Group Questions for Hardbody Masculinity

     Instructions:  Your group should compose responses to the questions below and post them to the blog before the end of the week (although you may post them during class is you are done.) Feel free to incorporate images, clips, or other materials in your responses.  Your answer need not be long, but they should be thoughtful and specific.  We will return to these briefly in next week's class (and there will be a winning group...)

1.    Jot down your impressions of Arnold as a cultural phenomenon:  what are your first memories of him?  How might we describe him?  Who that we’ve studied might you compare him too?  In Stars, McDonald writes that ‘stars are significant for how they make . . . elusive . . . [concepts of identity] into a visible show’  (180).   What concepts of identity does Arnold help us visualize?    How? 

2.    When studying Marilyn, we discussed ways in which her star image was closely tied to her body, that is, issues of embodiment were tightly bound up with her star persona.  Is this true of Arnold?  If so, how are visual representations of his body like or unlike representations of Marilyn’s body?  Could we say he’s positioned as a spectacle?  To what end?  What role does genre play in how Arnold is imaged?

3.    How do the readings for today relate Arnold’s importance as a star to the cultural moment from which he emerged?  Put differently, why Arnold in the 1980s and 1990s?  How are these two decades different?  Do you buy Susan Jeffords’ argument?  What other popular cultural images of the period connect up with the image of Arnold?

4.    What role does femininity play in a film like T2?  How is Arnold’s hypermasculinity sketched in relation to femininity?  Can we relate this to wider cultural issues of the 1980s and 90s? 

5.    How can we understand the relationship between Arnold’s past as a Hollywood star and his more recent present as a political player?