The Incredible Bulk: The Dangerous Lie of Male Superhero Bodies

Let’s go hypothetical for a second.

You’ve been working in Hollywood for a decade or so - mainly underground supporting roles, character actor stuff - enough that maybe a podcast fan would recognise you on the street, but you can still do your grocery shopping in relative peace. You know that the next big role is right around the corner though - maybe it’ll be a dramatic lead in an Oscar type film, or maybe it’ll be a big hero in an action film. The part is coming, you just need to keep trucking along. 

Then one day - it happens. Your agent calls you with the news; you’ve booked a role of a lifetime. Marvel are making a movie and you’re going to be a superhero! It’s been a dream since you were a little kid reading comics by flashlight while you were supposed to already be asleep. The next few months are a slurry of costumes, lines, training, stunts, character work, press. You meet with a personal trainer, a dietician, a nutritionist, an endocrinologist, a physiotherapist, Your hair starts getting thinner, and you start getting back acne, but it’s fine because you’ve got a new stylist and a dermatologist. You keep getting mood swings, your balls start shrinking, you’ve forgotten what pasta tastes like, you start crying at your wife’s birthday party because you can’t have any cake. The party is ruined but you look amazing. 

You spent the actual shoot in front of a greenscreen reacting to a tennis ball. 

The movie is released to lukewarm reviews. It tops the Box Office for a month before immediately getting overtaken by the next superhero film. 

The sequel starts shooting in three months and you need to get in shape again. 

The Superhero Industrial Complex is to blame for a lot of things; the general milquetoast nature of popular releases, the pro-cop pro-army propaganda, and the use of diversity exclusively as tokenism. In much lower stakes news, having seen recently released pictures of Chris Hemsworth as Thor, and Kumail Nunjiani in preparation for the new Eternals movie, I’m genuinely concerned. What is Marvel doing to these bodies ????

In her seminal essay Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema, feminist scholar Laura Mulvey coins the male gaze theory; wherein in media, the woman is the object, and the male is the subject. The male gaze and how women are portrayed in cinema has been discussed to death, however, less discussed is how the male gaze affects men. 

In a generic superhero film whose goal is to make as much money as it possibly can, the goal isn’t to subvert gaze - it’s to play directly into it. The men are men, and they are to fit every stereotype of what a “man” looks like! Sure, the characters can have hidden depth, but from a purely aesthetic point of view, they all fit the build of a male superhero - perfect muscles, perfect smiles, perfect hair, perfect bodies. They look perfect. Their bodies are not objectified - the MCU is so sexless that objectification would be too risque - instead, they are exalted. This is what peak performance looks like, this is what a hero looks like. Ignore the fact that these heroes have gadgets and superpowers to the point where unnecessary muscles would just get in the way - real men are swole. 

Of course, these body standards are impossible to reach. Despite the countless Marvel-themed workouts being plugged online, it doesn’t take a pharmacology expert to realise that Chris Hemsworth and Kumail Nunjiani are almost definitely using performance-enhancing drugs. (But it certainly helps, shout to the anaesthetic modules in e-learning for healthcare.)

Superhero bodies in cinema have come a long way since their inception. When cast as Superman in the 1979 film, Christopher Reeve certainly looks in good shape, but it looks attainable. Similarly, prior to Christian Bale and his infamous bulk up / weight loss cycle, the previous Batmen weren’t so obviously bulky. Over the past decade or so, superheroes have only gotten bigger and bigger - this has just so happened to coincide with the rise of body dysmorphia in men. “Bigorexia” is the belief that your body isn’t big or muscular enough, regardless of how much working out one does, and it’s affecting up to 10% of male gym-goers. There is an increased pressure for men to have washboard abs, have basically no body fat and have a perfect V-shaped body; when the majority of media features men who look like action dolls, it makes sense that men are conditioned to believe that this is how they should look. 

“I would not have been able to do this if I didn’t have a full year with the best trainers and nutritionists paid for by the biggest studio in the world,” said Kumail Nunjiani on his superhero transformation. He is at least acknowledging the fact that it’s basically impossible for your average man to look like this, yet he’s refusing to offer any specifics. So far, no male celebrities have admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs to get in shape for a role; Rob Mcelhenney has heavily alluded to it, and Tom Hardy said he bulked up the “naughty” way when getting in shape for The Dark Knight Rises (we all know what “”skittles”” are buddy, come on now), however, no one has been blunt enough to admit that they’re on drugs. Since the dawn of social media, relatability has been a key factor in how likeable a celebrity is, why is no one being honest about their bodies? Hollywood was built on the dream that anyone can be a star; if anyone can be a star, surely that means that anyone can look like a star? Laura Mulvey said that the male gaze is “obsessively subordinated to the neurotic needs of the male ego.” The Male Ego insists that all the heroes are insanely built - never mind the health of the stars of the viewing public.