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In Search of a Modern Hercules: The Strongman and the Material Culture of the Gym in Global Perspective
(Academic)
Dr. Simon Bronner is Distinguished Professor of American Studies & Folklore at Penn State-Harrisburg
With origins as symbols of empire in Europe and with references to a revival of classical civilizations, the modern strongman became a theatrical sensation in the eighteenth century. Influenced by performances of Prussian Eugen Sandow on the American Ziegfeld stage and the rise of a "gym culture," in America the strongman became a popular culture icon since the late nineteenth century. Arguably, the modern Hercules or Samsons, as they were called, responded to a crisis of masculinity brought on by fears of industrialism's consequences. Ironically, a response to this crisis was to invent equipment and masculine environments in the gym for religious devotion to muscular development. During the twentieth century, health and fitness crazes, sparked by more mythological references, such as Charles Atlas, who preached a "gospel of strength," took hold in America. The narcissistic worship of the muscular body suffered during World War II America when the Nazis were castigated for their racist "superman" ideology. After the 1970s, however, in the wake of the women's movement and Cold War, American media sponsored strongman contests, often with international contestants from Russia, intended to showcase American bodily, and political, power. Against this historical background, twenty-first century contests have globalized further with Asian participants, still poised against American standards of strength. In this presentation, Bronner analyzes the meanings of these contests as symbolic texts in relation to what is perceived in a new crisis of masculinity as a feminizing, enervating world.
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