From Kubrick’s Political Icon to Television Sex Symbol
From Kubrick’s Political Icon to Television Sex Symbol
This chapter starts from the iconic 1960 Stanley Kubrick film version of Spartacus and it compares it with the other version to demonstrate how in the Kubrick version the political and ideological nature of the Spartacus figure re-emerges in the twenty-first century, reinvented and far more sexualized than its predecessor. STARZ Spartacus, the chapter argues, has an altogether different set of objectives, placing special emphasis on the glorified and eroticized image of mostly male—but also female—bodies. This chapter concludes that Kubrick's Spartacus is transformed from a political icon, representing freedom, equality, and independence, into a new Spartacus who also becomes the image of a hypersexualized masculinity.
Keywords: Stanley Kubrick, Spartacus, film, political icon, sex symbol, hypersexualized masculinity, glorified and eroticized male bodies, reinvention
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