Sly, Arnold and the American mirror
Action stars who are fast approaching a combined 100 years in the public eye are the subjects of “TMZ Presents: Arnold & Sly: Rivals, Friends, Icons” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-14). Streaming on Hulu tomorrow.
Both men arrived almost fully formed as icons in the mid-1970s. It’s difficult to describe the rapture that met Stallone’s boxing thriller “Rocky” in 1976. At a time when many of the best movies were “downers,” the tale of Rocky Balboa was hailed as “Capra-esque” and won three Oscars.
Similarly, the
1977 documentary “Pumping Iron” catapulted “Mr. Universe” into the public eye, a place he has never left. The strenuously campy “Iron” gave way to iconic roles in “Conan the Barbarian” and “The Terminator.”
Whether you consider their movies brilliant or merely violent distractions, there’s no mistaking the impact Stallone and Schwarzenegger had on the public’s perception of the male physique and the cinematic notion of the American hero.
If you look at films and television shows from the mid-1970s, you can observe a sea change in the male body. In movies like “The Longest Yard” or “Heaven Can Wait,” actors with relatively “normal” builds like Burt Reynolds and Warren Beatty were convincingly cast as football players. By today’s Hollywood standards they would seem puny.
Sly and Arnold introduced many to a gym routine and an emphasis on “physical culture” that had hitherto been seen as an eccentric niche with decidedly gay overtones.
Jane Fonda’s workout videos of the early 1980s and the explosion of gym culture announced an emphasis on muscularity and fitness for both sexes. Suddenly, everybody wanted to be “ripped.” If you don’t believe me, check out an old “Love Boat” on Pluto and ogle all those “untoned” bodies.
Stallone’s role in the 1985 thriller “Rambo: First Blood Part II” merged his macho physique with an extreme and paranoid take on patriotism that echoed the “stab-in-theback” myths championed by Nazis after WWI. Some giggled at Stallone’s “GI Joe on Steroids” appearance and noted that a real war hero like Audie Murphy had only measured 5’5” and weighed 112 pounds.
This contrast between the heroic image and reality was further blurred in 2003 when Schwarzenegger ran for governor of California against incumbent Gray Davis. Schwarzenegger, who had left Austria to dodge that country’s draft, was touted as a real hero, while Davis, a Bronze Star recipient with Vietnam experience, was dismissed as a wimp.
Over the decades, the extreme emphasis on muscularity has only increased to a ludicrous degree. At a time when there is so much public nervousness about gender and identity, it’s interesting to see how much the hyper-macho subcultures of the WWE and UFC borrow from drag culture. And the corporate leaders of both those macho organizations have hitched their wagons to the 45th president, a man whose own claims to macho status strike many as suspect, if not laughable.