inarticulate cries of pleasure in porn, screams of fear in horror, sobs of anguish in melodrama," the excess present in the "peplum" is marked by grunts of pain (Williams, 209). The grunts that mark excess are present in the first Hercules film from 1959 when the main character fights a bull and then a lion. In Hercules Unchained he fights a tiger and in Samson the titular character defeats another tiger in the same fashion. The hero in Hercules against the Moon men wrestles and defeats a giant bear in the same way. Other examples have the Hercules/Maciste character struggling to rip out trees or large stones from the ground in order to smash oncoming opponents.

The excess of strength acts like the excesses in the other "body genres" since it "seems to be the case that the success of these genres is often measured by the degree to which the audience sensation mimics what is seen on the screen" (Williams, 210). As Williams describes the rating system of the "peter meter" for porn or the number of handkerchief's a movie receives for melodrama, the "peplum" would receive the "muscle meter," measuring how strong the audience feels watching the main character. This feeling of connection with Steve Reeves moved Arnold Schwarzenegger enough to become a body-builder and actor. The main difference between the "peplum" and the other genres is the "primary embodiments of pleasure, fear, and pain" (Williams, 210). While feminism, horror, and melodrama place the main focus on the bodies of women, the "peplum" places the focus on the body of the male...