Claudia Schippert
University of Central Florida
Abstract
Studying how popular iconography intersects
with discourses of sexuality, I describe contemporary cultural
icons of heroic bodies with regard to their significance for
religious and national ideology. In this paper I investigate
multiple layers of complexity in the representation, practices,
and discursive implication of a Christian exercise chain,
the "Lord's Gym," and the particular bodies targeted
and produced there. Indicating implications, I suggest that
studying contemporary representations of heroic bodies, placed
within the reemergence of historical movements of "muscular
Christianity" and vis-à-vis critical discourse
about masculinity and nationalism, contributes to understanding
religion in post 9/11-American culture.
I. The Icon
Billboard displayed at Route 50 (Colonial
Drive) in Orlando, FL. March 2002
Logo for "Lord's Gym" franchises
(by lordshealthandfitness.com)
[1] The exercise chain "Lord's Gym"
has been opening several new branch facilities throughout
Florida and the South. Billboards sport the logo, well known
through a widely distributed Christian t-shirt (produced by
'Living Epistles' for many years):
Franchise T-shirts widely available. 'His
Pain Your Gain' is a play on the familiar workout motto 'no
pain no gain'.
[2] A hyper-muscular Jesus bench-presses
a huge cross (the sin of the world) - and models Christian
manhood in the capitalist marketplace for the new millennium
(coming soon to your neighborhood/now also in a gym near you).
Advertising coupons for "Lord's Gym".
Part of monthly "Best of Orlando" packets, these
were mailed to households February to May 2002
[3] Over several months I received coupons
as part of my monthly package of advertisements from neighborhood
businesses. In an ever-expanding strip mall not far
from my house, Christian men and women exercised and built
their bodies in what the parent corporation ('Lord's Health
and Fitness') describes as "a facility which provides
a well-rounded health and fitness environment without compromising
a Christian atmosphere."[1]
[4] I have encountered the hypermuscular
Jesus before. Mark Simpson, in Male Impersonators (1994),
concludes his chapter on bodybuilding by claiming that
[t]he male bodybuilder dramatizes in his
flesh the insecurity, the uncertainty, the enigma of masculinity.
He is a living testament, not so much to the capabilities
of the male body, its phallic power, its massive irresistible
virility (...) but rather to the sacred mystery of sex and
gender, the fluidity of the categories male and female,
masculine and feminine, hetero and homo and the fabulous,
perverse tricks they play.
What initially drew me to Simpson's quote
was his addition, as final thought, of lyrics from a Catholic
hymn, originally written by Thomas Aquinas:
Pange, lingua, gloriosi / Corporis mysterium.
(Sing, my tongue, of the mystery of the glorious body.)
(42)
[5] The very last lines in a chapter on
bodybuilding - in a thoroughly contemporary book about men
and masculinity - came from a hymn originally written for,
how could it be otherwise, the feast of Corpus Christi. Simpson
thus invoked the glorious body of Christ alongside his other
(latently gay) massive muscular built bodies. Simpson is one
of several academics who, like me, are intrigued by the practices
of pumping iron, bodybuilding competitions, and the complicated
cultural dynamics in and beyond the gym: excessive bodies
that explode cultural categories of gender, sexuality, and
intelligibility. Some others in religious studies have also
written about the bodies produced through the worship of iron;
Steven Moore's hypermuscular - and potentially queer - Jesus
works out in God's Gym (1996), a book about postmodern
New Testament scholarship. Daniel Boyarin's embrace of Jewish
sissies in Unheroic Conduct (1997) provides helpful
companions to the set of hypermuscular bodies that scholars
like David Halperin (1995), Ann Pellegrini (1997) or myself
(Schippert, 2001) have written about in other contexts. Of
course I also know about the manly Christians and the heroic
Jesus of muscular Christianity (Hall, 1997; Ladd & Mathiesen,
1999; Putney, 2001). I will return to that context later in
this essay.
[6] Nevertheless, in the past, I have mostly
engaged (and participated in) a particular kind of academic
appropriation of the hypermuscular divine body: as a parody
or over-the-top reading of biblical literary analysis; or
as a strangely suggestive icon for the variously queer positions
that hyper-built and strangely gendered hypermuscular bodies
take on in contemporary cultural contexts. There is something
to learn from such images and fantasies of academically queer
transgressive bodies. Encountering once again this Jesus,
benchpressing the sin of the world, drew me in for another
closer look. In this article I read the hypermuscular
Jesus as a heroic icon. Its deployment in the specific site,
i.e. the Lord's Gym, points to connections among Christian
images, representations of male bodies, and the regulation
of sexuality and gender norms in American culture. Furthermore,
it raises questions about this icon's cultural context and
intelligibility and prompts further questions about historical
connections or precedents.
[7] Building Christian muscles is not a
new phenomenon -- as the much longer history of the YMCA indicates.
