Jump to ContentJump to Main Navigation
Screening the Golden Ages of the Classical Tradition$
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.
Screening the Golden Ages of the Classical Tradition

Meredith Safran

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9781474440844

Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online: September 2019

DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474440844.001.0001

ContentsFRONT MATTER
Show Summary Details
Page of

PRINTED FROM EDINBURGH SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.edinburgh.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Edinburgh University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in ESO for personal use.date: 30 March 2020

Re-(en)gendering Heroism: Reflective Nostalgia for Peplum’s Golden Age of Heroes in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys 2.14 (1996)

Re-(en)gendering Heroism: Reflective Nostalgia for Peplum’s Golden Age of Heroes in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys 2.14 (1996)

Chapter:
(p.27) 1 Re-(en)gendering Heroism: Reflective Nostalgia for Peplum’s Golden Age of Heroes in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys 2.14 (1996)
Source:
Screening the Golden Ages of the Classical Tradition
Author(s):

Vincent Tomasso

Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press
DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9781474440844.003.0002

In this first chapter investigating the golden ages of heroes, Tomasso examines how nostalgia for the mid-twentieth century golden age of peplum (“sword and sandal”) films, which inspired the heroic “golden age” world of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995–9), is redoubled in “Once a Hero” (Episode 2.14, 1996). In staging a second voyage to re-claim the Golden Fleece, the episode presents Hercules as a guide for the demoralized Jason’s recuperation of his masculinity and status as the titular hero, in the wake of his ex-wife Medea’s killing of their two children and the mysterious disappearance of the Golden Fleece. In defining heroism within the scope of the series’ interpretation of the classical golden age, the episode highlights the challenge of reconciling the regressive sexual politics inherent in the peplum genre with the “girl power” Zeitgeist of 1990s American society and culture. On the one hand, the episode leans into the traditional villainization of Medea as a femme fatale; on the other, it also presents an invented character, Phoebe, who earns her own place as a hero among the Argonauts.

Keywords:   peplum (“sword and sandal”) genre, “girl power”, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, nostalgia, neomythological plots, golden age of heroes, Hercules and the Amazon Women, masculinity, Jason and the Argonauts, Medea

Edinburgh Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.

Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.

To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.