Tales of Cin­e­ma No. 1 – Chris Hemsworth’s Abs

Inspired by Miguel Gomes’ tac­tic of sto­ry col­lect­ing for Ara­bi­an Nights, we set out in search of off-the-beat­en-path true tales in the hope of glimps­ing the soul of cin­e­ma today. These are sto­ries of obses­sion, acci­dents, gam­bles and mortality…

Chris Hemsworth’s abs: out of habit, we would call Chris Hemsworth’s abs a ​“six-pack,” but in fact, I count eight dis­tinct mus­cle bel­lies with­in the sin­gle rec­tus abdo­min­is mus­cles, as in a med­ical text­book. They pro­trude from his tor­so like the lumps on a rub­ber suit worn by an old Doc­tor Who alien. The lin­ea alba, the north-south seam sep­a­rat­ing the two ab stacks, is prob­a­bly deep enough to chan­nel liq­uid, were Chris Hemsworth to ever pour an entire bot­tle of water onto his bare chest while shak­ing the sweat from his locks.

The top lay­er of artic­u­lat­ed abs make a sort of invert­ed V, almost in the shad­ow of Chris Hemsworth’s pecs. The sec­ond row appears to be the largest, each rough­ly the size of the back of one of Chris Hemsworth’s hands – which are very large. The third row of mus­cles are more round­ed, their bot­tom bor­ders curl­ing out from his bel­ly but­ton in more of a W pat­tern. Chris Hemsworth’s rec­tus abdo­min­is becomes pro­gres­sive­ly nar­row­er, read­ing top to bot­tom, like an arrow­head point­ing at Chris Hemsworth’s groin.

Ques­tion: how does any­one have enough time to main­tain that mus­cu­la­ture and an affa­ble social-media pres­ence? I guess if you post sta­tus updates between sets? I guess we’d all have enough time, if we had enough mon­ey. The arti­cle ​“Chris Hemsworth’s God-Like Thor Work­out,” in ​‘Mus­cle & Fit­ness’ mag­a­zine, describes a five-day cir­cuit (plus bonus ab cir­cuit) encom­pass­ing dai­ly sets and super-sets of body-weight and weight-train­ing exer­cis­es designed by a for­mer Navy SEAL. The arti­cle makes no men­tion of car­dio, but I assume Chris Hemsworth does some car­dio. Cardio’s impor­tant. Does Chris Hemsworth read? Maybe he lis­tens to audio­books on his iPhone, from which he can also tweet, and text his friends, the ones who maybe are at the office, or at Hap­py Hour, or read­ing. I assume not all his friends have abs like his. But maybe they do. He’s Aus­tralian, and enjoys surf­ing, Muay Thai, moun­tain bik­ing, or so I am led to believe by a GQ arti­cle enti­tled, ​‘Meet the Man­li­est Man in Hollywood.’

As Thor, on Sat­ur­day Night Live, and dur­ing his cameo in the 2015 com­e­dy Vaca­tion, Chris Hemsworth dis­plays a blithe, hunky humour and aware­ness of his good for­tune. The gim­mick of Thor is that he is not a super­hero but an actu­al God; a bit of self-dep­re­ca­tion is called for, both on-screen and off. The Man­li­est Man in Hol­ly­wood shows the GQ reporter a scar earned when he acci­den­tal­ly stabbed him­self as a small child, while snorkelling and try­ing to catch a fish. He was excel­lent in The Cab­in in the Woods as an arti­fi­cial­ly pumped-up movie-movie jock arche­type who dies hor­ri­bly and unheroical­ly. Did you know he was on the Aus­tralian ver­sion of ​‘Danc­ing with the Stars’? He’s the one who brought it up.

The first atti­tude that Chris Hemsworth’s abs present: oth­er­world­li­ness, beau­ty, Ide­al­ism in the orig­i­nal sense of clas­si­cal phi­los­o­phy, of a true divine form made mirac­u­lous­ly man­i­fest in human flesh. This is intim­i­dat­ing. The sec­ond atti­tude that Chris Hemsworth’s abs present is marked­ly less intim­i­dat­ing, but it fol­lows direct­ly from the first: com­pli­ance. Because, sure, God made Chris Hemsworth in His own image, fine. But who made God? Of Michelan­ge­lo and David, who is more pow­er­ful? Of Thor and Mar­vel Studios?

That a young actor might be simul­ta­ne­ous­ly super­hu­man and sub­mis­sive is, of course, not news to any female per­former in the his­to­ry of the arts. But among this gen­er­a­tion of male movie stars, Chris Hemsworth is not atyp­i­cal in his will­ing­ness to play along, to dis­play a per­fect self-aware­ness to go along with his per­fect physique. On YouTube is a video of Ryan Gosling smil­ing sheep­ish­ly, win­ning­ly (dream­i­ly!) as he accedes to an online video-news outlet’s request to read aloud from var­i­ous fan memes asso­ci­at­ing him with var­i­ous fem­i­nism-adja­cent atti­tudes; Ryan Gosling also has neg­a­tive body fat. The entire run of the sit­com 30 Rock offered up a parade of male guest stars – James Fran­co, James Mars­den, Matt Damon, Jon Hamm – all eager to offer a time-lapse mim­ic­ry of Alec Baldwin’s inex­orable tran­si­tion from Jack Ryan, the steely blue-eyed hero of The Hunt for Red Octo­ber, to Jack Don­aghy, the sitcom’s steely blue-eyed tele­vi­sion and kitchen-appli­ance executive.

There are sev­en bil­lion peo­ple on earth, and sev­er­al bil­lion social media users. We think of every­thing, col­lec­tive­ly if not indi­vid­u­al­ly. We can inter­act with our idols, call­ing out bad behav­iours and demand­ing recog­ni­tion for good atti­tudes and good caus­es, giv­ing very de nite ver­bal cues to the machin­ery of celebri­ty jour­nal­ism and pub­lic­i­ty – not just con­sumers but work­ers seiz­ing the means of pro­duc­tion from the old stu­dio-sys­tem titans. Our celebri­ties are crowd­sourced, fea­tur­ing every cus­tomi­sa­tion we can think of. It’s impos­si­ble to be as well-read and well-informed as the aggre­gate of your social- media feed. But Chris Hemsworth is an aggre­gat­ed person.

The stars of Gold­en Age Hol­ly­wood were gods, too, but awed, quirky gods: nary a Zeus among them, but a deca­dent Diony­sus (Clark Gable), a spry Her­mes (Fred Astaire), a shuf­fling Hep­haes­tus (Jim­my Stew­art). Any­one can do a fun­ny Jim­my Stew­art imper­son­ation. How can you imi­tate Chris Hemsworth with­out first embark­ing on sev­er­al cycles of his god-Like Thor Workout?