Are You Not Entertained?: Mapping the Gladiator Across Visual Media

Anglo-American culture is marked by a gladiatorial impulse: a deep cultural fascination in watching men fight each other. The gladiator is an archetypal character embodying this impulse and his brand of violent and eroticised masculinity has become a cultural shorthand that signals a transhistorical version of heroic masculinity.

Frequently the gladiator or celebrity fighter - from the amphitheatres of Rome to the octagon of the Ultimate Fighting Championships - is used as a way of insistin...