Game Of Arms: an almost unbearably tender insight into masculinity
|
Version 0 of 1. A man bends a frying pan with his bare hands. Four more lunks, wide as they are tall, swagger into an abandoned car park. A narrator rasps something about wars being waged. “I’ve lost houses, cars, women,” says one man who looks like a terrible genetic accident. “Is it worth it? Probably not. But I ain’t gonna quit doin’ it.” This is Game! Of! Arms! Ugh! Fuck yeah! Simply put, Game Of Arms (Thu, 8pm, Dave) follows two regional arm wrestling teams as they prepare for a big match. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is everything. Agricultural vehicles pull unnecessary wheelies, new scenes come at you every 15 seconds like blows to the jaw, and it’s all filmed in widescreen, just to fit the men into shot. Each of these men take arm wrestling very, very seriously. Mike Selearis, captain of New York City Arms Control, starts each day performing one-arm pull-ups off a joist in his basement. The thud of Mike’s head hitting off the ceiling reverberates through the house as his wife gets the kids ready for school. Mike is a strange figure. Fuelled on motivational tapes and whey powder, he has tiger stripes cut into his goatee and a good line in crazy eyes, designed to psych out his opponents good and proper. Mike is also a schoolteacher. “I’m the flame, and he’s gonna get thrown into the fire,” he gurns over a Bunsen burner while his pupils laugh nervously. “Let him burn, man. I’ve got no pity for this guy.” The guy Mike is going to burn is his nemesis, Kenny Hughes of the Sacramento Arm Benders. Kenny burst on to the scene as a teenager and went on to make arm wrestling history, by bending a lot of arms. Sixteen years and a vast quantity of beer later, Kenny carries with him a sad subtext of faded glory. Even Kenny’s pre-match ritual of releasing his dad Jed’s pigeons, which on closer inspection can’t fly properly, has more pathos than I can comfortably deal with. “They spin real fast backwards,” Jed explains, “Sometimes they’ll roll all the way and hit the ground. Obviously they’ll kill themselves if they hit the ground too hard.” The look of quiet, reflective horror that spreads across Jed’s face as he lets this little titbit linger is the single most chilling thing to be shown on television this year – and that includes Gregg Wallace dancing on Strictly. The unexpected thing about these men is how powerfully they’re in touch with their feelings. Popular myth would have you believe that inflated hulks are as empty inside as a lilo, but this lot are swirling with emotions. Take the giant vegan who relaxes with a little cry in the bath, or the Arm Benders’ Tom, whom Kenny describes as “an emotional trainwreck”. Cut to Tom on a mountainside tearfully vowing to “fulfil his life”. There’s another tender moment when Kenny’s teammates stage an intervention around a campfire to tell him he’s drinking too much. As it happens, Kenny just cracks open another beer and, come match day, is hanging like a dog but adamant he’s caught the flu. For this, Kenny will eternally have a place in my heart. From men brimming with so much masculinity it occasionally slops out of their tear ducts to someone I’d barely credit with the title of human, it’s Dapper Laughs On The Pull (Mon, 10.30pm, ITV2), wherein lad on tour and worst person alive Dapper Laughs helps someone get his leg over. Dapper Laughs, aka Daniel O’Reilly, found fame on Vine and quickly proved that even six seconds of this awful bastard are more than anyone needs to see. But it’s 2014, and TV makers will quite literally plumb the depths of humanity if it will generate a good social media response. And so we have Dapper Laughs saying minge a lot, openly laughing at his hapless charges, and generally parading about like the first horseman of the apocalypse under a flag that says “New media OI OI!”. I do have a solution, though. When the night is dark and the sky is clear, look to the stars and say a silent prayer that Kenny might put the can down, hop on a flight and put Dapper Laughs in an almighty, 60-year headlock. |