ENGAGING CULTURE

You can call this week the Summer doldrums. Unless you are a sex-crazed 40-year-old near menopausal woman or if you think people with bags over their heads are scary. The movie adaptation of the hit HBO series Sex and the City, and the all too cliche, alone in the woods, people are trying to kill me, horror movie, The Strangers are the two major releases this week. Clearly, nothing that I’m excited about. My advice, stay home and watch the three good Indiana Jones movies. However, if you are fortunate enough to live in LA (Los Angeles, not Lower Alabama) or New York, then you will get a chance to see the movie that will keep Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore from winning best documentary of the year. It’s called Bigger, Stronger, Faster: The Side Effects of Being American.

Christopher Bell’s intensely personal look at performance enhancing drug use among athletes attacks America’s obsession with the superlative from the other side. He focuses on his two steroid-pumping brothers, but this isn’t a Bell family home video. There is a well researched survey backed up with in your face interviews from all sides of the issue. I’m surprised that no one else has made Bigger, Stronger, Faster* in light of all the recent sports scandals.

Baseball record-breakers Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco as well as Olympian Marion Jones are only three of the many high-profile national heroes to recently admit to steroid use. But Bell’s interest in steroids go all the way back to his childhood when his role models such as Hulk Hogan and Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted to taking this route to their fame.

This leads Bell to ask some very personal and reflective questions including: Why should I feel guilty about using steroids when everybody else is doing it? I think it looks provocative and very interesting. I can’t wait till it comes to my neck of the woods or at the very least I’ll check it out on DVD.