However, the "C" in YMCA was at times contested
and its meaning certainly changed over the decades (Mjagkij
& Spratt, 1997; Gustav-Wrathall, 1998.) In the 1970s and
80s, the Y underwent a shift in focus from "Christian
character building" to "body building" as good
in itself (Putney 1997). Today, building Christian
muscles seems to be on few people's minds when entering the
local Y.
[8] In the case of the "Lord's Gym",
given the rather dominant Christian symbolism, one might ask
if this gym is different. On the one hand, though unaffiliated
with the YMCA, the Lord's Gym shows similarly Christian brand-naming
amidst a fairly normal gym setting: Mostly located in
the suburbs (read: in strip malls), the focus is on individual
bodies and on their control. Like the YMCA, the Lord's
Gym knows that (as Putney put it regarding the YMCA)
"people today hunger not for personal salvation ... but
for the feeling, the momentary illusion of personal well-being,
health and psychic security" (Putney, 1997, p. 244).
On the other hand, and quite unlike such a general unspecified
well being, according to a news report about the Lord's Gym
and the current boom in "faith and fitness," customers
explicitly invoked sentiments of "body as temple"-theology
that are quite familiar to students of the history of muscular
Christianity and the YMCA: "The Lord says your body is
a temple, so you keep it fit and nice."[2] There seem to be some contradictions in the representation
of 'Christian-ness' in this gym.
[9] It is because of the interplay of, on
the one hand, the parallels and a shared legacy of evangelical
Christianity and, on the other hand, the differences in the
contemporary cultural situation and in the Lord's Gym's negotiation
of them, that this gym emerges as a useful site to explore
the changing strategies and investment of Christian
material culture, and specifically of evangelical Christian
embodiment in contemporary America.
II. The Gym or: Where in the World/Gym is Christianity?
Mission Statement, Lord's Gym Website
[10] Consider this paradox: The Lord's
Gym bills itself to offer a serious approach to the distinctly
Christian building of body and soul. Yet it does so without
a stated missionary purpose in the gym. Instead, the
Corporation explicitly displaces its evangelizing impulse
from the sphere of the gym to the financial support of organizations
that spread the gospel worldwide. First, results are guaranteed
-- to be achieved in a "facility that [provides] a well-rounded
health and fitness environment without compromising a Christian
atmosphere."[3] The
Christian meaning of the claim that "the Lord's Gym is
a company founded on Christian principles" is demonstrated
in a concrete explication of that principle: "A
portion of your membership will provide a financial resource
to churches and ministries. In return, these churches and
ministries will promote salvation worldwide."
In another mission statement and web site, we learn that
"[h]aving affiliations with Compassion International
and several other non-profit organizations, Lord's Health
and Fitness contributes 10% of all member fees to these organizations
as a way of returning thanks to God and the community for
the business."
[11] The Corporation seeks to distance itself
from specifically religious, or overtly missionary, intent
in this (ironic) globalization. Reassured that this is a really-real
Christian gym --you know it by where your money goes -- closer
to home, we learn that "although the company logo depicts
Jesus and the Cross, Lord's Health and Fitness welcomes all
people without the risk of staff members forcing their doctrinal
or religious views as a criteria for membership."[4]
Evangelism is a step removed, farmed out to another, non-profit,
organization.
[12] The question arises: What makes the
gym (and the bodies produced) Christian then? On the
one hand this might seem like a very silly question considering
the ever present and rather dominant Jesus icon and reference.
But I am also skeptical of the ease with which we are asked
to read seemingly obvious signs. In that context I recall
that Janet Jakobsen once researched the Christian Coalition
and tried to find published material on the exact meaning
of "Christian" in the organization's name. Surely,
there had to be a brochure, promotional material, or a PR
statement. Far from it. It took Jakobsen several weeks of
phone calls, ever re-connected to someone else who would know
what to tell her ... until finally, she was speaking to someone
who could clarify and spell out the exact meaning of "Christian"
in "Christian Coalition" (a puzzling question
and problem all too familiar in the historically shifting
significance of the 'C' in YMCA as well; see Mjagkij &
Spratt, 1997.) Speaking with someone who she assumes must
have been a high ranking PR person in the Christian Coalition,
Jakobsen was told: "Ma'am, you can be assured that
we are Christian: It is in our name!" It is in
the name - as a sign and signifier. Christian it says-so Christian
it is! The assumption here being that saying it makes it so.
Thus some of the tensions - or contradictions - of twenty-first
century Christian brand-naming are resolved by evacuating
content from the (remaining though empty) sign.
[13] How does the production of "Christian"
work in the Lord's Gym? Does the Lord's Gym's insistence on
its lack of doctrinal enforcement in fact represent
the absence of specific "Christianity" in the gym?
