On the Yahoo News “most popular” page you can see the most e-mailed, most highly recommended, and most viewed recent news stories and photographs. I’ve been watching the photos Yahoo displays under these headings for some time now and it seems to me that there are three types of images that invariably populate each of the categories. (1) Women. (Currently it’s Aishwarya Rai and Selma Hayek but I’d bet, from my very unscientific research, that usually the woman is Carmen Electra.) (2) Animals. Usually young, and of the cute or weird variety.
It’s not decoration, though, that makes the category what it is. Some of what I’ll call the “excessive body” images depict people who have not made their body unusual by choice. Currently a photo of an 11 month old boy who weighs around 48 pounds is one of the “most e-mailed” photos. A hormone imbalance is suspected of causing his too rapid weight gain.
What all of the “most popular” photos indicate (including those of women and animals) is a fascination with the body, a fascination with looking at and thinking about the body. Photos of politicians, battles, even landscapes appear on the “most popular” page but are easily outnumbered by the body images.
What the “excessive body” images point to seems to be a fascination, and not I think with seeing the “freakish” or strange, but with seeing someone else push the limits of what we’d thought was physically possible, and with a body that is, after all, not so different from our own. That so many of those pictured have endured physical pain, great inconvenience, or a tremendous amount of discipline in order to create a body outside the normal adds to the fascination and pleasure available in these images.
Another example. Recently I came across this video. I love what this guy (the last one) can do with his body - seemingly melt it and rearrange it and then somehow stutter it (I can’t think of what else to call it) in a way that defies understanding. I also love the audience who take as much pleasure as I do in both his virtuoso performance and in seeing what his body can do. Even over what has to be at this point a dozen or more viewings, it hasn’t ceased to delight and exhilarate me.
(It’s so delightful and exhilarating, in fact, that I presented it to one of my classes yesterday at our last meeting. This is physically the lowest point of the semester - everyone is sick and exhausted. The video seemed a perfect way to share something wonderful with them, a perfect way to thank them for what was a very good class. The gift, such as it was, was excessive itself since break-dancing has absolutely no connection to our subject.)
The feeling of exhilaration (and it is – watching this guy move makes my heart beat faster) is the same one I experience watching the bullet-time sequences in The Matrix. The feeling reminds me of E Hayot's description of watching the NBA Slam Dunk Contest. The still images aren’t exhilarating in the same way, but they do seem to key into the same thing – a delight taken in merely seeing what the human body could possibly be or do, a body that we can recognize as one not so different from our own.
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