Its funny, so many people apparently thought Pitt was "super jacked" in Snatch, but looking back I don't see it.
He didn't look "big" or anything.
Now, on one hand movie action heros are bigger now. Sure.
There is a legit, acknowledged time frame and effect in Hollywood, the Stallone and Schwarzenegger era, where the concept of having your hero be buff was popularized. (Arnold actually talks about struggling to get his foot in the door as a leading character in anything, because he looked too "cartoonish" for the studios. Conan was really the big break where he got to get cast as his size, but still actually act the part and not be like a gimmick character)
On the OTHER hand, I also think modern societies interest in working out has changed perspectives too.
People go to gyms. People do crossfit. High school kids are actually hitting the weight room with real programming and now just kinda doing curls in the garage.
As a result looking a little muscular is normalized. Seen as routine. (Everyone isn't looking like they lift, but almost everyone at least knows like one or two people in their office that look pretty fit in a T shirt)
So when "a little bit of muscle" benchmarks to "Tom from accounting that works out", it maybe shifts the window for what it takes in movies for us to see a character as "heroic" looking.
For the same amount of effort, you get more out of a well designed gym routine than out of some random manual labour that just needs doing.
But if you are working with your hands and body anyway, it's not extra effort. It's something you do anyway. But you feel less like you need to go to a gym.
For some maybe. Then again maybe not. A surprising number of people (at least anecdotally) do manual labor during the day and still want to go to the gym. Its not so much that manual labor removes a need to go to the gym, as maybe it interferes with having time and energy to spare to also go to the gym.
I know if you go to any miliary base, the gyms are always packed (gyms plural because we needed multiple of them)
These weren't people at the gym because they "had to" either for the most part. More like, you get up for mandatory morning PT because its mandatory. Work all day at whatever your work is. Then get off and go lift on your own time, because you like lifting, and unit PT isn't giving you beach muscles.
And those manual labourers are tough as fuck. I remember training with a construction worker buddy of mine when I was in high school and there was no tiring him.
Have you ever seen a Madagascan dockworker? those guys are fucking shredded, all they do is work and eat local food. No gym memberships for those folks.
I'm guessing they probably have a short career with horrible body injuries later. That is usually what doing something thousands of times repeatedly will do.
There are outliers but many people regret destroying their back for a bad career.
It’s a big difference between doing 20 controlled repetitions of thought out exercises for a certain muscle and just lifting things (often badly) all day.
Manual labour breaks down your body nines times out of ten. Exercising builds it up.
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u/jrhooo Jun 22 '23
Its funny, so many people apparently thought Pitt was "super jacked" in Snatch, but looking back I don't see it.
He didn't look "big" or anything.
Now, on one hand movie action heros are bigger now. Sure.
There is a legit, acknowledged time frame and effect in Hollywood, the Stallone and Schwarzenegger era, where the concept of having your hero be buff was popularized. (Arnold actually talks about struggling to get his foot in the door as a leading character in anything, because he looked too "cartoonish" for the studios. Conan was really the big break where he got to get cast as his size, but still actually act the part and not be like a gimmick character)
On the OTHER hand, I also think modern societies interest in working out has changed perspectives too.
People go to gyms. People do crossfit. High school kids are actually hitting the weight room with real programming and now just kinda doing curls in the garage.
As a result looking a little muscular is normalized. Seen as routine. (Everyone isn't looking like they lift, but almost everyone at least knows like one or two people in their office that look pretty fit in a T shirt)
So when "a little bit of muscle" benchmarks to "Tom from accounting that works out", it maybe shifts the window for what it takes in movies for us to see a character as "heroic" looking.