I included that shot of "Janice" (Leah Ayres) waking up the morning after a night spent with "Frank Dux" (yes really that is Jean Claude's character's name in Bloodsport) to happily gaze upon his perfectly framed ass -- to get comfortable, take it all in -- because it brings me right back to being 11 and being forced to watch shitty action movies with my Dad, and these magic moments where it all seemed worthwhile. Janice is basically the only female character in Bloodsport, which is far more concerned with greasy half-naked rubbing on each other for other's men's eyes than it is with women and romance, but this moment of the female gaze inserted all of a sudden into its otherwise preoccupied self fascinates me.
The reason I was way into Jean-Claude's films was these moments are in every single one of his films -- more than Arnold or Sly (although they too had their moments) JCVD invited the viewer to luxuriate his physique; he liked the attention to be specifically sexual, whereas the other dudes (well Swayze excepted I guess, although Road House aside he didn't do a lot of Capital A Action Flicks) were mostly about being impressive walls of mass that bullets bounced off of. Jean-Claude bled, and Jean-Claude screwed, and we were all the better for it. (Bloodsport is on Amazon Prime.)
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All of this really resonates with me. I watched a lot of his movies too for the very same reason. Dude showed his ass in everything and had no problem getting objectified in little briefs or little shorts or little of anything.
I wonder if directors just naturally sensed to objectify him because he was also blatantly better looking than Stallone or Schwarzenegger. Sure, Stallone did porn and they both jacked, but neither were exactly sexy and they were so built their bodies became almost unsexual. Whereas JCVD never got that huge - he remained lithe and built at the same time and had a much more handsome face. Even if a male director would never consciously think "this guy is sexy," JCVD was just more sexual in general and so they seemed to gravitate toward that lensing.
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