A typical news story seems to suggest otherwise. Writes a
reporter: "[a]t places like the Lord's Gym you find an
overall Christian experience."[5]
The owner John Freehling states that "what the
spirit of God does is alive here and it's alive in the people
and the way we act." A customer confirmed this:
"You see the Lord everywhere around this place [the Lord's
Gym] and I like that. I like that a lot." As one
could tell from stepping into the gym - or from merely reading
the occasional newspaper article about it: for all the ways
the Corporation explicitly displaces its missionary impulse
outside the gym, multiple aspects within this specific Lord's
Gym point to a rich tapestry of religious practices and ideologies
that seek to materially produce Christian bodies. There
are posters, Christian music, a prayer request box, and the
daily gathering of staff for prayer incorporating those requests.
There are also programs aimed at muscle building and fat-loss
include names like "Chariots of Fire Spin," "Body
of Armor Step Sculpt," "Praise Dance,"
"Kids For Christ," and "Candlelit Power Stretch"
along with more generic fitness staples.
Pictures of Prayer Circle in the gym; Bible
verses posted among workout machines.
Report in the Orlando Sentinel ,
January 2002.
[14] Besides music, posters, and a prayer
request box, the Lord's Gym relies on (or produces) religious
identity that is tied to a particular dress code. Writes the
same reporter, "The dress code is modest - Christian
tunes play overhead - and Bible passages are everywhere."
"I try to memorize them as I'm doing reps," says
one exerciser. Note that what is mentioned here is that "the
dress code is modest" while the reader is trusted to
infer, associate, and imagine what such modesty looks like.
Presumably, bits of information like "Christian tunes
overhead - and Bible passages everywhere" assist in this
associative work. Officially, the company states "[a]
moderate dress code is encouraged at all franchise locations
as well as spiritually focused music and music videos."
There is no further explanation or description of the dress
code.
Picture of "husband and wife"
working out at the "Lord's Gym".
Report in the Orlando Sentinel, January
2002.
[15] It is useful to flesh out what exactly
the dress code is supposed to be or do. It helps to see that
particularly gendered ideals, especially a particularly Christian
masculinity are built up in this gym. Female bodies
are present, yet in specifically circumscribed ways.
Indeed, one of the main identity claims of the company is
that it "fosters a non-sex driven environment where men
and women can exercise without the discomfort of gawkers and
those flaunting their bodies openly." A recent
newspaper article can illustrate what this means: A
"husband and wife team" attend the Lord's Gym. And
happily so, because even when the husband cannot be the "chaperone",
the wife does not experience the same sexual aggression from
other men in the gym that she had been subjected to in the
past, i.e. prior to joining this, the Lord's, Gym.[6].
The message is clear: Women are safe in this gym. Men protect
rather than prey on women -- and it is the dresscode, one
has to assume, that is responsible for this (untypical?) behavior.
[16] What is important to my argument here
is that the (Christian) bodies are produced within a specifically
gendered matrix. The kind of bodies the gym (seeks to) e/affect
are connected to more than religious identity. Very little
in the news-stories discusses any details of the dress code
even while its result, i.e. "protection from
gawkers," is consistently mentioned in newspaper reports
and in publicity material issued by the gym as key to
the positive (or "uplifting") experience of customers
in the Lord's Gym.
Close-up of advertisement coupon
[17] Another aspect of advertising further
illustrates a paradox: At the same time that the Lord's
Gym advertises the absence of sexually charged encounters
that are uncomfortable or make women self conscious of their
(sexual-gendered) bodies, this gym can't escape the typical
marketing strategies either: "90 days till summer:
are you ready for swimsuit season?" exists next to the
supposed absence of gawkers. Gawkers are supposed to be discouraged,
in order for wives to feel comfortable without the chaperone
husband to ward off sexual aggression. At the same time, bodies-to-be-in-swimsuits
are targeted consciously and not-quite-ready fleshy target
areas are raised to their -guilty- conscience. It appears
that it is not (hetero-)sexual appeal that is being discouraged.
Online store for Lord's Gym clothing
and related workout/brand merchandise
[18] We may get another clue by looking
at merchandise for sale at the store and through its website:
It is mostly typical athletic-logo-style t-shirts, although
of course with an evangelical twist ("J-Freaks: Satan
sucks"). Interestingly, next to t-shirts and some
typical baggy stuff for men, women are offered a spaghetti-strap
outfit (and high heels) as proper gym-clothing. "You'll
be beautiful inside and out" - not exactly a 'modest'
display....
[19] Nevertheless, the poses, the clothing,
the language used, all contribute to the meaning of modesty:
clothing that can support the attempt to curb hetero-male
aggression. However, this is also and more importantly,
the creation of an "atmosphere" that defends against
homoerotic aesthetics and the specter of gay bodies.
In order to make this point, I turn to another shift in advertising.
Documenting a shift in advertising
from March to May 2002 (emphasis added)
[20] In a chronological comparison of the
widely distributed advertisement-flyers, one notices editorial
shifts within the list of "services offered".
