In The New Gladiators, televised violence is an institution rather than an interruption of normal life. The future sports spectacle joins motorized action to a satire of audiences trained to demand a more dangerous show. Pay attention to the gap between the competitors' physical risk and the cool management of their images. The worn industrial setting helps: this future looks like a business that has found a new use for existing brutality, not a clean world transformed by miraculous technology.
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Film notes
The New Gladiators
1983 / VIEWING NOTES
In The New Gladiators, televised violence is an institution rather than an interruption of normal life.