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“Just Look At His Vascularity:” The Dangerous Theatricality of the World Bodybuilding Federation

2022; Wiley; Volume: 45; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jacc.13310

1542-734X

Conor Heffernan, Claire Warden,

Fashion and Cultural Textiles

In 1991, legendary bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno announced his intention to return to competition. Rather than host a mere established bodybuilding contest, he decided to throw his weight behind the newest company, established only a year previously: Vince McMahon’s World Bodybuilding Federation (WBF). When asked why he chose the WBF he said, “What’s nice about the WBF is that you have a choice to pick your own character. Music, the posing, connecting with the audience, expressing yourself” (“Lou Ferrigno”). This was not “a competition where you are just standing there” (“Gary Strydom“). After considerable success “just standing there,” Ferrigno seemed to be chasing something more, a way of competing which, even more than bodybuilding seems to do in general, lurched towards the theatrical. Here was a new form of bodybuilding show, one that twisted the genre entirely while also adapting the conventional expectations and muscular poses. Ferrigno’s description sets the tone. In this article we provide the first scholarly reading of the WBF, understanding it alongside that other more famous McMahon-owned global entertainment provider, the WWF (World Wrestling Federation, renamed the WWE in 2002). Pursuing this comparison enables us to see the WBF as a theatrical challenge to, and simultaneously an extension of, the established history and practices of bodybuilding. Ultimately the WBF, like wrestling, flits between the real and the fake, the authentic and the phony (while recognising the troublesome nature of all these terms). What emerges in this article is a new intertextual history of American entertainment in the early 1990s. We conduct this analysis, first, by setting out the disturbing history of theatricality, particularly in association with wrestling. We then lay out a history of bodybuilding. This is a history which the WBF both contributed to and unsettled. This narrative can be scoped in the WBF’s magazine Bodybuilding Lifestyles which will be understood both as a primary source and as an extension of the WBF’s theatricality. As will be shown, Lifestyles represented an early attempt to market a healthy lifestyle while simultaneously serving as a platform to extend the WBF’s efforts to create bodybuilding characters. This article marks the first time that this publication has been seriously analysed. It will read the tension between authenticity and performativity (particularly in relation to wrestling tropes, and the acceptance or rejection of anabolic steroids) as its defining characteristic. Finally, we focus on the WBF’s final 1992 show as paradoxically the pinnacle and demise of this short-lived but memorable venture. The theatrical has frequently been read as dangerous. In plague times theatres were closed for fear of spreading disease, a situation that, interestingly, we are currently experiencing as we write. During religious upheaval, the theatre was regarded as morally bankrupt. Actors were seen as pedlars of pretence, show-offs who perverted manliness by being fraudulent and phony; actresses were even worse, as they were a danger to patriarchal structures in their perceived sexual deviance. According to critic and historian Jonas Barish, words associated with the theatre—stagey, showing off, melodramatic—are inherently ignoble, especially when compared to words from other art forms such as the literary or the poetic (Barish 329). This antitheatricality is not just an accusation shouted from offstage; it is a tradition within the theatre itself. In the early twentieth-century context, scenographer Edward Gordon Craig expelled the actor from his stage and complained that the body of the actor “is by nature utterly useless as a material for art” (5) and Russian director Constantin Stanislavski condemned the “disgusting artificiality” of melodramatic theatrical work (43). An antitheatrical impulse remains on the contemporary stage too; in an interview with The Guardian performance artist Marina Abramovic, for example, contends “Theatre is fake: there is a black box, you pay for a ticket, and you sit in the dark and see someone playing somebody else’s life. The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real” (O’Hagan 2010). This sentiment, what Barish refers to as an “anti-theatrical prejudice,” extends throughout Western culture and civilisation. In her more recent book, Lisa A. Freeman attends to Barish’s reading in a new way. She contends that antitheatrical incidents “provide us with occasions to trace major struggles over historical shifts in the nature and balance of discursive power and political authority” (2). Ultimately, the understanding of the theatrical as a threat is embroiled in broader conflicts about