Erasing overt labels while foregrounding child/family-friendly
services and atmosphere, the services included change from
"positive Christian Music" to "positive music";
the explicitly 'family friendly' dress code" changes
into a more diffuse "family friendly" while "The
Cross Cafe/Smoothie Bar" disappears completely and is
replaced by "Free Kids Classes". This subtle shift
in advertisements de-emphasizes explicitly Christian labeling
and makes clear that what establishes the link between modesty
and protection from gawkers is language about the family.
In my view, it is the interpretation of "family-friendly"
that gives the modesty of the dress code its real meaning.
At the same time, it is here that the Lord's Gym erases and
defends against particularly sexual-gendered bodies while
producing specifically wholesome meaning. Again a seeming
absence (or elision) of content (Christian-ness) is re-imported
through cultural and moral interpretation of what that Christian-ness
is to signify. (Ma'am, you can be assured that we are Christian:
we are family friendly.)
[21] My claim is that "wholesome"
and especially "family-friendly" means "not
gay": These are families with kids; families where
protector/chaperone husbands are worried about the purity
of their wives, who in turn are asked to reflect on their
swimsuit-shape and may consider spaghetti-strap workout clothes.
Without having sufficient space in this article to fully analyze
the advertising data, I want to merely suggest that the men
who sport the merchandise for sale at the Lord's Gym look
distinctly not-gay (if one takes the homoerotic investment
of a particular "gay gym body"-aesthetic to be relevant
at all). In addition, men at the Lord's Gym are depicted
either alone or together with a woman, but never with another
man.
[22] None of this is surprising. Historically,
men's exercise and bodybuilding often had to deal with homoerotic
or homosexual stereotyping and implications. This was the
case in the YMCA's move away from the promotion of intense
strong male friendships in the realm of the gym - even while
the actual Y's became or continued to be well known same-sex
cruising and sex grounds (Gustav-Wrathall, 1998; Putney, 2001).
In the case of the Lord's Gym, we see a similar attempt to
reassert buff masculinity untouched by the male homoerotic
gaze. [7]
[23] Even though the Lord's Gym is a pretty
normal gym in some ways, it carries the burden of embodying
Christian masculinity at the beginning of the 21st century:
The Lord's Gym appears to be less concerned with the (ideal)
shape of muscles than it is with creating an "atmosphere"
of absent presence of the queer other, an atmosphere that
is billed as "morally wholesome" precisely because
of exclusions it effects and because of the kind of bodies
produced as visible/worthy.
[24] It seems to me that there is more to
the gym's Jesus-iconography than some interesting marketing
strategies. Regulating sexual bodies, although more covert
than the visible Christian posters and music, does the work
of producing a religious identity that is configured and embodied
along specifically sexual-political lines. Simultaneously,
gendered identity is configured along specific interpretations
of "Christian". In tracing the bodies that surface
and those that are erased a critical look into the kinds of
repetitions that are enacted in this Lord's Gym can open up
useful connections. Analyzing the differences that might be
effected by repeating ("imaging and imitating Christ")
in this way can contribute to an exploration of the
function of built/excessive/heroic bodies in contemporary
U.S. religion and popular culture. An important
and timely project as hyper-visible/heroic bodies strut their
stuff in a Christian nation-at-war.
III. (Re)Emergence of Muscular Christianity?
[25] Historically, movements of "muscular
Christianity" focused on both wartime and world mission,
seeking to produce manly bodies that were simultaneously Christian
and heroic. (Hall, 1994, Putney, 2001.) Indeed, one was necessary
to successfully be the other: Christian exercise and muscular
Christianity were meant to strengthen and "beef up"
weakly and "sissified" Christians suffering from
the feminization of American Christianity in the 19th and
early 20th century. War was welcome as a means to combat
softness and effeminacy found in Protestant Christianity.
And athletic activity was closely linked to this purpose.
(Consider that basketball was invented by a muscular Christian,
James Naismith, at the YMCA academy in Springfield, MA). Similarly,
Christian Mission was considered a battlefield that could
showcase the manly strength of missionary work, according
to Teddy Roosevelt for example - who is also legendary for
his appreciation of football as soldier-training machinery
(Bairner, 2001; Gorn & Goldstein, 1993; Pope, 1997; Rader,
1999; Riess, 1997).
[26] One could claim that the hypermuscular
Jesus-Icon and its guardianship of nervously reassured hetero-masculinity
in the Lord's Gym descends from the muscular Christians a
century ago and is reminiscent of figures such as Billy Sunday.
Indeed, it is possible to claim that Muscular Christianity,
much like evangelical Christianity more generally, has reemerged
-- or was never gone, but has resurfaced in mainstream media
and politics (see Watt, 1991, for the conflicting interpretations
of the re-emergence of fundamentalism and evangelical Christianity
in America) and is today visible in conservative Christian
discourses about masculinity.
