Julie Wyman, left, and Olympic weightlifter Cheryl Haworth visit the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand, days after the World Championships in Chiang Mai, in September 2007. (Julie Wyman/courtesy photo)
Weightlifter documentary questions fit vs. fat theory
Excerpts from Strong!
Mass moves mass: In this excerpt from the unfinished documentary Strong!, Cheryl Haworth explains that, as a “super-heavyweight” weightlifter, it’s “better to be heavier.” The concepts are illustrated by July 2004 footage of Haworth training in Savannah, Ga. (Flash, 1:20 min)
By the time filmmaker Julie Wyman finishes her story on super-heavyweight lifter Cheryl Haworth, she will have experienced two Olympics and one world championship, and gained an appreciation for Team USA that she never could have predicted.
Plans call for submitting the hour-plus documentary (which has a working title of Strong!) at the world’s most prestigious film festivals — Sundance, Toronto, Berlin and Rotterdam — and getting the film onto television through a national network such as Showtime or PBS.
When you think of films that garner such attention, visions of millions of dollars and big film crews come to mind. But Wyman, as an assistant professor in the UC Davis Technocultural Studies Program, is mostly a one-woman documentary maker. As for funding, she depends on the kindness of foundations.
What is this full-length documentary about, and when will you finish?
I hope to finish sometime in the 2008-09 year — between December 2008 and June 2009. It is about Cheryl Haworth, the U.S.’ No. 1 weightlifter. She is actually ranked highest across men and women. That doesn’t mean she can lift more weight than men in the U.S., although she can lift more weight than most of them. It means on the world scale, when she compares to other women in her class, she’s ranked third or fourth in the world, which is a higher ranking than any other current U.S. weightlifter.
Cheryl is 24 now, almost 25, and she’s competed in the last two Olympics, and she’ll — knock on wood —compete in Beijing in 2008.
Thematically, this documentary is about having a body that doesn’t fit. It’s about a body that is at once totally triumphant and successful and yet, in the scope of what we think about as a healthy, beautiful athlete’s body, she is definitely outside the box. She is 300 pounds, and she’s 5-foot-9.
Cheryl’s way of challenging expectations about body image, strength, health and power is what drew me into the subject matter. There is another strand in the film that I have discovered by getting to know her. Representing the U.S. and being proud of being American connects to her size. I’m interested in seeing her body as a feminist icon and simultaneously as an icon of particular mode of American strength and power.
‘But my most general and important aim as a filmmaker is to allow people to experience their own physicality and see other people’s physicality in a more expansive way.’
Julie Wyman
How is Strong! different from your other films?
My films so far have not been expensive. Strong! is a huge step money-wise. I have to pay for licensing of Olympic footage, which is very, very expensive. Another difference is that there is a lot of international travel. I’ve been to Greece and Thailand. On these trips, I’m working all of the time, carrying gear through 90-degree heat. In Greece, it was just me. In Thailand, I hired a camera person for a few of the days, and in Beijing, I’ll bring my camera person. That’s the plan.
Did you have any intense experience making this documentary that affected you?
The most surprising thing in working with Cheryl is I’ve had moments of feeling patriotic. I wasn’t raised to play sports or cheer for teams, and I tend to keep a critical distance, especially in recent years, from any sense of pride about America. But because of my personal connection to Cheryl, I now find myself rooting for Team USA, checking the USA Weightlifting Web site and lurking on the weightlifting forums. When Cheryl’s team wins and they play the “Star Spangled Banner,” I respond with a sense of pride and excitement – which is a new and complicated sense of patriotism for me.
For Cheryl, her family and her community in Savannah, Ga., it is so important to do well for the team and the country. I see that is what her success means. But I also see her success from another point of view: as a triumph for large bodies.
As a filmmaker, how do you deal with your relationship with Cheryl?
One of the draws that has made me stick with this project so long is that there is a certain distance between Cheryl and me — and certain cultural differences between us. My previous films were essentially about my friends. I’ve always been at some level an insider to the community that I was documenting. In this case, I have the opportunity to see and understand a subject across the lines of cultural difference.
But, of course, as I’ve gotten to know Cheryl, we have become closer and, on certain levels, we have become friends. I think she’s enjoyed the process, and we genuinely enjoy each other as people. But it’s a specific type of friendship, founded, at least partly, on me filming her.
It is a relationship based on her trusting me to be in her life and to come into hard moments with a camera. She is giving something to me, and I am giving something to her by crafting her story and bringing a new perspective to it, which may or may not match the way that she sees herself.
For example, she doesn’t see herself as a hero to other large women. She doesn’t see herself as a feminist icon. During the course of my making this film, she’s matured. In 2004, she’d been recently honored as a “Woman of Courage” by the National Organization of Women, and she was a bit surprised by the fact that her athletic success would mean anything to anyone else.
Now, when she talks about what motivates her to be in the sport, she says, “If I can make a difference in the way that women’s sports are seen, if I can increase the visibility and emphasis that we place on women’s athletics, I want to do that. Women’s athletics are not treated equally to men’s.” She’s talking like a feminist, although she probably wouldn’t put it that way herself.
What is your aim for this documentary? Awards? Get tenure?
Right, those things would be good. But my most general and important aim as a filmmaker is to allow people to experience their own physicality and see other people’s physicality in a more expansive way. People generally see anything a few millimeters beyond the skeleton as extra and excessive to one’s ‘natural’ healthy body. I would like to challenge the audience’s assumptions about the usefulness of weight and mass, and to allow the audience to consider that a broader range of bodies can signify strength, beauty and power.