Predators of Capua. Spartacus and the limits of the human

GÓMEZ PONCE, ARIEL

Spartacus in the Television Arena: Essays on the Starz? Series

McFarland & Company Publishers

Lugar: North Carolina; Año: 2015; p. 152 - 169

In this work, In Spartacus, we focus on the theoretical discussion about the man/animal tension in television series Spartacus: Blood and Sand from the point of view of the predation category, and we analyze it under the light of ecosemiotics and the semiotics of culture. The question of the predator-becoming can be approached, considering the practices and behaviors of gladiators in Ancient Rome to demonstrate how man represents himself in its animalistic configurations and how subjects-Others (slaves and gladiators) are produced and transformed in new media products. We recognize the idea of the predator as a recurring construction in the cultural imagery through diverse representations that reflect this animal-becoming in agonistic modes of human behavior: in this sense, if we take a close look at the series Spartacus, we can argue that certain forms of violence are associated with a "wild", atavistic and primitive world. We know that brutality and cruelty are classic characteristics of gladiators. Characters like Spartacus, Crixus, and Barca, on the sand and in the open, are subjects carried away by an innate nature that moves and impels them to survive in a hostile environment, propelling a ?survival of the fittest?. Taking the historical rebellious slave to fiction, Spartacus, the series, uses the most basic behaviors (even those which we may share with other species) to bring forth a new understanding of humans in their practices: the predatory zeal.