‘I'll Be No Man's Slave and No Man's Whore, and If I Can't Kill Them All, by the Gods They'll Know I've Tried’. Swords, Sorcery and Barbarian Queens

Abstract

The 1980s saw both a return and rise to box office prominence of the once-popular Sword and Sorcery genre. Following on from Arnold Schwarzenegger's performance as Conan the Barbarian (1982), a raft of imitators followed. On the one hand, there were films like Krull (1983) and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) with their big budgets and excellent casts. On the other were their ‘spaghetti’ variations, such as Conquest (1983), Hercules (1983) and the Ator (1982–1990) series, where poor production values, doleful acting, and even more atrocious dubbing remained more frightening than any monsters the hero encountered.

For the most part, the sword and sorcery genre predominantly focused on the male in the canon. However, using Yvonne Tasker's (1993) work on spectacular and hard bodies in action cinema, this chapter will provide an analysis of how female characters in the sword and sorcery genre are portrayed, using Barbarian Queen (1985) as a case study.

Citation

Gerrard, S. (2022), "‘I'll Be No Man's Slave and No Man's Whore, and If I Can't Kill Them All, by the Gods They'll Know I've Tried’. Swords, Sorcery and Barbarian Queens", Gerrard, S. and Middlemost, R. (Ed.) Gender and Action Films 1980-2000 (Emerald Studies in Popular Culture and Gender), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 37-49. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-506-720221003