ABSTRACT
Pumping Iron (Butler and Flore, 1977) and Pumping Iron II: The Women (Butler, 1984), two documentaries about bodybuilding contests, provide an ideal opportunity to look at the relationships operating between body, desire, and power in the United States today. 1 Taken as a pair, these films are a veritable melting pot of sex, sexuality, race, and sales. Intentionally and unintentionally, they reveal how the visible differences of sex (to have or have not) and race (to be or not to be) mesh with ideology and economy in contemporary American society, and within film fictions. In both films sexuality is adroitly linked with sex and race at the expense of any reference to history or class. The body is marketed as a commodity in its own right, not just as the silent support for the sale of other commodities.
