Arnold Schwarzenegger Core #3 Shelby

Week’s Lesson: “Hardcore Masculinity in the 1980s and 1990s”

By Shelby Adair

In “Stars,” Richard Dyer discusses how stars are significant for the way they turn intangible concepts, like concepts of identity, into a visual spectacle. Masculinity is often visually portrayed through exaggerated and extremely muscular male heroes in action movies. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, is notoriously known for his toned physique and his type-casted roles. In Terminator 2, the first time Schwarzenegger is shown on screen he is completely naked and hunched over in an athletic position like a track runner about to start a race. The director wanted the viewer to gaze and admire his body in its simplest form without the distraction of clothes, immediately emphasizing the importance of his body to what the character represents in the film: strength and protection.

  

Dyer presents two possible explanations for the popularity and recycling of the male action hero. One option is that it amplifies the notion of what assertive and confident masculinity would visually look like. Another is that by presenting such an exaggerated male character it exposes this version of masculinity as fictitious and “unnatural” (Dyer 180) since most men cannot look like this way without body enhancement drugs. Often viewers will either admire the hero’s strength or mock his unrealistic feats (181). His similar roles in Predator and Total Recall are other examples of this hyper masculinity that symbolizes his Hollywood image. If you ask anyone about Arnold Schwarzenegger, after they say, “I’ll be back,” the next thing mentioned are his muscles.

Dyer says how “bodies act as key signifiers of cultural beliefs,” which began in the 1980s in America where “physical development worked as a metaphor for the striving and enterprise which motivated the Reagan years and ‘yuppie’ revolution” (182).  Bryan S. Turner refers to our society as one that “major political problems are both problematized in the body and expressed through it,” a term he calls “somatic society” (182). Our culture is visually motivated and stimulated so it only makes sense that, for example, good physicality and health habits would be associated with certain qualities like success or discipline because both require hard work.

Although Schwarzenegger has gained fame and fortune for his similar macho muscular roles, he is still not considered a talented actor in Hollywood. Dyer compared Meryl Streep to Schwarzenegger, primarily her ability to changer her voice, accents, and variety of roles. Although he has earned more money for his roles, unlike Streep, has never been considered for an academy award. Partially it is because he always plays the same roles. Another could be that “the effect of a common opposition in cultural production is which profit is believed to be the antithesis of art” (185). But another interesting point is that people associate high art with intellectualism, but muscularity is associated with manual labor (186). Overly muscular action heroes, while often desired can also have a backlash in the entertainment industry and as well as in the construction of masculinity.