I had seen clips of Magazine Dreams circulating around my timeline, but I hadn’t had time to watch it. Last night, I thought was the perfect time. I had had a vanilla day of doing a whole lot of nothing, except a trip to the gym (it was leg day :< ) and an iced matcha the size of a football. I thought, ‘I’ve been lifting for a while, it's almost mandatory I watch a movie on competitive bodybuilding.’
Safe to say I was not prepared for the intensity that followed me pressing play.
Magazine dreams follows the life of Killian Maddox, I bodybuilder with dreams of becoming an IFBB Pro Champion, who is considered to be the highest of awards that can be given to a bodybuilder. It is revealed early that Killian is incredibly shy, with most of his interactions with people ending in ‘sorry’.
Early in the film, we are greeted with what looks to be a sort of social worker, discussing a situation that happened, presumably in the past, where Killian was hospitalized. While being cared for in the hospital, Killian told the nurses that he would ‘split their skulls open and drink their brains like soup.’
When Killian's social worker asked him to explain why he was so violent towards the nurse, he replied,
‘I don’t like people touching me.’’
Though he might seem shy on the surface, it's revealed fairly quickly that Killian is no stranger to fits of rage. His emotions, coupled with his physique, were a clear sign to me that Killian wasn’t natural, and he was definitely on some sort of steroid. My suspicions were confirmed when Killian pulled out a needle and a vial of Trenbolone Acetate from a faded Space Invaders lunch box, not 10 minutes into the film. The directors wanted to show how obsessive Killian is over bodybuilding, from the use of steroids, to writing countless letters to his idols, and his room, which is covered in pictures of bodybuilders like Jay Cutler and Kevin Lerone. It's also clear that the directors wanted to illustrate the incredible emotional weight of this level of obsession by including scenes that illustrate Killian's heavy emotional consciousness. The most notable of these scenes is when he furiously vandalizes a paint store because the owners told him they refused to put a second coat of paint on his grandfather's house, whom he lives with.
With his hands bloody and death metal in his headphones, Killian proceeds to decimate the paint business's store, out of pure rage at the refusal to repaint his grandfather's house.
I have often heard people say that an obsession with a hobby is something good. The phrase, ‘find something you're obsessed over, and you’ll never work a day in your life,’ was often repeated to me in high school. While I would agree that obsessiveness over a hobby or interest is good, I don’t think people understand some of the ramifications that come with that obsessiveness.
It might be just me, but when I look at something I am obsessive about, for example, writing, I find that I enjoy doing it so much, but I also sometimes feel that my writing will never be enough. I will never reach my ultimate goal, because that goal keeps becoming more and more out of reach with each step I take. While I have come to accept that, I think a lot of people don’t expect something like this ( I am not trying to sound ‘holy-er than thou’, I'm a dumbass, and there is probably a lot of different side effects I haven't even conceived) to be such a large issue when the thing you love, and could do for the rest of your life, swallows your existence whole.
It is a gift and a curse; in reality, no one is ready for the consequences of obsession.