[27] Evangelical sports-ideology (itself
historically not a constant, but rather dynamically changing
ideology) is re-embracing high profile athletes, sport-stardom,
and physical fitness/male prowess as models for the Christian
battlefield of life. (In this regard, Billy Sunday is not
the best parallel after all, as Sunday was opposed to "using"
sports to further the spread of the gospel.) Today,
any sample of contemporary Christian men's magazines or books
will likely include references to perceptions like the one
pointing out that these are "tough times" due to
technological changes and challenges, "tough times"
in which "battles" must be fought (Cole, 2002).
Contemporary sports stars are hyper-visible in that realm
and establish a connection between physical fitness, hyper-built
bodies and Christian leadership and authority.
[28] Asked from a historical direction,
we can think about these movements and trends in connection
with precursors of Muscular Christianity of the Progressive
Era. However, it is imperative that we consider this contemporary
re/emergence of "Muscular Christianity" in connection
with other contemporary ideologies. Despite, or maybe precisely
because of, its complicated and at times contradictory imbrications
with ideologies of nation and sexuality, the hypermuscular
Jesus of the Lord's Gym on the billboards (and t-shirts and
walls and exercise machines) points to a Christian masculinity
that is not weak, humble, yet ends up nailed to a cross. Rather,
this Jesus-on-steroids is strong and heroic and falls into
a trajectory of masculinity that has in the past lend itself
easily to hypermasculine colonialist expansions - at times
evacuating religious content from heroic masculinist imagery
- at times using it directly.
[29] Historically, Christ has not always
been portrayed in one or the other way. Indeed, the iconography
and its gendered, sexual, and colonialist interpretations
can open important views into the larger social and cultural
forces at a given moment. It therefore seems useful to ask
why now this particular heroic (divine) body - and
to explore what other heroic bodies are emerging (parallel
or in opposition). It seems likely that the cultural
intelligibility of the Jesus icon (i.e. why it makes sense
to people who see it - and why it thus can function as a marketing
device for a chain of gyms, among other things) should be
related to the surfacing of other heroic imagery that draws
on similar discursive moments of cultural and social crisis/intervention.
IV: American Heroes
[30] Although the Lord's Gym displaces its
missionary impulse onto "Compassion International"
(reassuring the members of its evangelical heart while avoiding
too aggressive a missionary face) I could not help but notice
that I was beginning to work on this material when people
in the U.S. began to live in a (post-9/11) nation that was
at war (and was getting ready to start another one): a war
that is in part constructed along religious categories, a
war against a particular kind of Islam. In the
context of the year following 9/11/2001 we have witnessed
a massive increase of heroes. Indeed, in today's US culture
we have more heroes than we can count. Alan Edelstein's 1996
book Everybody Is Sitting on the Curb: How and Why America's
Heroes Disappeared seems rather outdated. Besides official
markers, such as the postal stamp "Heroes 2001"
officially issued in 2002, celebrations and public icons of
heroes abound.
[31] In the larger context of my work, I
explore several other examples of contemporary heroic masculinity
and its imbrications with Christian ideology, both historically
and in its contemporary form. In the remaining space of this
article, I want to point out a few of these heroic images
of embattled yet celebrated Christian masculinity that can
point to the complicated challenges we face in terms of understanding
(or maybe merely describing) the connections of sexuality,
gender, and nation in some of the heroic bodies displayed
in contemporary American culture.
Mychal Judge's body being retrieved from
the rubble of WTC. This picture was the central image
on the front page of the New York Times on 9/12/2001.
Bookcover
Reinterpretation of the image as pieta in
a collage on the website 'saintmychal.com'
[32] One of the best known examples
makes the point that the celebration of heroic masculinity
so desperately needed right now is intimately connected to
religious, but also to sexual and national, ideology
- and to the manipulation of all of these issues in popular
and virtual media realms. The first recorded victim
of the deaths at WTC was Father Mychal Judge, chaplain of
NYC firefighters. He is already "an authentic American
hero" (see the subtitle to Ford, 2002, the first
book about him). Furthermore, you can learn more than you
might want to know at "saintmychal.com" a website
dedicated to the discussion of Judge's eventual canonization.
Here too are offered products to buy, in the gift shop
section of the website. Hero or saint: hagiography
seems to be an all American activity these days - and always
intimately connected to purchasing products and commemorative
items, lest we forget the (perhaps all too fleeting) heroism
of the new heroes.
[33] Indeed, in the case of Mychal Judge
a process of hagiography - including all its challenges -
could be observed from day one: The accounts of how exactly
he died were soon contested; the picture on the cover of the
September 12th NY Times had been described as a "modern
pieta" more than once, as is most obviously the case
on the Saint Mychal website (see image above). With regard
to the emerging hagiography of Mychal Judge, we soon became
aware of a couple of "problems" that required urgent
discussion: Judge was gay and a recovering alcoholic. It is
assumed that the Pope probably did not know this when he accepted
Judge's helmet from fellow Catholic firefighters. Despite
calls for his sainthood, Judge's order has refused entertaining
any such thing, stressing instead that Judge was "very
human and flawed - just like all of us." (www.saintmychal.com).
