Stuart Rosenburg's "Cool Hand Luke"

 

This movie about a prison chain gang shows the cruel irony of life as seen from Luke, a man who ends up arrested for drunkenly cutting the heads off of parking meters.  Again and again Luke proves to be a man who refuses to give up, and at multiple points the cinematography compares him to Christ.  For example: when Luke eats 50 eggs for a bet and collapses afterward, he is hailed as a hero and then left on the table, nigh comatose from over-eating.  His position almost exactly mirrors that of Christ on the cross: arms outstretched, legs straight with one foot over the other, and his body clothed in nothing more than a white garment to cover him.  He sacrificed his dignity to give his comrades a chance to enjoy themselves for a moment in their bleak lives.

 

 Comparisons continue when he escapes the prion for the third time, finding himself in a church in a thunderstorm.  He calls for God to answer him and show him why he was made the way he was, but he gets no reply beyond the police finding his hideout.  When his friend encourages him to give up, he simply refuses and accepts his fate as a man who goes against the grain.  When he opens a window to face the police and calls out the famous line, "What we've got here is a failure to communicate."  He's gunned down, and dies slowly for his peaceful rebellion.

Robert Mapplethorpe's "Ajitto"

Mapplethorpe's photograph, Ajitto, shows a different – but no less artistic – depiction of the male form than Arnold Shwarznegger.  The image depicts a black man sitting on what appears to be a covered stool or pedestal, curled in the fetal position with his head resting on his knees.  His arms hold his knees close to his nude form, and we cannot see his face.  Nonetheless, it is apparent that the man is handsome and well-built with strong arms and legs.  The photo is a mixture of blacks and grays, and the lighting is what gives the image its depth.  Light shines off of the man's muscles, and the smooth shine of his skin contrasts with the fuzziness of his hair and the cloth texture of the fabric beneath his body.  On an unrelated note: the shape of the body and pedestal remind me of a tulip photograph that Mapplethorpe took, with the petals closed tightly and the flower standing straight against a plain backdrop.

 

The man in Ajitto is placed on a pedestal, which would normally imply a positive thing, but he is hiding himself as much as possible in this submissive pose.  Does this mean the man is ashamed of being objectified?  If so, is Mapplethorpe really trying to capture the struggle and objectification of black people during the time of slavery?  Though the man's body is beautiful, he hides it from the world as he sits upon a pedestal, aware of how he is being stared at as an object instead of a person.  The audience then may realize how shaming slavery was for black people and how they suffered from the popular view that they were little more than property to be displayed or put on a pedestal for viewing.  

Whereas the white body of Shwartznegger would have been seen as admirable, masculine, and dominant during the time of slavery or unequal rights for black people, the man in Ajitto would be viewed more as an object to be owned than a person showing off their body type.  Though I do not think Mapplethorpe was racist, I believe he was aware of racist undertones and depicted them well if one juxtaposed the two images.  Not only that, but he aptly showed that the bodies of both races were beautiful, despite their differences.  He was attracted to the male body, thus he photographed it in all its glory.  Yet, he did not forget the people inside the bodies and the situations that affected the individual as well as a race as a whole.  

Robert Mapplethorpe's "Arnold Shwarznegger"

Robert Mapplethorpe, a photographer in the late 60's and early 70's photographed the nude and partially nude bodies of men in a way that emphasized the beauty of the male form.  This could not be called the “female gaze” precisely because the photographer was male and not intending to reach a female audience in particular.  Instead, Mapplethorpe seems to apply the male gaze to other males, admiring their bodies with the same kind of reverence and fascination that heterosexual men do with women.  This is consistent with the knowledge that Mapplethorpe was homosexual and was attracted to the male body.

This photo, Arnold Shwartznegger shows the then-bodybuilder posing for the camera in a Speedo, his arms flexing behind him as he shows off the musculature of his legs, chest, arms and abdomen.  The light accents the lines of the muscles showing through his skin, and though the audience can tell he is posing, Shwartznegger's body is not too stiff as he looks at the camera calmly.  The white wall behind him shows the shadows on his body and highlights the contours, posing a contrast to the darker curtains on the left and the wood floor beneath his feet.

One could argue that this image is an erotic one, as Shwartznegger's body is pleasing to the eye and his pose is similar to that of male models, yet his expression does not seem seductive: he stares calmly and confidently into the camera. I would argue that the image calls back to roman sculptures of virile men like Lacoon and His Sons.  Though Shwartznegger's body is the focus, by including the curtain and keeping him out of the center of the photo, I believe Mapplethorpe was showing how the bodybuilder's form could be compared to the curtain with its gentle creases similar to the shadows on Shwartznegger's muscles.  The bodybuilder should be viewed as the epitome of masculinity, a callback to the Greco-Roman sculptures of the past.