HOUDINI, TARZAN, AND THE PERFECT MAN:
The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America
By John F Kasson
In his provocatively titled "Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America," social historian John F. Kasson finds the description of "a splendid specimen of manhood" in an early Edgar Rice Burroughs tale: "Standing a good two inches over six feet, [he was] broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of a trained fighting man. His features were regular and clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes were a steel gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled with fire and initiative." Not too much like you or me, perhaps, but if he sounds a bit like Mattel's Ken doll, it's for good reason: he's already the cookie-cutter version of today's manly man, as seen ubiquitously in comic books, fashion ads, television shows, and movies.
Kasson traces the 20th century American cultural obsession with bodily strength to the vaudeville days of the Prussian-born strongman Eugen Sandow, now barely remembered, but an icon of masculinity-the Schwarzenegger of his day-who performed feats of strength and paraded his near-naked body (the world wasn't yet quite ready for the penis to make its public appearance) for all to see. In Harry Houdini, the escape artist, Kasson finds the cultural metaphor also for man's struggle for freedom from the social constraints he suffers in the tedious rote of business and family life in the post-industrial world: in his spectacularly daredevil performances, Houdini-not unlike Rambo-went head to head with the indignities of imprisonment, bondage, even death, and came out invariably the winner. And in the fictional ape-man Tarzan, Kasson finds a reincarnation of the Romantic myth of the authentically wild Noble Savage, the alter ego of his creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs.
As a social critic, Kasson envisions the idealized white male body as a weapon in the field of class and racial warfare, caught in a quasi-Darwinian struggle for survival: "[I]mmensely strong, incomparably free, indomitably wild", the "real man" is fighting to salvage his true identity amidst the hostile ecology of modern, mechanized, technologized, and pluralistic American life. And in the age of "personal responsibility", the perfect body is now touted more than ever as a matter of choice: with the right combination of diet and exercise, the message reads, it is within the reach of even the most average of Joes.
Teddy Roosevelt, as Kasson reminds us, was the archetype: he "transformed his 'sickly, delicate,' asthmatic body into the two-hundred pound, muscular barrel-chested figure of a supremely strong and energetic leader." The lessons of Sandow, Houdini, and Tarzan are the same. Puniness is choice. We too can pump up and scare away the bogeyman who shames us, kicking sand in our face in front of our girlfriend at the beach. We too can participate in the ancient male ritual of preening and display to attract the female of our species. Or, to be exact, at a time of increasing openness about human sexuality, another male. Gay culture has led the way to a recognition of the role of pleasing bodily strength and fitness in the rituals of mating.