The heroic (and redemptive) status of a courageous saviour-figure
seems compromised if that figure is also gay. The celebration,
albeit contested depending on context, of a fallen (sic) priest
as Christ-like hero points to some of the complexities that
support my claim that we ought to think sex-gender-nation-religion
together if we are to describe or understand contemporary
American culture.
Bookcovers
[34] A closely related example of (conflicting)
images and representations: Flight 93, the fourth plane that
was hijacked and crashed in Pennsylvania, most likely as result
of passengers and crew struggling for control of the plane.
As is to be expected, several books were published immediately.
One of the first, Among the Heroes (Longman, 2002)was
written, coincidentally, by a journalist who previously had
covered the women's soccer world cup. A related book
appeared rather quickly: Hero of Flight 93: Mark Bingham
(Barrett, 2002). "MarkBingham.com"
is the related website to check out. And here as well we find
ourselves in that curious position of being in the midst of
a hero-myth being written (without much evidence or data at
the writers' disposal). Bingham was also gay: a fraternity-loving,
gay-rugby-team athlete. He was neither an activist nor particularly
gay-identified. But in 2001, he was The Advocate's
"person of the year". However, in the mainstream
media, Bingham is not usually remembered as the hero of Flight
93. While Bingham became ghettoized in the gay press, Todd
Beamer became the (mainstream's) celebrated hero on board
of Flight 93. His last words over his cell phone ("Let's
roll") made for a good book title, and President Bush
chose to invite his pregnant widow to the first public speeches
after 9/11/2001. Despite their names being listed in close
proximity in most passenger lists of Flight 93, Beamer and
Bingham rarely appear together in the stories of heroic wrestling
control of the plane (however contested these stories are
at this point. The hagiographic activities in the gay press
are interesting (for example the book about Bingham (see image
above) has to make do with very little information, and thus
becomes a book more about his mother and friends than about
any available data from his life). They construct a hero for
the mainstream - yet in competition with the mainstream upholding
of the family-man Beamer (who was an evangelical Christian).
[35] The ongoing and continuously heated
discussion around Judge's status as saint and/or hero - as
well as the ongoing celebration, however contested,
of Bingham as outstanding gay heroic role model, point to
redefinitions of heroism within American Catholicism/Christianity
and within dominant U.S. culture (these two are of course
not unrelated realms). Furthermore, they point to the implicit
significance of sexuality in discourses of heroism. To add
another layer of heroic re-building, and as another suggestive
set of images, let me end with the following re-makes of themes
discussed thus far:
V. Christian (Comics) Heroes Reloaded
[36] As sport heroes reemerge as national
icons there are further areas of popular culture that provide
insight into the values that shape national identity and policy.
Across the parking lot from the "Lord's Gym" I saw
Spiderman the very day it came out. Stunned I sat in
the dark as I listened to the repetition of the motto: "With
great power comes great responsibility". It seemed telling
that this was the motto repeated during the time that the
US began to wage war on the "evil axis"; not explicitly
for Christian world domination, but also not that far removed
from missionary terminology.
[37] Turning to comics is a useful move.
Comics have always been a medium of telling dominant stories
in smart and subtle ways. And to complete the tour of
the strip mall near my house, in the store right next to where
the Lord's Gym used to be I bought (on sale!) various items
that combine many of the concerns I have mentioned: Bibleman,
a Christian superhero with his own line of gadgets, paper
cups, party napkins, fan-zines, video recordings, and a touring
special-effects show plying to full houses of young kids.[8].
This hero is celebrated, indeed he materializes and becomes
real, through the purchasing of brand name products.
Cover of 'Bibleman'-fanzine ("A
Totally Authorized Album")
[38] Quoting scripture throughout, Bibleman
teaches the importance of righteousness and promotes the values
of following authority. Bibleman's hyper-muscular heroic body
(and yes, he has his own cool bike), hidden in the
everyday normal man, but emerging (coming out?) in skintight
outfits, purple tights, and heroic breastplates, replicates
(and transforms?) an aesthetic appeal familiar from popular
cultural icons such as Spiderman or Batman (including the
cute but often clueless sidekick and the easily recognizable
evil guy) and is becoming more commonly recognizable as
a modern version of Christ triumphant. Whereas
Bibleman might appear as obvious "muscular Christian",
his dresscode (neither moderate nor modest indeed) and the
homosocial banter with his sidekick are persistent reminder
of the (constantly negotiated) homoerotic implications of
such a bond - and such an outfit - and are unlike earlier
muscular Christians' position vis-à-vis a crisis in
masculinity a century ago.
[39] Lastly, my students have helped me
establish another connection that I need to further explore:
Marvel Comics produced a special tribute to the heroes of
the WTC tragedies.[9].
