Fussell is like the servant from Death in Tehran. He runs from death and life and finds death in bodybuilding. He becomes an adolescent malcontent hiding his fear and his wounds behind a veil of self-aggrandizement.
One. What is the important of initiation in the book? What kind of tribe is Fussell entering?
He is entering a closed society of adolescent misfits who are deluded by fantasies of greatness. They are desperate children hungry for a sense of belonging and family. They develop codes to be part of the tribe.
America is a huge country where it is easy to get lost, spit out by family, school, "the system" and find oneself a loner. Loners adapt by creating tribes that give them a sense of belonging.
The country is full of maladapted men who are lost and hungry for rituals that affirm their masculinity and belonging to a male tribe with a strict set of codes. These male tribes, be they bodybuilding or MMA circles, become substitute families for young men.
These men act brave and "in control," but in truth they are scared, lonely, and empty of meaning. In the case of Fussell and his associates, bodybuilding is their drug and their religion. By joining this religion, they become dead to their old selves, but their new selves are emotionally stunted.
Bodybuilding becomes a "disease," an illness that makes one withdraw from life as bodybuilding requires "a complete commitment to all matters pertaining to iron."
Two. How is bodybuilding fanaticism like religion?
There are sins. There are ways to salvation. There are pilgrimages. There are blasphemies (not wanting a 22-inch biceps muscle).
Like religion, there is an epiphany like Paul in Damascus, being converted in a dramatic fashion, in which old alliances die and new alliances are born.
The gym is the holy temple. The outside world is a place of lost souls. We read, "The muscle magazines concurred, taking great pains to explain that gyms are actually a haven of safety in a world rife with disease, poverty, and prejudice."
In the gym, there must be suffering, sacrifice, and self-flagellation.
Like religion, there is Us and there is Them, Los Otros.
Three. When does Fussell's "trouble" begin?
He moves to New York to work in publishing and he feels anxious and helpless in his new surroundings. He is afraid of crime, but on a deeper level he is alienated from others and himself, and this alienation causes him to panic.
Extreme problems require extreme measures in the eyes of the panic-ridden.
These fears evolve into paranoia. Fussell is at the age where is fear impedes intimacy, with others in the realm of friendship and romance.
Erik Erikson, famous psychologist, speaks of late adolescence and young adulthood as a crisis of intimacy vs. isolation.
Fussell is aware of his vulnerability and fear, and this awareness causes him shame. He goes into a vicious cycle.
He subverts or sublimates his fear of feeling insignificant and unworthy into fearing violent crime.
He appears to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The city overwhelms him and gives him diarrhea. We read, "The city literally scared the shit out of me."
Studying in the calm Apollonian towers of the university, Fussell cannot transition to the cacophonous Dionysian chaos of urban life. Cruelty abounds and humanity is silent and indifferent in the presence of their fellow beings' suffering.
Fussell has symptoms that are similar to PTSD.
Juxtaposed to his urban terror, his parents, both famous professors, have just had a bitter and public divorce.
His fear is so extreme, he contemplates martial arts, suicide, taking up chess, relocating to the wilderness to become a survivalist (he has since moved to Montana where he kills his own meat).
As he is hiding from a menacing man holding a crowbar and a taxi medallion with $50,000, he finds refuge in a bookstore where he comes across Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Education of a Bodybuilder. He has a revelation that by becoming a bodybuilder he will be feared and as such he will not have to fear others. Bodybuilding will, he believes, save him. Little does he know, this coping mechanism will become a maladaptation and destroy him.
At first, though, the weight training feels like a godsend. We read, "The harder I worked, the better I felt. My routine brought order amid chaos." Still, he will find that he can never get enough armor or muscle to protect him from his fears.
As his "armor" amasses, he becomes a malformed human being. He discusses his challenges at getting along with co-workers: "The real problem at work, though, wasn't my muscle homilies, my private posing, my pigsty of protein powder, my magazines, or my blender. No, the real problem was me. My physical metamorphosis had brought with it a completely different way of perceiving the world and my place in it."
His new perception is "at war" or "in battle" against his own smallness and the hordes of people who don't understand that salvation lies in being a bodybuilding fanatic, what they would deem a "muscle head."
He saw himself "as a person of consequence" among nonentities and ciphers. In other words, he became a condescending, obnoxious egotist bullying other people while in truth beneath his facade of grandeur lied a paranoid little child who could not figure out how to connect to the world.
Four. How is the bodybuilding like a virus?
