ABSTRACT
This chapter completes the author's discussion of how the dominant bodybuilding culture of the past 40 years operates and is understood from the inside. The chapter focuses on the spectacle of freaky built bodies as a commodified cultural form. By exploring how it is defined and promoted, the author discusses how the spectacle of the freaky body is made possible and gets reproduced at the level of meaning and practical organization. The chapter examines how the alignment of extreme bodybuilding with a corporate entertainment industry paradigm is reflected in the adoption of a particular business model. Situating the author's discussion in terms of critical moments both inside and outside bodybuilding culture, he first examines competing spectacles of the built body by contrasting 'natural,' i.e., drug-free, bodybuilding with its dominant, chemically assisted counterpart. The chapter then looks at variations inside the dominant model by thinking through forms of institutional 'engineering' of the spectacle and how these have been received.