ownership, authenticity, tradition, and the purity of the culture, all of which are imperilled by the infiltration of theatre’s innate fraudulence. It is this polluting version of the theatrical that stalks the WBF. Ultimately the transforming of the bodybuilding competition into a spectacle complete with costume, props and characterisation (of sorts) detracts from the real muscular contest. Or so said the WBF’s detractors (McGough 25): in reality, bodybuilding has always slipped down the gap between sport and art. It is, in essence, a liminal form, a between space which is both a type of theatre and a type of sport. It celebrates look rather than athleticism, even though behind the exhibitionist muscularity is extensive training and extraordinarily (perhaps even dangerously) disciplined nutrition. In its valuing of spectacle, bodybuilding always resembles professional wrestling. We make this claim while acknowledging that neither of these practices are stable or anchored, that this comparison is sometimes clear (as in the early 1990s’ WWF-WBF context) and sometimes less applicable (take, for example, contemporary British independent wrestling where there are very few bodybuilding physiques competing). In his chapter in Performance and Professional Wrestling, Broderick Chow explores this shared sign of the muscular body in bodybuilding and wrestling, coining an “erotohistoriography” of the built body in both practices. Both bodybuilding and wrestling (while acknowledging the diversity of bodies in the latter), Chow suggests, gives the “bare male body something to do” (Chow, Laine, and Warden 148). This muscled figure also extends our initial context of the antitheatrical as, Chow confirms, “the wrestler’s built body is thus a theatrical body which manages to provoke the same kind of discomfort and irritation as bad theatre, more specifically, theatre that is trying too hard” (Chow, Laine, and Warden 150). While this accusation might be levelled at all bodybuilding to a certain extent, this resemblance becomes more pronounced in the WBF given its association with the WWF; Chow acknowledges that the WBF “was borrowing spectacle from the WWE” (Chow, Laine, and Warden 148). The spectacle is centred on the excessive, muscular bodies of the performers. This is unsurprising given the obvious real-world business connection between the two as both were owned by promoter Vince McMahon who, more famously, tried his luck with American football in 2001 through his company XFL which, again like the WBF, was ‘tarnished’ by its association with the WWF. But the relationship between the WWF and WBF also existed on far more complex, intertextual levels. In the lead-up to the 1992 final show, for example, the WBF is presented through the lexicon of the WWF. The bodybuilders are referred to as “Superstars” (“Ultimate Warrior Promo”). This is the moniker used to describe wrestlers in the WWF and in the contemporary WWE. Individuals are notably not ‘sportsmen’ not even ‘bodybuilders’ or ‘wrestlers;’ ‘superstars’ makes a firm association with showbusiness. A number of peculiar pre-show promotional events and interviews also played on the intersection between bodybuilding (WBF) and wrestling (WWF). There was a WBF vs. WWF Tug of War Challenge which the WWF team won because they cheated; there is the suggestion that WWF heel (that is ‘baddie’) Ted DiBiase paid off the referee (“WBF vs. WWF”). This is the sort of heinous cheat ‘The Million Dollar Man’ Ted DiBiase did regularly in the WWF. In a promo, a form more readily associated with wrestling than bodybuilding, WWF superstar Ultimate Warrior compared himself to the future winner of the WBF: “I had the same hunger, I made the same sacrifices, I had the same desires” (“Ultimate Warrior Promo”). Ferrigno referred to the WBF show as the “Wrestlemania of bodybuilding” (“Lou Ferrigno”). While all this meant that the WBF could attract a crossover audience of wrestling fans it actually proved a distraction. Bodybuilding here became polluted with the theatrical fakery of wrestling. Numerous scholars have endeavoured to flesh out wrestling’s liminality and theatricalism. Sharon Mazer, writing at approximately the same time as the WBF’s brief existence (her book was published in 1998), describes wrestling as “a hybrid performance practice: a professional sport in which players can earn their livings at the same time that it offers its audiences a show that goes beyond contest into theatrical spectacle” (7). Her apt description could be applied just as readily to the WBF’s version of bodybuilding (and, arguably, bodybuilding in general). The “superstars'' are, as the denotation suggests, hybrid practitioners. Following Mazer’s reading, they are embedded in capitalist wage systems. Wrestlers are regularly referred to as “workers'' and, contentiously, are independent contractors even in the global leader WWF/WWE. In his recent study Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage, Eero Laine contends that wrestler’s bodies are key sites of profit-making: “Professional