Once, the disease enters Fussell's portal, as it were, he is possessed by this virus. Possessed, he studies bodybuilding books as if they were scriptures. He underlines important passages and prepares for what appears to him to be a significant undertaking.
This virus compels Fussell to be larger than life, something not human, a grotesque monster. In this monster state, going into "Beast Mode," Fussell believes he will be able to erase his fears.
An obsession forces one to confine oneself into a small world where one can create the delusion of control as one cannot cope with the overwhelming stress of the outside world.
Five. How did Fussell connect bodybuilding to the American Dream?
Fussell idolized Arnold Schwarzenegger whose bodybuilding prowess transitioned him to TV, movies, celebrities, and entrance into the upper class via his marriage to Maria Shriver.
Ambition requires "grim determination" and the puritanical work ethic.
Of course, for the most part, this bodybuilding drive destroys the Dream because the bodybuilders are angry teenagers who will never grow up and become articulate, only pseudo eloquent in their bodybuilding homilies and cliches.
Part of the Dream is to assume a pose, to create a facade through one's bearing, demeanor, choice of dress, and choice of language. Wearing XXXL shirts and doing The Walk, Fussell answers the phone, not with a hello, but with a SPEAK!
The American Dream is all about reinvention, and Fussell reinvents himself as a jackass. As we read, "I was no longer me. Gone was the cautious, passive, tolerant student, the gentle soul who had urged departing friends to 'take care' and actually meant it. The new me was a builder. A builder who had no time for anything that wouldn't help him grow. Who, in place of words 'thank you,' barked 'no kindness forgotten, no transgression forgiven.' As my behavior changed, the smiles of my fellow workers faded, their greetings tapering off to a nervous nod of the head. There was fear in the air."
Fussell becomes a militant, a fanatic, an obnoxious bodybuilding proselytizer and zealot who creates a "Growth Center," a kitchen for all his protein. At one point, a co-worker Benny opens a door for him and instead of accepting Benny's politeness, he throws Benny across the room. This incident forces Fussell to quit his office job before his boss can fire him.
After quitting his job, Fussell disappears into his "bunker" where he intensifies his transformation into a madman.
Becoming a scary monster is precisely what Fussell wants so that he can terrify his enemies, the criminals at the subway who used to intimidate him. He writes, "If even Jerry could detect the ocean of violence raging just beneath my taut T-shirt, I was saved. The makeover was complete. I'd lost my job, but I'd found my way of life. At this point, I was far beyond recall."
Six. How does bodybuilding take more than it gives?
We read, "I had always been told that to grow up meant to stop wanting those things you couldn't have. But everything I'd learned from bodybuilding taught me to fight this notion. You can become the person you dream of being, bodybuilders said. You can defy both nurture and nature and transform yourself. it's the essential drama of the dream, though in the end it might take more than you're willing to give."
In other words, Fussell wants to defy nature and through bodybuilding become a sort of god or superman. But when we try to become a god, we fall on our butt, we crash, we become maimed. The Greeks created a myth to explain the danger of trying to defy nature and become a god. The myth of Icarus is about a man who made wings and tried to fly to the sun, but the sun melted the wax that affixed the wings to his back and mid-flight he crashed into the sea.
Fussell's coping mechanism is in many ways a retelling of the Myth of Icarus.
In Fussell's unnatural quest to become a god and achieve a sense of perfect safety and protection from his perceived enemies, he becomes a malformed being. As we read Fussell's defiance of the principle that says defying nature will destroy us:
But not me, I vowed. If it meant feeling safe and protected, I was willing give up everything. Along with my job, I gave up my friends--my non-bodybuilding friends, that is. "As they say, if you stick around cripples--mental or physical--long enough, pretty soon you'll learn how to limp," Arnold counsels in Posedown! I took him at his word.
In his quest for control and safety, Fussell goes out of control and becomes less safe, vulnerable to the monster raging inside him. He becomes his own worst enemy. His problem isn't "out there." His problem lies within.
His quest to be a muscle monster is so great he will spend his entire inheritance on transforming himself into an anti-social muscle-hewn gargoyle.
When we speak of giving more of ourselves to something than what that thing gives back, we say we've been tricked, we've been duped by a Trickster or a Devil. When we are short-changed in this type of bargain, we call this a Faustian Bargain because Faust is a famous story about a man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for the world, but in the end Faust loses his soul.
Seven. What is solipsism and how does Fussell's "Bunker" contribute to solipsism?
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