This chapter explores the spectacles of gladiators, bare-knuckle boxing, and the early theater. Wild, violent bodies were banned in Rome and America: the gladiator excluded from civic participation and protections; boxing matches banned through much of the nineteenth century. Both bodies were marked by wounds, but even more by a brashness and ruggedness that was contrary to standards of elite decorum. These bodies were the object of elite condemnation as uncivilized, uneducated, and unrefined. And these bodies were the object of the gaze, put on display to perform to the expectations of the audience. The problem is that boundaries of exclusion prove to be permeable. And these boundaries prove to be permeable because the lawless, uncivilized bodies replay the role of violence in constituting a founding identity. The conquest of wild, lawless nature in the name of civilization required a type of body, one that could act with similar violent wildness. To the chagrin of certain elites, the taboo body comes to be valorized, grafted and grafting itself onto the rugged origins embedded in the founding ideal.

This chapter looks at Sun City, the massive resort and casino that opened up in Bophuthatswana in 1979. Just a 2-hour drive from Johannesburg, Sun City was a massive entertainment complex that served as the most visible symbol of the Bophuthatswanan state. Part of Sun City’s appeal was that it flouted many of the laws in the Republic, most notably apartheid’s racial segregation and prohibitions on miscegenation, as well as South Africa’s proscriptions against gambling. Sun City was an important flashpoint in the battle over Bophuthatswana’s contested sovereignty, especially because it attracted marquee sports and entertainment figures who were willing to break the anti-apartheid cultural boycott. The contours of these battles were often counterintuitive and surprising. Frank Sinatra’s opening of the Superbowl venue in 1981 began the short golden age of Sun City that would last until the release by Artists United Against Apartheid (AUAA) of the “Sun City” in 1985. Thereafter, the cultural boycott applied equally to Bophuthatswana as it did to South Africa proper.

In 1975 Mailer published The Fight, an account of the Muhammad Ali and George Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa. His portrait of Ali during the days leading up to the famous face-off punctuates Mailer’s ongoing fascination with the sport, which he covered in his journalism for decades. In all of these pieces, Mailer expounds on the existential and moral aspects of boxing, drawing connections between boxing, moral courage, masculinity, and existential leadership, which also appear in novels like The Deer Park, An American Dream, and Tough Guys Don’t Dance. This chapter engages with boxing as a journalistic focus of Mailer’s but centers on his ongoing fascination with Ali as the symbol of all that boxing symbolized.

In a number of works, ranging from “The White Negro” to An American Dream to Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Mailer controversially confronts the issue of race. As this chapter explains, he does so in ways that reflect the racist limitations of perspective arising from Mailer’s own position of privilege, and which also capture significant elements of the racial climate of the time.

Mailer’s definitions of manhood lie at the center of much of his work; they not only inform the construction of his fictional protagonists, but are also connected to his ideas of existentialism, and are tied to his hopes for the future of America. Mailer’s notions of manhood also often intersect with his theories of violence, and thus threaten to uphold toxic notions of masculine power (which Mailer himself internalized throughout his life, evident in his performance of machismo), though Mailer also confronts the many pressures and vulnerabilities associated with cultural expectations of manhood.

Athletic competition played an important role in ancient Greek and Roman culture. From the earliest days, competitive athletics included the combat sports of boxing, wrestling and pankration. Though athletic combat sports continued during the Roman period along with the increase in agonistic festivals and retained their popularity and importance, the spectacle of gladiatorial combat itself also spread throughout the Roman Empire, including the Greek eastern sections. Combat sports presented the spectator with extreme acts of violence which were potentially even fatal. But that violence was controlled and purposive. It took place in ceremonial contexts – funerals, or religious festivals primarily – with athletes wearing special uniforms: nudity in the case of combat athletes and identifiable armaments for gladiators. The fights were not violent chaos or murderous free-for-alls, but regulated and controlled by rules and expectations, all monitored by referees and the watching people themselves. These games were able to give visible expression to the values and ideology at the heart of Greek and Roman societies: courage, skill and discipline, perseverance to victory against all adversity and at all costs, even one’s life, and the ostentatious demonstration of personal excellence. The public nature of the performances is critical: it must be seen to be legitimised. Victory in such combat was worthy of immortality.

Through most of human history, displays of violence, either between humans or animals, have been an integral component of sport. Violent sports have been global in reach and they have extended across every social rank, though they have been largely a male domain, with many societies placing restrictions on the extent to which women might participate in sports of any kind whether as participants and spectators. Yet the period since 1800 has witnessed an unmistakable redrawing of the place of violence in sport, with many societies becoming considerably more squeamish about sports that manipulate or showcase aggression between men or animals for entertainment. The West initiated legislation prohibiting animal cruelty in the nineteenth century, and these extended, albeit in a piecemeal fashion, to other parts of the globe in the twentieth century. There has also been a global move to restrict the degree of interpersonal violence in martial arts, boxing and wrestling, and although hand-to-hand combat sports remain popular across the globe, regulation has sharply reduced the risk of death or serious during competitive events. As a result, the period 1800-2000 has witnessed new controls on the degree of violence permitted in sport.