wrestlers manipulate emotions for a living and share in the emotional labor of building an in-ring story. Their ability to do so is what makes them productive laborers for promoters” (22). While, conventionally, bodybuilding has not been (or perhaps not been as) subject to these sorts of narrative structures, the WBF morphed bodybuilding into wrestling, meaning that both their more typical physical, muscular labour and the new layer of emotional labour the WBF project imposed, dragged the bodybuilders into the structures that had exploited wrestlers since the inception of wrestling. Returning to Mazer’s description, in both the WBF and the WWF the show is “beyond contest.” This is not to say that there is no contest in both, of course; there are titles to be won, victors and losers, even if these are theatrical devices. The contest in wrestling can, rather, be seen in who will “get the push” and who will not. In this, wrestling is extremely competitive. Ben Litherland suggests that wrestling and bodybuilding can be compared because both “sit uncomfortably on the boundaries of sporting contest and theatrical display” (4). Because of this, wrestling is notoriously difficult to define in terms of genre; as Laine says, “professional wrestling is a tradition, an institution, a ritual, even while it is a fleeting entertainment, a carnival trick, and a flippant waste of time” (1). In Performance and Professional Wrestling, the editors intentionally sit on the fence when they say, “professional wrestling represents a special case in that it is at once scripted, theatrical, and fake, and improvised, performed, and real” (3). It might be said that bodybuilding, in general, exists on a similar axis of tricky definition. However, in the WBF, where the association with wrestling is so strong, it becomes even more difficult to disentangle it, as the finale of the last show illustrates (a moment to which we will return below). Indeed, wrestling has a word to describe this “beyond contest,” this uncomfortable boundary sitting: kayfabe. Emerging from wrestling’s carnival foundations, kayfabe is the maintenance of the fictional story. Traditionally, wrestling protected kayfabe by, say, not allowing ‘antagonists’ to travel together or by maintaining character outside the ring. In contemporary wrestling, it describes the way in which the audience, which is almost universally aware that it is watching a show, plays along with the fiction because it is a pleasurable, entertaining process. While kayfabe is a wrestling term, it is now being picked up by various disciplines to analyse the difficulty of identifying real and fake. As Eero Laine says, “it reads narratives onto everyday events and assumes a backstage, where those in power make decisions that affect the rest of us” (90). It is, therefore, a useful descriptor for many contexts from an analysis of fake news to the prevalence of simulacra. Most notably, the term ‘kayfabe’ has recently been used by Shannon Bow O’Brien (2020) to understand Donald Trump’s presidency. This opening up of the term enables it to be used in a bodybuilding context, particularly in the WBF which was so closely related to the WWF. Just as in its sister organisation, it is difficult to differentiate between the real and the fictional, to truly decipher the kayfabe. Clearly some elements are obviously fake—in terms of characterization, for example, nobody truly believes that WBF bodybuilder Tony Pearson is a fighter pilot in the same way that they are not buying that The Undertaker is really a mortician. There is an excessive theatricality in both, then, that is easy to identify. Yet other elements, such as the idea of the fair contest, are far harder to determine. Reading the WBF through the hazy lens of kayfabe, a lens that is inevitable because of its association with the WWF, means that one can never be sure what one is watching: is this a sporting event, a competition, a theatrical show, a cynical but financially lucrative ruse? The kayfabe structures mean we cannot be sure. Both the WWF and the WBF also battle with the tension between the live event and the screen-mediated spectacle. This is not unique to these two companies, of course; wrestling and bodybuilding often flit between these different viewpoints. But it would be true to say that these companies navigated the live and the mediated in particularly interesting ways. The WWF has always been the premier televised wrestling corporation; the only exception to this was between 1996 and 1998 when rival WCW enjoyed higher ratings (the WWF took over WCW—performatively and actually—in 2001). While bodybuilding has enjoyed television coverage (and now uses live streaming), the WBF was unique in its televisual presentation. In the WBF, and the WWF, the live and the mediated are difficult to distinguish and tease apart. Philip Auslander, one of the prominent voices in contemporary performance studies, contends that live events are becoming more and more like mediated events to the extent that it becomes impossible to pull apart