Where journalists and academics attempt subtle descriptions
of tragedy, heroism and the complicated imbrications with
nation and nationalism, comics afford a bolder language:
Examples of merging of contemporary (9/11)
'heroes' with Marvel comic book characters in Marvel's 9-11-tribute
volume
[40] Captain America is sad while other
Marvel superheroes hold candles and stay in the background
as the real tragic and heroic actions unfold in the rubble
of the WTC. The heroes of 9/11 (firefighters, police
officers, EMS personnel) are embraced and celebrated by Marvel's
long line of superheroes. (The current privileging of
"Captain America" in many a heroic drawing - but
also in critical books about these phenomena is no accident;
see Jewett & Lawrence, 2003). Uncertainty over what happened
on Flight 93 might have prompted a rather simple design for
the bookjacket of Flight 93, yet did not deter the
comic artist from a much more explicitly heroic rendition
of the event. And Mychal Judge's body - often referred to
as a modern day pieta - is also redrawn in the comics.
Two images that refer to the same
event: the reported struggle on board of UA Flight 93
Modified rendition of Mychal Judge 'pieta'
within comic-stylized celebration of American heroes in Marvel
tribute volume.
[41] As center spread in the commemorative
comic volume, we thus find a fusion of the Spiderman motto,
a celebration of American heroism, and muscular bodily ideals
-- and all that written onto, and thus translated through,
the heroic portrayal of a dead man's body. Muscular Christians
in the past certainly used popular culture to their advantage.
Today's muscular and heroically male Christian bodies are
again produced in, through, and for popular media and consumption.
We ought to make an effort to understand the connections -
but also the innovative uses of virtual and popular media
technology - and the always-shifting connections to ideologies
of gender, sexuality and nation.
Notes:
* I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers
at JRPC for their helpful encouragement and insightful comments.
[1] I write this in past tense because this particular
branch facility closed down one year after opening. There
is now another gym: LA Fitness. In May 2002 the local news
showed disgruntled customers who stood in front of locked
doors, never having received prior notice or any refund of
their previously paid membership dues. My students seem to
consider this a particularly important (because they think,
so clearly "un-Christian") aspect of the tragic
decline of this branch facility. One reviewer also asked why
I did not forefront this failure of the Lord's Gym. Indeed,
this one franchise location failed - and it might be worth
a more sustained study of the economics of the location to
understand the details and financial dynamics. However, throughout
Florida and California, several other Lord's Gyms continue
to do well and are continuing to operate with the same or
similar publicity. As I am most interested in the discursive
work of images and representations deployed in the realm of
the representation of the Lord's Gym, I do not further explore
this aspect of the gym's economic failure in this article.
All quotes are from the company website, some of which are
now also defunct. A similar statement can still be viewed
at another branch facility's site http://www.lordsgymclermont.com/mission_frame.htm.
[2] EyewitnessNews11.com "Faith and Fitness"
July 9, 2001
[3] All quotes from company website in 2001. Current
(very similar) company statement to be found at http://www.lordsgymclermont.com/company_body.htm
[4] ibid.
[5] The Orlando Sentinel, Saturday, January
26, 2001. pages E1.
[6] Ibid.
[7] This is a "family" that is Christian and
has kids. This is not the kind of "family" that
some might suspect when thinking about a gym - or the kind
of Village People-YMCA-iconography of such "family"
matters.
[8] Thanks to Laura Levitt for handing me my very first
Bibleman party napkin.
[9] I thank Jessica Koesters for lending me the Heroes
tribute edition and for making me aware of the Marvel series.
References
Bairner, Alan. (2001) Sport, Nationalism,
and Globalization: European and North-American Perspectives.
Albany: State University of New York Press.
Barrett, Jon. (2002) Hero of Flight 93:
Mark Bingham. Los Angeles, CA: Advocate Books.
Boyarin, Daniel. (1997) Unheroic Conduct:
The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish
Man. Berkley: University of California Press.
Cole, Edwin Louis. (2002) Strong Men
in Tough Times: Exercising True Manhood in an Age that Demands
Heroes. Watercolor Books.
Ford, Michael. (2002) Father Mychal Judge:
An Authentic American Hero. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
Gorn, Elliott J. and Warren Goldstein. (1993)
A Brief History of American Sports. New York:
Hill and Wang.
Gustav‑Wrathall, John Donald.
(1998) Take the Young Stranger by the Hand:Same‑Sex
Relations and the YMCA. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Hall, Donald. (1994) Muscular Christianity:
Embodying the Victorian Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Halperin, David M. (1995) Saint Foucault:
Towards a Gay Hagiography. New York: Oxford University
Press
Jewett, Robert and John Shelton Lawrence.
(2003) Captain America and the Crusade against Evil: The
Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism. Cambridge: Eerdmans.
Ladd, Tony and James A. Mathiesen. (1999)
Muscular Christianity: Evangelical Protestants and the
Development of American Sport. Grand Rapids, MI: BridgePoint
Books.
