ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the freak as representing 'hardcore,' that is a particular model of practicing bodybuilding. Having become dominant in the culture from the 1980s onwards, hardcore intertwines and reconciles what may first appear as antithetical elements. On the one hand, the author traces an emphasis on willpower, discipline, sacrifice, and rationalization. On the other hand, the author looks at the bodybuilding freak in its emphasis on the physical and authentic experience. The chapter brings attention to the significance of the experience of the embodied practice in the present, in contrast to its much more frequently discussed aspects of deferred gratification. It tries to show how machinic and the animalistic elements inform a particular aesthetic of intensity that has become dominant in the culture. The chapter explores how the dominant approach to and experience of the embodied practice, marked by notions of seriousness and authenticity, allows for the articulation of a whole community of lifestyle around a common habitus.
