We often hear that it is not easy to get boys to talk. Those on which Jérémie Battaglia focuses his camera, mirrored cabinets around 20 years old, correspond exactly to the cliché of the guy who doesn’t speak. They open up to him. What they say in his documentary Adonis is sometimes very worrying.
The role models we present to boys and men have changed radically in recent decades. If skinny Mick Jagger could have been a sex symbol in the 1960s, now every Hollywood actor flaunts ripped muscles, even if he’s playing the romantic love interest in a film like La La Land. The masculine ideal that the young men interviewed by director Jérémie Battaglia aim for in Adonis is, however, of another order. They are real Mr. Muscles for whom training is an extreme sport.
An extreme and dangerous sport.
Le documentariste lève en effet le voile sur ce qu’il décrit comme une crise de santé publique qui passe complètement sous le radar. Il parle d’un système nourri par les réseaux sociaux qui encourage l’utilisation de stéroïdes anabolisants, sans aucune supervision, par des culturistes amateurs.
Ce qu’il montre dans Adonis, c’est – ni plus ni moins – un marché ouvert des produits dopants… pourtant interdits à la vente au Canada. Des substances que bien des jeunes adeptes d’entraînements utilisent « au péril de leur santé », constate le réalisateur. Et avec une lucidité qui glace le sang : tous les jeunes hommes qui parlent de stéroïdes dans son film savent que ces produits sont dangereux pour la santé et plusieurs envisagent quand même d’en prendre. L’un d’eux dit même préférer mourir à 50 ans en faisant ce qu’il aime qu’à 80 ans en s’en privant…
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, LA PRESSE
Inquiet pour les jeunes adeptes du culturisme, Jérémie Battaglia a voulu avec son film Adonis mettre au jour le recours répandu et l’accès facile aux stéroïdes.
Il y a une sorte de désinformation qui est mise en place par des hommes que je qualifierais de prédateurs. Ces influenceurs fitness vont véhiculer l’idée que les effets secondaires [des produits dopants] are controllable.
Jérémie Battaglia, director
“There is sometimes some truth in what is said, but they only show the good side, they do not show the long-term impact it had on their health,” indicates Jérémie Battaglia.
Areas of influence
Adonis also deciphers the way in which some young men are sucked into the vortex of an unhealthy form of training. Interest in bodybuilding can quickly lead to a corner of the internet populated by influencers who play coachdrug dealers and masculinist ideologues like Andrew Tate, known for his misogynistic speech and now accused of rape and human trafficking.
EXTERIOR DAY PHOTO, PROVIDED BY PRODUCTION
Social networks play an accelerating role in the trajectory towards the harmful side of training, according to director Jérémie Battaglia.
It only takes “a few clicks” for an algorithm to identify a young person’s interest in bodybuilding and expose them to content that Jérémie Battaglia associates with “brainwashing”. “We tell you that, in life, you have to be muscular like this and that, to get there, you have to eat this, train like this and take this product and, what’s more, on social networks, we even go get it for yourself, he insists. All this on Instagram, with complete indifference! »
The director is also training. He admits in his film that he even suffered from an eating disorder when he was younger due to his obsession with training.
I’m 40 years old and I say to myself “if I was their age, what would I have done?” It breaks my heart that this is not taken more seriously by the authorities.
Jérémie Battaglia, director
Which gives a lot of strength to Adonis, it is the simplicity with which the young men confide in Jérémie Battaglia’s camera. Everyone talks to him about their aspirations, but also about their flaws. Everyone has a wound within them that makes them want to be muscular, perceived as strong, attractive, confident or even threatening.
“I myself was surprised by the ease with which they gave in, to be honest,” admits the director, who did not hesitate to share his own experience with his interviewees. I think that with boys in general, we rarely take the time to ask them how they are, to really listen to them. They have a lot to say, actually. »
Wednesday, 9 p.m., on Télé-Québec
From 14 years old
Sonia* has seen the recruitment process in the world of bodybuilding up close. His son (who does not appear in Adonis) was 14 when he started training. “I started doing push-ups in my room, several times a day,” says the teenager who is almost 16 years old today. I liked the effect it had on my body. »
His mother was surprised by this sudden interest, far from the family world. She was even more so when her son mentioned steroids and the “not so bad” comments of a certain Andrew Tate. Rather than object, she dialogued with him and became interested in his new passion. “Victor* has always had a strong critical sense,” she says.
No, the teenager has never taken doping products (“I am too well informed to judge that it is a reasonable idea,” he says), but admits to appreciating the “respect” shown to him at the time. school since it became more built. A nice change for a boy who experienced bullying.
Training quickly became his world (he even became an “influencer” in his field), but Victor keeps a distance from the “alpha male” speeches and the “bodybuilding culture” which he finds “ridiculous” . “Just because I work out doesn’t mean I have to make it my personality,” the teen says.
*Fictitious names to protect their anonymity.