Austere diets are also common, and after winning his final title and announcing his retirement from bodybuilding, Schwarzenegger celebrates with a meal of 'real food' for the first time in many months. The ascetic as well as aesthetic nature of the sport is also underlined in the way that Butler's subjects, Schwarzenegger in particular, also embody femininity, however unconsciously in their physical obsessions and movements. Schwarzenegger even takes ballet lessons to improve his movement and posing, in addition to pursuing a sparse and protein-heavy diet to enhance his body. Ballet, a stereotypical pursuit of gay men and women adds a catlike grace to his movements.
Schwarzenegger's emphasis on grace and beauty also raises the question: is bodybuilding art or sport? It is not about achieving a goal, a personal best or a 'time.' Rather bodybuilding, like modeling is about posing and being gazed at: it is a nonverbal, wordless art form. The female body as a sculpture is not idea that is particular to cinema, but as old as the view of Galatea and Pygmalion -- the female is created, the male body simply is taken for granted. Schwarzenegger describes bodybuilding not as the pursuit of a physical achievement (like running a mile in record time or being a great hitter) or even the pursuit of health (the ostensible reason for working out at the gym) but of purely physical attributes: "You look in the mirror and see you need a little more deltoids to make symmetry. So you exercise and put more deltoid on. A sculptor will slap stuff on" (Eder 1977). One could add that a woman 'slaps stuff' on to her face, just like a sculptor adds more to a beautiful statue of a woman.
Schwarzenegger views his body in a cold, almost impersonal manner at the same time he glories in his 'creation' of beauty. However, unlike a model or a woman who adorns herself with cosmetics, the male bodybuilder clearly functions as a manufacturer of his own aesthetic: he creates his body from the inside as well as the outside, with his own sweat and tears, almost giving birth to a new body like an act of feminine birth -- although even he, in the end is rendered vulnerable as a woman to being judged on his appearance. During the Mr. Universe competition, one of the losers actually cries after he learns he has not secured the victory after many attempts. His act of self-creation has failed, he has been judged unworthy -- in the eyes of the male-focused gaze.
Pumping Iron lovingly stares at men in various stages of undress, but it also suggests that their competitive beauty is also dangerous, as is manifest in Schwarzenegger's psychological as well as physical annihilation of his competitors. He is a master of intimidation, as much as any 'mean' high school girl and even proclaims that through psychological intimidation he can 'talk' his competition into losing. Again, unlike athletics with quantifiable wins and losses, bodybuilding is as much about attitude as ballet: Schwarzenegger's sense of theatricality is so intense he even uses women to practice his 'art' as barbells, rather than actual implements. He trains at the infamous Muscle Beach, in the outdoors where he can be gawked at by spectators in a manner that eggs him on, and at Gold's Gym in California, another famous venue. Although the male gaze can be damaging in its harsh and eroticizing judgment, it also has a positive potential to celebrate and validate the subject's ego through its approval. Schwarzenegger seems to love the attention of the camera: "Photographing is essentially an act of non-intervention... The act of photographing is more than passive observing. Like sexual voyeurism, it is a way of at least tacitly, often explicitly, encouraging what is going on to keep on happening' (Sontag, cited by Chandler, "Eye," 2000).
Like an athlete -- or an aspiring Hollywood starlet -- Schwarzenegger plays fast and loose with ethics, even giving his rivals false advice about training. He is both charming and bullying at the same time. He clearly views the competition as a way of catapulting himself to celebrity, not as of merely achieving an 'Olympic' best or gold metal where his sporting achievement is the be-all and end-all of existence. Bodybuilding is a celebration of the self, and the culture of competitive bodybuilding seems rooted in narcissism, an act of self-voyeurism and delight at one's physical beauty and prowess.
Schwarzenegger describes bodybuilding as a runner's high and a sexual, orgasmic high: "When you have driven your body past the barrier and then you relax, all the blood comes rushing, pounding back into your muscles. You feel like you're swelling up, like your skin is about to explode. That's the pump," he says when he describes what it means to be 'pumped up.' The feeling is orgasmic, but...
The 1964 film Dr. Strangelove uses the context of Cold War brinksmanship in order to uncover a more fundamental problem with patriarchy and the maintenance of a destructive masculinity. This masculinity is under threat as a result of sexual frustration, and the characters of Ripper, Turgidson, and Kong embody three different kinds of this frustration. Ripper's sexual frustration is the most explicit, and leads to the most overtly violent reaction.
This critic argues that plays such as Twelfth Night, Midsummer Nights Dream, and as You Like it merely serve to assert masculine authority and to rebuff practices like cross-dressing. Besides, cross-dressing threatened the social order and the gendered hierarchies of power. The principles of subordination were challenged by the subversive potential of such practices which transgressed norms (Howard, 1988:418). Regarding the motivation of disguise in Shakespearean plays, it assumes a
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