Et in Arcadia, Aggro

Hercules Unchained, in its striking fusion of sophisticated contaminatio and juvenile production, seriousness and inanity, might even be said to parallel, grossissimo modo, the works of Dada and Surrealism that responded to the brutality of war and tyranny of reason through artistic and literary representations of the absurd. Though not originating in the halls of the intellectual elite, Hercules Unchained serves up a proletarian retreat into a looking-glass landscape where the returning hero’s soul, disoriented in war, finally regains memory of self and sense of purpose.