Documentary film is the preservation of history through art, very similar to the role of the historian, whose duty is to gather and archive ancient texts that would otherwise be forgotten. In watching documentary film we momentarily transcend the boundaries of time in which we explore a portion of the past, relive a moment prior to when we existed, and magnify a fragment of our culture through the lens of an artist.
Documentary as art is so successful at preserving our culture that it is regrettably associated with the mundane, the colorless, the history of the world—the streaming television shows we know as National Geographic and The Discovery Channel. Because of this, documentary film has received little recognition and is uncomfortably perceived as textbook information instead of being recognized for its real value as a curator of culture.
Through documentary I was able to glimpse at a time period that I would have lived in given the choice, the Golden Age of Bodybuilding, a time when health, fitness and discipline were becoming increasingly more important than getting drunk and stoned or having sex. The documentary Pumping Iron was directed by George Butler and Robert Fiore, and featured Arnold Schwarzenegger as the protagonist. It reflected an era of men who would become known as champions.
[And becoming a champ wasn’t easy.]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0x8FvzV-_w
Pumping Iron was initially produced in order to draw attention to a certain minority group among the American population, the health conscious and the professional bodybuilders. At the time little was known about these men except that they lived in the same community, ate the same food, worked in the same buildings and maintained a ritual of disappearing into the gym for an hour a day. Butler and Fiore took this ignorance as an opportunity to produce an unconventional film that revealed the inside lives of the gym rats, and as a result turned Arnold Schwarzenegger into the icon of American bodybuilding culture.
The impact of the film has permeated throughout our culture. Arnold still exists as a universally renown figure and gym-goers are now stereotyped, for reasons which include spending hours in the gym, following a low-fat diet, and trying to lift things several times their bodyweight, all of which was perpetuated by the media since the release of the documentary. Even women were influenced to become more health conscious as Butler later released Pumping Iron II: The Woman. The film preserved a moment in which people actually wanted to exercise and made strong efforts to stay in good shape [as opposed to current times].
But Pumping Iron did more than preserve culture, it changed the way Americans viewed themselves. It encapsulated the growing desire to be fit and helped shape the ideals of a beach body. For instance, many fitness magazines featured athletes who starred in the film, since its release.
With the increasing obesity epidemic and its influenza-like spread in America, the documentaries of yesteryear remind me of a time when America cared what it looked like.
Oh how things have changed…
