Acting for America: Movie Stars of the 1980s

Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger: Androgynous Macho Men

36 ★★★★★★★★★★ ✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩ 2 Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger Androgynous Macho Men REBECCA BELL-METEREAU The 1980s witnessed a profound shift in the nature of idealized masculinity and stardom, exemplified by the rise of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger as superstars. The bodies and films of these actors represent the super-sizing of muscles and publicity, and the two engaged in a constant dance of competition with each other for the position Rambo: First Blood Part II. Courtesy Jerry Ohlinger. Copyright Anabasis, N.V., 1985. Conan the Barbarian. Courtesy Jerry Ohlinger. Copyright Dino De Laurentiis Company/ Universal Pictures, 1982. of top money-making star. A close look at how and why these two figures dominated the decade’s box office is key to analyzing the complex relationship between marketing and gender in creating stardom. Although these two figures are most often associated with hyper-masculinity, their appeal for viewers does not lie exclusively in their identity as the stereotypical lone “macho man.” Rather, both stars incorporate a complex and fascinating mixture of stereotypically masculine and feminine signals as inherent to their star personas. These contradictory gender cues are essential to both actors’ commercial success, in part because they helped broaden the actors’ appeal for female and gay audiences. Even as heterosexual manly men watch these stars with unalloyed pleasure, the erotic display of smooth, hairless bodies and bulging pectorals that look like large breasts conveys an androgynous identity hidden in plain sight for other viewers. During the 1980s, this counter-text brought in a whole new set of fans who enjoyed reading these stars’ sexual identities in multiple ways—either consciously or unconsciously. At the same time, these two actors followed the path to international stardom through a web of primarily male economic and political networks, while their multilayered sexual identities spoke to deep ambivalence and anxiety over shifting social, political, and sexual roles. As preeminent muscle men of the decade, Stallone and Schwarzenegger were inextricably bound to each other in a battle for fans and box office supremacy. They were well aware that they were competing for a similar viewing audience, and they spoke of each other publicly with the kind of openly boastful hostility one normally associates with the Worldwide Wrestling Federation. At one point, Schwarzenegger wished his temperamental girlfriend Brigitte Nielsen on Stallone: “She was obsessed with him [Schwarzenegger], she wanted to marry him, and he didn’t know what to do. Arnold and Sylvester shared the same attorney and so he had the attorney introduce Brigitte Nielsen to Stallone, and Stallone ended up marrying her” (Leamer 216). In Stallone’s 1986 Rolling Stone version of the story, Nielsen had been obsessed with Stallone since she was eleven and she essentially stalked him until she won him over (19 December 1986, 127). Similar competing narratives of the two actors abound during the 1980s, adding to their fascination for fans and viewers. Rival ethnic identities also contributed to the dueling personas of these actors, whose speech and accents tied them to particular social and economic milieus. The almost monotone flatness of their voices hearkened back to John Wayne. Their semi-naked physiques evoked traditions of the 1950s bathing beauty contests, teenage beach movies, and a subsequent broader notion of self-conscious parody. Both actors modified their star perSYLVESTER STALLONE AND ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER 37 sonas by incorporating into their work the kind of irony that involves selfdeprecating humor and exaggeration, typical of the growing camp sensibility noted by such critics as Richard Dyer. Their competitive transformations followed the rapidly shifting parameters of masculinity, femininity, and androgyny, as they raced to keep up with one another and with the moviegoing public’s constantly changing social and sexual tastes. ★ ✩★ ✩★ ✩★ ✩★ ✩ Sylvester Stallone: Refashioning the Italian Stallion Stallone’s acting career, which began in 1970 with a pornographic film, moved through smaller parts to his triumphant appearance in the Academy Award–winning Rocky (1976). Throughout the 1980s his image and identity evolved in such films as Victory (1981), Nighthawks (1981), First Blood (1982), Rocky III (1982), Rhinestone (1984), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rocky IV (1985), Rambo III (1988), and Tango & Cash (1989). The media of the 1980s presented Stallone in contradictory terms, ranging from the “dumbest piece of meat in Hollywood” to the man who can talk “cogently on subjects ranging from geopolitics to poetry and bemoan the lost art of conversation” (Ladies’ Home Journal, July 1988, 96...