What Does Bodybuilding Have in Common with Ancient Greece and ‘Merica?

The Athenian Doryphoros and Arnold Schwarzenegger, what do they have in common? The answer is bodybuilding and its pragmatic function for a weakened state.

I was teaching a class on ancient Greece the other day and showed the statue of the Doryphoros to my history students. A muscle-bound body reminiscent of Brad Pitt in Fight Club or Michelangelo's David with classical proportions and perfect lines, the statue was an image that Athens wanted to share with the world beyond its borders.

The Athenians really wanted to show the world what they were even if they weren’t exactly that fit and brawny. The physical description of Socrates (also a citizen of Athens at the time) and the Doryphoros don’t mesh in our view of ancient Athens, but who cares? We care about Socrates as a giant of philosophy while we admire the perfect bodies of ancient Athens’ art.

Athenians just wanted to embellish themselves in the eyes of other Greeks city-states (poleis) and maybe even beyond Greece. They wanted to let the world see what it would have to face when the Athenians finally showed up at their gates. A little propaganda? Definitely. The Assyrians did the same thing with their art glorifying their emperors as warriors and hunters at the expense of poor mountain lions and foreigners.

And the Unites States did something similar in the 1980’s… After a couple of decades of low morale stemming from the Vietnam War and the years of stagnation, set against the backdrop of the Soviet Union gaining more and more points in the Third World’s score cards, the United States had to come out on top. Somehow. Finally, a Hollywood actor gained the best role of his life by becoming President of the United States and fully understanding that people’s perception of America mattered much more than the United States’ real state of the union.

Russia. 1993. Here’s a typical wall in a Russian teenager’s room. We were convinced that most Americans looked like the guy behind us.

What was real anyway? Who was able to conduct a thorough investigation into the economic, military, mental, and social strength of the United States? And even if it were possible to do such a thing and publish its results, who would want to read and comprehend them, except for Noam Chomsky of course? An image of a powerful United States, again, mattered a great deal more than its real condition.

And there came Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone jostling for the status of the highest-paid actor in Hollywood in the 1980's. Not only did they help the White House (with an actor in it) sweep the world off its feet, but Americans at home were watching Commando and Rambo with delight and excitement too, wanting to believe in American superheroes taking on bad guys all alone in the name of ‘Merica. Never mind that Arnold came from Austria. With a couple of lines added to the scripts explaining his accent, he would pass for someone as American as apple pie.

A statue of a drunk woman during the Hellenistic period

As my buddies and I watched movies with Arnold and Sly in Russia in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, we actually believed what we saw: an America that could do anything.

American professional bodybuilders were even better in that regard. We didn’t care that they took steroids. They looked like superheroes to us, and we fell in love with America as a result.

This is what political scientists call a nation’s soft power, and America had it galore. Does America still have its soft-power? That’s something for another story, but in the 1980’s Schwarzenegger and Stallone definitely made up for what America wasn’t. Until it was again — in the 1990’s. By that time, action heroes had shrunk to the size of Jean-Claude Van Damme and even further to the size of Matt Damon (in the Jason Borne series) in the 2000's. There was no need for muscle power on the screen because America was it in reality.

Kind of like the Hellenistic art with its drunk, old, and wrinkly subjects. Alexander the Great accomplished the incredible: taking over the mighty Persian Empire. What was the use of sculpting another Doryphoros? The Greeks were it. Never mind that Alexander wasn’t Greek, just like Arnold wasn’t really American. But who cares? People’s perception is what matters.

From Bodybuilding to Mindbuilding

Written by

Or from bodybuilding in Russia to teaching history in America. If you love history, philosophy, religion, AND bodybuilding, all in one package, join in!

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade