It’s gotta be the intro (before the credits) to “Red Heat” with Arnold:
You know, it’s the movie with Arnold as a Russian police guy and Jim Belushi as the comic relief sidekick (and Chicago cop).
The scene I’m talking about is at the beginning of the movie, when Arnold enters a gym/sauna parlor in Moscow looking for a gangster and has a fight with the tough guys. It has, like, all the symbols of the testosterone mentality and physique:
- muscular hypertrophy (well duh)
- sex drive (a lot of naked, good looking chicks hanging around)
- high tolerance to pain and trauma (Arnold’s character squeezes a hot piece of rock, freshly pulled out of fire, with bare hands)
- diminished sense of danger, extreme courage (Arnold’s character essentially walks into the gangsters’ lair naked)
- agression, conquest and domination
There are also all sorts of secondary symbols such as fire, weight training gear, etc.
I’m not sure how much of all that was consciously put into the script, but anyway the whole scene is like a textbook example for T psychology.
Any other movie scenes like that that you can mention??
