(Arm) Wrestling with Masculinity: Television, Toughness, and the Touch of Another Man’s Hand

Abstract

For decades, dating back to the medium’s origins as a commercially viable form of mass communication in the postwar years, US television programs have contributed to the many paradoxes of masculinity, revealing but also obscuring the normativizing function of cultural representations through the use of generic encoding and the compositional “logic” of male (visual) dominance. One visual motif in particular—the shot of two men sitting at a table, their hands temporarily locked as part of an arm wrestling contest—is noteworthy, given the frequency of its recurrence in a variety of fictional programming ( All in the Family, The Odd Couple, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, etc.) as well as for its literal staging of masculinity as spectacle, as an object of spectatorial contemplation vis-à-vis the televisual construction of “toughness” as an inherently male attribute. If television and toughness can be said to go “hand in hand,” then the actual sight of two men joined together in a physical contest hints at the idea that intimacy is at much a part of such ritualized representations as intimidation is. Indeed, what several of the episodes discussed in this article (selected from representative television programs of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s) reveal is that a man is sometimes at his most unguarded—his most forthcoming and honest—when seated opposite another man during an arm wrestling match, a moment that is deserving of consideration as a symptomatic illustration of masculinity’s paradoxes. Inspired by the early writings of Roland Barthes, in particular the French philosopher’s essay “The World of Wrestling” (published as part of his 1957 book Mythologies), I ultimately hope to reveal how seemingly innocuous images are “invested with ideological meanings,” unwittingly revealing what they often seek to conceal.

Analysis and generalization of the manifestation of different types of force in competitive exercises of the leaders of the world armwrestling weighing over 100 kg

“…A feature of the competitive activity of arm wrestlers weighing over 100 kg is that athletes in this weight category, according to the rules of the competition, are not limited by weight as in other weight categories, where the difference in weight between rivals is only a few kilograms [14,15,16]. Athletes participating in competitions in the absolute weight category can differ from each other by a large difference in weight, ranging from a few to 100 or more kilograms.…”

Comparative Analysis of the Efforts of Highly Qualified Elite Armwrestlers with Different Strength Abilities

“…I would also like to note that these athletes often defeated super-heavyweights who weighed 20-50 kg or more. This is what attracts special attention from spectators, fans, athletes, coaches and, of course, researchers (Diffrient, 2019;Silva et al, 2009), when lighter athletes, inferior to anthropometric data, win due to strength and speed-strength indicators. All of these individuals are interested in determining the strongest athlete of the tournament, country, continent and even the world.…”

Virile Infertile Men, and Other Representations of In/Fertile Hegemonic Masculinity in Fiction Television Series

“…First of all, empirical analyses of negotiated hegemonic masculinity within (but also beyond) the context of male infertility experiences predominantly examine relationships between men: they show how men amongst each other understand and negotiate (their) normativity and hegemony (Bird 1996;Connell and Messerschmidt 2005;Diffrient 2017;Dolan et al 2017;Lee and Chu 2001;Malik and Coulson 2008;Mason 2003;Webb and Daniluk 1999). In doing so, these studies position women at the periphery of constructions of masculine norms and hegemonic masculinity, rather than understanding them as significant actors in the negotiation of hegemonic masculinity (Brod and Kaufman 1994;Connell and Messerschmidt 2005).…”