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Muscular Otherness: Performing the Muscular Freak and Monster

Staszel, John Paul
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1245266700

Abstract Details

2009, Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, Theatre and Film.
The historic “freak show” presented human difference as a popular form of entertainment, which both fascinated and repulsed. While voyeuristically consumed to look at on stage, freak show performers were often alienated from the rest of society, stared at, and called “freaks” and “monsters”—terms connoting repugnance and physical disorder. Today, the muscular body is a newly emergent form of physical bodily difference inviting our stares, and the gaze at its difference is still very much informed by the historical mode of staring at the freak and monster. However, these terms, when applied to muscular identities in popular discourse, no longer only have negative connotations associated with disgust and disgrace. The muscular bodies and public personas of famous bodybuilders, and their performances as war heroes, crime fighters and sports stars, have had a tremendous impact—inspiring millions, including myself, to take up a bodybuilding lifestyle for health and aesthetic reasons. The inspiration we get from these muscular identities, however, lies in more than their standardized performances as hero or athlete. These performers have also modeled positive, empowering images of the “muscular freak” and “muscular monster,” new character types that invite idolization and admiration. In this manner, images and performances featuring the muscular body have altered our social understanding of terms normally associated with the classification of the deformed and ostracized human body into terms of honor, veneration and praise. The muscular body has had a transformative power over the terms freak and monster, and it is in this power that I place its foundation. To articulate the particulars of this transformation, I look to pivotal historic events in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and recent case studies in film, television, and magazines, as well as my own participant and scholarly findings of bodybuilding expositions.
Scott Magelssen, PhD (Advisor)
Lesa Lockford, PhD (Committee Member)
Eileen Cherry-Chandler, PhD (Committee Member)
134 p.
Theater
Freak; Monster; Muscular Freak; Muscular Monster; Schwarzenegger; Pumping Iron;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Staszel, J. P. (2009). Muscular Otherness: Performing the Muscular Freak and Monster [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1245266700

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Staszel, John Paul. Muscular Otherness: Performing the Muscular Freak and Monster. 2009. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1245266700.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Staszel, John Paul. "Muscular Otherness: Performing the Muscular Freak and Monster." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1245266700

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1245266700
3,678
© 2009, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.