these two ways of seeing. Auslander explores the historical and contemporary intersections of the live and the mediatised by critiquing the traditional valuing of the former over the latter: “live performance cannot be shown to be economically independent of, immune from contamination by, and ontologically different from mediatized forms” (7). Note Auslander’s terminology—“contamination” —here which resembles the arguments about antitheatricality investigated above. The WBF benefits from being analysed through this intricate debate as, in essence, it is neither live enough nor mediated enough to be successful. The mediatised emerges in two layers: like the WWF, it uses pre-recorded story vignettes to present the personas and then, clearly, the whole show is mediated through the television screen. These two layers have a different relationship with the live as the pre-recorded films are presented as past documentation, whereas television programming (even when pre-recorded) “remains a performance in the present” (15). As Auslander goes on to say, “Television was thought to make the home into a kind of theatre characterized, paradoxically, by both absolute intimacy and global reach” (16). The vignettes in the WBF usually feel forced and awkward, illustrating that WBF superstars, unlike (some) WWF superstars, have little training ‘on the mic.’ But the “performance in the present” is equally unsuccessful. Like the WWF, there is a commentary team, with Bobby Heenan as colour commentator, and the personas in the vignettes spill out on to the stage. The superstars seem unsure whether to perform for the live audience or for the audience in their “home theatres.” Unlike the WWF, where the audience is its own character holding signs, performing chants and even at times getting physically involved in the action, the audience of the WBF is in proscenium. This not only distances them from the action on the stage, but also makes it difficult to discern the liveness of the televised action too. This initial reading of the WBF needs to be understood in the context of bodybuilding. Bodybuilding, as a practice, stands in stark contrast to other physical activities. In the first instance, the sport of bodybuilding is not based on skill or objectivity but rather on the subjective comparison of physiques. Bodybuilders train for months prior to competitions but such training is not then placed in a competitive context but rather serves as the backdrop for the sport itself. Comparing bodies, based on standards which are subject to changes in taste, distinguishes bodybuilding from other sports which utilize relatively objective means to determine a winner—be they a point or goal scored, a knockout or a record-breaking time. As sociologist Dimitris Liokaftos argued in their book on the subject, it is this subjectivity which has often led to accusations that bodybuilding is not a legitimate sport despite the physical demands it places on competitors (Liokaftos 167). That several high-profile claims of cheating exist in major bodybuilding competitions furthers the idea that the sport’s objectivity is problematic (Fair 77). Bodybuilding, as a sport, has a relatively recent history compared to other activities. While soccer, football, rugby and a host of other sports were codified in the nineteenth century, it was not until the mid-twentieth century that regular bodybuilding competitions, as bodybuilding historian John Fair explained, became a reality (Fair 23-33). Although early physique competitions were held in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it was not until the late 1930s that recognisable bodybuilding contexts began to be held. In the American context, this came in the form of the Mr. America competition which was first held in 1939. From 1939 to roughly the mid-1960s, the Mr. America contest was recognised as the United States’ preeminent bodybuilding competition. Unlike later shows, winners in the contest were not chosen based solely on their physique, but also on their appearance and ability to perform athletic feats. The reason why the Mr. America contest used this variety of metrics stemmed from its organizational structure. The contest was organised by the Amateur Athletic Union which, at the time, was the governing body for American sports in a range of disciplines ranging from amateur wrestling to track and field to weightlifting. Under the auspices of Bob Hoffman, who also acted as coach to the American Olympic weightlifting team at this time, the Mr. America competition was designed to find the best male representative of the United States (Fair 45-60). The inclusion of an athletic component—which was routinely taken to mean a weightlifting feat—spoke to the restrictive nature of the AAU’s bodybuilding vision. As John Fair’s work on the Mr. America contest previously explained, the AAU’s handling of the Mr. America contest caused a great deal of discontent among those competitors who wished to be judged solely on their physique and not, say, on their appearance (191-195). Filling