(the) American (Novel of)

44 Kenneth J. Saltman
Why would not hardcore bodybuilders be ideal models for all to
follow in a culture in which the highest faith is to the market? What
is it about the blatant revelation of the workings of the body as capital
that makes the hardcore bodybuilder freakish and obscene? What makes
the hardcore bodybuilder an enfleshed lapse in etiquette, like a conversation
at a restaurant in which one conversant casually mentions over
pâté, chopped liver, black bean dip, or a hot fudge sundae that he
happens to be suffering from a bout of explosive diarrhea and the other
diner inevitably responds with “That was more information than I
needed”? Likewise, the hardcore bodybuilder is more information than
you needed. The verbal reference to explosive diarrhea at the table
might ruin one’s enjoyment of the deliciously turgid brown dip precisely
by closely mirroring it and thereby breaking down the symbolic barrier
that one has erected between the exemplary appetizing food and excrement,
the most symbolically prohibited item one might imagine consuming.
The gustatory excess of such an edible indulgence as fudge
brings the eater to the boundary of a prohibition. The fat and sugar and
cocoa is not all that makes that chocolate seductive to the diner educated
in the vices of calories and cholesterol. U.S. consumer culture is organized
by an ambivalent dictate on the one hand to hedonistically consume
and on the other to ascetically resist consumption. The prohibition
that is attached to excessive consumption of chocolate or chopped liver
or any other food has as its limit the ultimate indulgence, the ultimate
prohibition, the ultimate excess, excrescense in its pure form, shit.
Likewise, what makes the hardcore bodybuilder “more information
than we needed, thanks,” or what make this an obscene body is
just how close this body comes to the simultaneously desired and
disavowed limit of the excessive body. The hardcore bodybuilder as
embodied excess is the limit of the idealized body in contemporary
U.S. consumer culture. Through drugs, diet, and exercise regimen this
is a disciplined body that has accumulated as much muscle as biologically
possible while simultaneously reducing body fat to a level that is,
as well, at the biological minimum. The hardcore bodybuilder embodies
the above-stated ambivalence of hedonistic consumption (excessive
consumption needed to accumulate this muscle) and acetic denial (the
denial of excess calories from fat and carbohydrates, the denial of sodium,
and so on). This is a hard body hard disciplined for consumption.
Yet what makes the hardcore bodybuilder obscene, a breathing
breach of etiquette, is the fact that this is a body that is so much at the