Blog #4: The Action Figure Dynamic

"The Insult", a motivational cartoon created to inspire young scrawny men worldwide, is fairly critical of the "natural" size of many young adult males. It depicts the taunting of a young loverboy and his girlfriend at a beach by an overaggressive, oversized bully. The comic means to sell a 32 page book on how to transform your body from one of simpleton weakling into a lethal muscle machine. The cartoon argues that if you are not ripped and fit, you cannot possibly protect the woman you love. It plays on the hallowed alpha male philosophy that if you aren't an aggressive silverback gorilla, you are not a real man. The woman, the young scrawny man's girlfriend, an attractive, skinny brunette, is elated when the man puts on several layers of muscle and turns the overbearing bully into a whimpering, falling tree with his feet cut out from underneath him. The story seems to portray Charles Atlas (the author of the 32 page book) as the scrawny man turned super hero. The exultation of the others on the beach after his knockdown of said bully shows the importance of creating a strong, masculine physique in the cartoon.

In "Evolving Ideals of the Male Body Image as Seen Through Action Toys," the authors, Pope, Jr., Olivardia, Gruber and Borowieki hope to draw attention to the fact that over the last 5 decades, action figures have evolved from skinny, expressionless seemingly insubstantial stick figure into a hulking, musclebound, unrealistic dynamo that children collecting these figures should aspire to. The figures have grown in bicep and chest size while losing much of the waistline that their earlier counterparts featured. The action figures are a grim reminder of the superficial reality that current generations are placing on masculinity. The most popular and long lasting toy lines, Star Wars and GI Joe, have consistently put more pressure on the children collecting them through subliminal and obvious means that they shouldn't look like the average person, but instead should exude confidence, anger, and the ability to grow to obscene proportions in the quest for the perfect body. Television, print ads, and magazines all support this notion.

In "The Insult," the author, the ad agency or Charles Atlas himself, seems to be taunting and tormenting young adult males through the use of the story. The tone is one of abject pity on the viewers of the cartoon, telling them that they aren't really a man. Sand kicked in the face of the protagonist and his girl screams "you are not good enough for the woman at your arm." The bully tells the protagonist that he would beat him senselessly except he isn't worth his time, and as an extension the advertisement is telling the reader that they(the reader) aren't really worth the time and effort to make lean and muscular, but they are going to do it anyways as a favor to them. His girlfriend calls him a "little boy," further inciting rage and violence (in the next frame) to inspire the man to become a "real" man. He uses Charles Atlas' program and becomes a big strong masculine individual capable of turning away all bullies. This sets the tone that any person reading the ad could become who they want to become, and that person that they want to become is a large muscular alpha male with the potential to secure any woman and win any fight. The audience is clearly pre-pubescent and young adult males who have not yet grown into their bodies. Many of them get taller and noticeably skinnier as they go through puberty, and that body image creates a negative impression on their fragile developing psyches. Young impressionable men do not realize that the period of being skinny and susceptible to bullying is a short one that they just need to bear through, and Charles Atlas looks to capitalize off of this fact.

In "Evolving Idelas of Male Body Image as Seen Through Action Toys," the tone switches from one of emasculating the audience to one of informing the audience how they are being manipulated by negative body images. In this case, the audience appears to be the parents of children who seek out to buy action figures. They use statistics of body size paradigms to show the gross change in proportions of popular toy brands that children gobble up to the extent that they remain popular for decades. The authors seek to connect negative body images from consumption of plastic toys with eating disorders in young adult males, though it is doubtful that such a logical connection can be made. Eating disorders are not a wholesale problem for young adult males, making the connection tenuous at best.

In the case of Charles Atlas' comic, he is a human being trying to make money off consumerism as everyone else is, and the fact that his article preaches that "YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is not enough for me to dismiss the article as trash. I understand the reasoning behind his method. He was at one time skinny and effeminate, and he made himself a successful alpha male through hard work and study, an attribute that could carry over into further success for those that read his book.

The other article seeks to blame toy action figures for eating disorders and other negative body images of young men by pleading with the parents of those men to look objectively at the toys they are buying. In this case, they fail miserably as no one in their right mind (ad hominem) would actually believe action figures influence anything outside of how children spend a few hours a day rather than watching television.

My parents never prevented me from reading, watching, or playing with anything. My favorite action figures growing up were GI Joe figures back before they grew to proportions that gave them masses equivalent to bodies floating in space capable of forcing orbits of smaller less massive bodies. While they were violent action pieces, I never grew up to be violent. While they had interesting clothing selections, I not once started dressing like them. The fact that they were expressionless and emotionless never inspired me to become a sociopath. The argument is weak at best, and outright propaganda at worst. My favorite cartoons were always my favorite action figures, and neither the cartoons nor the figures ever made me into some violent peon bent on assuaging my master's wishes. Expectations are realistic: blaming the expectations on toys is sophomoric.