this demand were a series of private entrepreneurs offering bodybuilding competitions without personality or athletic components. Of these entrepreneurs, the most important were brothers Joe and Ben Weider, the two men whose competitions Vince McMahon sought to challenge. In 1946, the Weider brothers founded the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness (IFBB) and began running competitions soon after. As well as organising competitions, the two men also ran a fitness magazine and supplement empire which, in time, became the preeminent business in American fitness. Running shows against the Mr. America competition for roughly two decades, the Weiders launched a new contest in 1965 which, as they claimed in their later biography, helped position them as the sport’s top promoters (Weider, Weider, and Steere 159-165). In 1965, the Mr. Olympia contest was created which promised first that all bodybuilders would be welcome (the Mr. America contest did not allow winners to re-enter) and second that it would be focused solely on physiques. These two stipulations, combined with the offer of prize money, helped position the Mr. Olympia contest as the sport’s preeminent competition within a manner of years. Although the Weiders had fierce competition with others in the fitness industry, not least the previously mentioned Bob Hoffman—who also sold fitness equipment, supplements and magazines—the Weiders became bodybuilding’s most successful duo (Fair 111-123). Where Joe Weider helped propel bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzeneger into the limelight, Ben Weider attempted to create IFBB affiliates around the world and even make bodybuilding an Olympic sport. The Weiders became to bodybuilding what Vince McMahon was to professional wrestling—they helped coordinate the sport, were seen as its preeminent organizers and, importantly, they oversaw the sport’s most important annual contest in the Mr. Olympia. It was, after all, the Mr. Olympia contest which featured in the 1977 bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron. Pumping Iron helped introduce Arnold Schwarzeneger to the public, increased the popularity of bodybuilding in American culture, and reinforced the importance of the Mr. Olympia contest in the sport (Liokaftos, 197). During the 1980s, the Weiders’ primacy in bodybuilding grew even more and, although competitors existed, there was a clear hierarchy within the sport. This does not mean that the Weiders were not without problems. When Vince McMahon decided to found the WBF in 1990, the Weiders, and the Mr. Olympia, were under public scrutiny regarding anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroids had been used in bodybuilding competitions since the early 1960s. Returning to Liokaftos, they cited a series of moral panics in American society, and several instances of bodybuilders collapsing on stage in the 1980s and 1990s, which led to tighter scrutiny being placed on the Weiders (Liokaftos, 160). This case at a time when American society was becoming more aware of anabolic steroids in general. Precipitated, in part, by the revelation that Canadian 100m sprinter Ben Johnson had used performance enhancing drugs at the 1988 Olympic Games, efforts were brought forth in the United States to tighten legislation around performance enhancing drugs. After several months of exploratory reports an Anabolic Steroid Act was issued in 1990 which made the use and abuse of such drugs much more difficult (Denham 260-265). The bill was signed into law in November of that year but even before it became official, bodybuilding responded to the new media and legal landscape. 1990 marked the year that the Weiders’ competitions attempted to enforce drug testing protocols. If Friday, 14th September 1990 (the day of the contest), was a black day for bodybuilding, it was a blacker day for the disqualified athletes. When the dreaded news was broken to the five concerned, tears were a feature of some of their responses, anger and histrionics weren’t. (“Bodybuilding’s Blackest Day”) This is the backdrop of the World Bodybuilding Federation. At that year’s 1990 Mr. Olympia Vince McMahon had rented a booth at the contest’s accompanying exhibition hall. As retold by powerlifter, fitness writer, and later McMahon employee Fred Hatfield, McMahon was there to promote his new supplement line Integrated Conditioning Program (ICO-Pro) and a new fitness magazine, Bodybuilding Lifestyles (Hatfield 66). That McMahon was branching out into the world of health and fitness was not too surprising. Former wrestling bookers, trainers, and athletes, have all noted McMahon’s fondness for large, muscular athletes. Indeed, in the world of bodybuilding, McMahon was known for signing bodybuilders to take part in his wrestling events, despite their lack of formal training (Hotten 70-75). He also, as famous wrestler Hulk Hogan’s memoirs made clear (43-50), had a personal interest in bodybuilding as evidenced by a dedicated workout schedule and obsession over his diet. From a