Longman, Jere. (2002) Among the
Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought
Back. New York, NY: Harper Collins.
Mjagkij, Nina and Margaret Spratt, eds.
(1997) Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and the YMCA in the
City. New York: NYU Press.
Moore, Steven D. (1996) God's Gym: Divine
Male Bodies of the Bible New York, London: Routledge.
Pellegrini, Ann. (1997) Performance Anxieties:
Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race. New York: Routledge.
Pope, S.W. ed. (1997). The New American
Sport History: Recent Approaches and Perspectives. Urbana
and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Putney, Clifford. (1997) "From Character
to Body Building: The YMCA and the Suburban Metropolis, 1950-1980"
in Mjagkij and Spratt, eds.Men and Women Adrift.
Putney, Clifford. (2001) Muscular Christianity:
Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880-1920. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Rader, Benjamin G. (1999) American Sports:
From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Sports.
fourth ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Riess, Steven A. (1997) Major Problems
in American Sports History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company.
Schippert, Claudia. (2001) Transgressive
Bodies, Queer Ethics: A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation about
Resistance. Unpublished dissertation, Temple University.
Simpson, Marc.(1994) Male Impersonators:
Men Performing Masculinity. London, New York : Cassell.
Watt, David Harrington. (1991) A Transforming
Faith: Explorations in Twentieth-Century American Evangelicalism.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Image Credits/Copyright
(Unless otherwise noted, any website indicate
below was working as of 4/12/2003.)
1 Picture taken by Claudia Schippert
2 Website no longer active (http://www.lordshealthandfitness.com/shop)
3 http://www.lordsgymclermont.com/images/logo_splash.jpg
4 Advertising coupons distributed through
the USPS mail in Florida (February, April and May 2002)
65 H/28 The Best of Orlando; 67 H/8 The Best of Orlando; 68
H/44 The Best of Orlando.
5 Mission Statement on company web site(http://www.lordshealthandfitness.com/mission.jpg).
Page is no longer active, but similar page currently active:
http://www.lordsgymclermont.com/images/mission.jpg
6 Orlando Sentinel, Saturday,
January 26, 2002. pages E1,3. Photos by Julie Fletcher/Orlando
Sentinel
7 Orlando Sentinel, Saturday,
January 26, 2002. pages E1,3. Photos by Julie Fletcher/Orlando
Sentinel
8 Orlando Sentinel, Saturday,
January 26, 2002. pages E1,3. Photos by Julie Fletcher/Orlando
Sentinel
9 Advertising coupons distributed through
the USPS mail in Florida (February, April and May 2002)
65 H/28 The Best of Orlando; 67 H/8 The Best of Orlando; 68
H/44 The Best of Orlando.
10 Advertising coupons distributed through
the USPS mail in Florida (February, April and May 2002)
65 H/28 The Best of Orlando; 67 H/8 The Best of Orlando; 68
H/44 The Best of Orlando.
11 Website no longer active (http://www.lordshealthandfitness.com/shop)
12 Website no longer active (http://www.lordshealthandfitness.com/shop)
13 Advertising coupons distributed through
the USPS mail in Florida (2002)
14 Advertising coupons distributed through
the USPS mail in Florida (2002)
15 http://www.saintmychal.com/photos/body1.jpg
16 From the book jacket (designed by Stefan
Killen Design) of Michael Ford. Mychal Judge: An Authentic
American Hero. Paulist Press, 2001. Image also found at:
http://www.saintmychal.com/photos/008.jpg
17 http://www.saintmychal.com/photos/body1.jpg
http://www.saintmychal.com/photos/body2.jpg
http://www.saintmychal.com/photos/body3.jpg
http://www.saintmychal.com/photos/pieta.jpg
18 From the book jacket (designed
2002 by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich) of: Jere Longman. Among
the Heroes: United Flight 93 & the Passengers & Crew
Who Fought Back. Harper Collin, 2002. Jacket photograph
2002 by Mark Wagner.
19 Book cover (cover design by Matt
Sams, front cover photograph by Matt Hall) of Jon Barrett.
Hero of Flight 93: Mark Bingham. Advocate Books, Alyson
Publications, 2002.
20 "Bibleman" is a registered
trademark. Copyright for all Bibleman artwork, design, and
text: 2000 by Pamplin Entertainment Corporation.
21 Heroes Vol.1, No.1 (December
2001), Marvel Comics, Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc.,
p.13. Carlos Pancheco with JĖsus Merino and Tom Smith. Text
by Kurt Busiek.
22 Heroes, p. 23. J. Scott
Campbell with Hi-Fi.
23 left: book cover of Among the Heroes
(see above, image18)
right: Heroes, p. 17. Igor Kordey with Chris
Chukry.
24 Heroes, p. 39. ChrisCross
with Rick Ketcham and Hi-Fi.
