BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Spurlock Museum//Spurlock Museum Events//EN
X-WR-CALNAME:Spurlock Museum Events
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN  
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:America/Chicago
X-LIC-LOCATION:America/Chicago
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0600
TZOFFSETTO:-0500
TZNAME:CDT
DTSTART:19700308T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0500
TZOFFSETTO:-0600
TZNAME:CST
DTSTART:19701101T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
UID:spurlock-event-2517
SUMMARY;LANGUAGE=en-us:"Ebert Center Screening and Presentation: \"Pumping Iron\" and the Aestheticization of Politics"
DESCRIPTION:"\rThe 1977 classic documentary Pumping Iron catches a pre-fame Arnold Schwarzenegger and original Incredible Hulk Lou Ferrigno and many other colorful characters competing to be Mr. Universe 1975. If you like Love Lies Bleeding (Glass, 2024), sports documentaries, 1980s action movies, and Conan the Barbarian vs. the Hulk, Pumping Iron is for you. Free popcorn! Doors open at 6:30 p.m.\r\rIntroduction by Casey Ryan Kelly, Professor of Rhetoric & Public Culture, University of Nebraska.\r\rPumping Iron Trailer (YouTube) \r\rAbout the Topic\rPumping Iron (1977), a documentary about the 1975 Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe competitions, cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger as a household name and popularized the subcultural sport of bodybuilding. But, more recently, bodybuilding and extreme fitness have become central preoccupations for the contemporary digital far-right who valorize the golden-age bodybuilder aesthetic, diet, and lifestyle as the masculine embodiment of white nationalism. How was a quirky sporting subculture appropriated into far-right politics? Why does the far-right view bodies as indexes of national health and morality? Although neither bodybuilding nor the documentary share an inherent relationship with far-right politics, the 1977 film offers some clues as to how the superlatively capacitated male body lends itself to what Walter Benjamin called the “aestheticization of politics,” wherein democratic governance and civil society are supplanted by mythologizing visual spectacles of violence.  \r\rAbout the Presenter\rCasey Ryan Kelly is Professor of Rhetoric & Public Culture in the Department of Communication Studies. He is also Editor-Elect of the Quarterly Journal of Speech. He researches the political and cultural rhetoric of the U.S. far right, primarily through the lens of psychoanalytical theory. He has also published work on the rhetoric of white masculinity in film, television, and far right digital culture. He is author of five books including Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood (OSU Press, 2020), Caught on Tape: White Masculinity and Obscene Enjoyment (Oxford UP, 2023), and Manifesting Violence: White Terrorism, Digital Culture, and the Rhetoric of Replacement (coauthored with William Sipe, University of Alabama Press, 2025). He is current completing a book manuscript entitled Habeas Musculi: Muscularity, Fitness, and the Body Rhetorics of the Far Right which examines relationship between rhetorics of physical fitness, masculinity, and white nationalism. \r"
DTSTAMP:20260626T152359
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20241107T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20241107T210000
LOCATION:"Knight Auditorium\, Spurlock Museum\, 600 S. Gregory St.\, Urbana\, IL"
URL:https://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/events/event.php?ID=2517
END:VEVENT

END:VCALENDAR