financial standpoint, McMahon and his WWF were experiencing success after success. The 1980s, fuelled by individual superstars like Hulk Hogan, ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage, Andre the Giant or Ultimate Warrior, had been a breakout decade for wrestling. Hulk Hogan, in particular, became a household name and one which the WWF relentlessly marketed (Maguire 155-160). In early 1990, McMahon officially opened Titan Towers in Connecticut. The towers were a state-of-the-art television facility costing over 9 million dollars with production facilities far outstripping his rivals. The ribbon cutting was accompanied by the news that McMahon was henceforth president of Titan Sports Inc., and that the company would be branching out into other areas (Klein 105). The WBF was one such avenue. This explains why Vince McMahon was at the ‘Olympia Expo’ in 1990. Promoting his Bodybuilding Lifestyles magazine and his new supplement range, McMahon was joined by Tom Platz. At that time, Platz was very famous within the bodybuilding community. Despite never winning a Mr. Olympia title, Platz had obtained a large following owing to the freakish size of his leg muscles, especially when compared to his upper-body, and the intensity that Platz brought to his training (Hotten 87). Modern-day montages of Platz training, found online, depict a blond muscular man screaming at both himself and others in the gym (“The Quadfather”). Hired as Editor of Bodybuilding Lifestyles, Platz’s relationship with McMahon was meant to signify the seriousness with which McMahon was treating his new project. Platz’s contacts, and status, within the industry was potentially invaluable. At the ‘Expo,’ the two men used outlandish wrestling style promotional tactics. Platz asked the Weiders if he could make an impromptu speech, which they allowed. Declaring that he was there to announce a ‘new dawn of bodybuilding,’ Platz’s speech ended with the news that a new bodybuilding federation, the World Bodybuilding Federation, was on the horizon. This WBF, Platz declared, would overtake the Weider’s IFBB, and bring back bodybuilding as “it should be” (Platz 15). As Platz’s message was digested, dozens of women entered the hall, brandishing WBF t-shirts and handing out flyers with more information. Platz’s comment about bodybuilding “as it should be” became a rallying call for the WBF. Joe Weider and the Mr. Olympia contest had begun to drug test athletes in the face of increasing media pressure to curb anabolic steroid use in America. American politicians, journalists, and coaches had begun decrying the use of steroids in sport, and while such debates had existed for decades, they took a renewed emphasis after the 1988 Olympic games when Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson failed a drug test. In 1990, the American Congress passed the Anabolic Steroid Act of 1990 which sought to deter steroid use. Bodybuilding, more so than many other sports, embodied anabolic steroid use (Denham 260-265). Since the 1960s, competitors had exhibited more and more musculature and, in fact, the 1980s had seen several high-profile instances of bodybuilders suffering medical problems from their drug use. At the time of the Act’s passing, Ben and Joe Weider were petitioning to have bodybuilding included in the Olympics (Weider 71). Owing to both sporting and political pressures, they began to curb drug use in the sport. It was for this reason that the 1990 Mr. Olympia, and several smaller contests, were drug tested shows. McMahon and Platz’s comments that the WBF was bodybuilding ‘as it should be’ was an admission that their contest would not be drug tested and would privilege the largest physiques on stage. Likewise, the WBF would provide yearlong contracts to bodybuilders alongside prize monies in contests. The Weiders’ IFBB did not pay athletes outside of contest prizes (Fair 311-313). These were some, of many, ways in which the WBF sought to distinguish itself from the Weiders. In January 1990, the WBF launched its first issue of Bodybuilding Lifestyles, a magazine which promised to give readers behind the scenes access to WBF ‘stars’ as well as lifestyle and muscle building advice. At the time of publication, the magazine had to compete with magazines run by the Weider group, like Flex or Muscle and Fitness, as well as independent media corporations like Muscle Media and Iron Man (Todd, Roark, and Todd 26-40). Seeking to distinguish itself in a saturated field, Lifestyles positioned itself as a magazine seeking to tell the truth about bodybuilding, as a magazine that would inform readers about the way to live a modern lifestyle and, finally, as a magazine that would give in-depth access to its ‘superstar’ athletes. These goals contributed to the organization’s broader publicity push which included a short-lived television programme, guest appearances on popular television shows and, at multiple points, appearing at live wrestling events (Fair 311-313). Central to the magazine’s approach was a claim for legitimacy an