Brock Lesnar is Going Down- A Performative Critique of a So-called Ultimate Fighter (original) (raw)
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This is version 1 of a paper written for the workshop Masculinities and Martial Sports: East, West and Global South Workshop, organised by Professor Kay Schiller, Institute of Advanced Study, University of Durham, 6-7 December 2018. I welcome comments by email (BowmanP@cardiff.ac.uk), as I hope to develop this into a chapter for publication
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In this paper we make use of inclusive masculinity theory to explore online media representations of male homosexuality and masculinity within the increasingly popular combat sport of mixed martial arts (MMA). Adopting a case-study approach, we discuss narratives constructed around one aspirational male MMA fighter, Dakota Cochrane, whose history of having participated in gay pornography became a major talking point on a number of MMA discussion/community websites during early 2012. While these narratives attempted to discursively ‘rescue’ Cochrane’s supposedly threatened masculinity, highlighting both his ‘true’ heterosexuality and his prodigious fighting abilities, they also simultaneously celebrated the acceptance of homosexual men within the sport which Cochrane’s case implied. Thus, we suggest that these media representations of homosexuality and masculinity within MMA are indicative of declining cultural homophobia and homohysteria, and an inclusive vision of masculinity, as previously described by proponents of inclusive masculinity theory.
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Considerable attention has been paid to the experiences of pain and injury in the sociology of sport literature. In this vein, this paper probes the experience of pain and injury as it pertains to masculinities. This paper documents the specific ways that, on the one hand, athletes conform to masculine ideals through attempts to assume ideal states of embodiment and withstanding pain associated with participation in sport, while on the other hand, through debilitating bodily injury, athletes actually fail to materialise masculine ideals associated with participation in sport. Drawing from an ethnography of mixed martial arts (MMA), this article documents the embodied experiences of pain and injury among MMA fighters. Based on 45 interviews with professional and amateur MMA fighters as well as field notes, this article elucidates the ways fighters interpret their bodily injuries, how this impacts upon masculine identities, and how injuries affect their conformance to the normative masculinity of MMA. This paper focuses on the narratives of despair and loss as it pertains to particular moments in the careers of MMA fighters.
Canadian Review of American Studies, 2019
Beginning from the premise (vis-à-vis wrestler-turned-scholar Laurence de Garis) that professional wrestling scholarship has historically overlooked the embodied, physical dimension of the form in favour of its drama, and reflecting on a series of professional wrestling story-lines that have blurred the lines between staged performance (“kayfabe”) and reality, this article suggests that the business of professional wrestling offers a vivid case study for the rise and dissemination of what political theorist Wendy Brown calls neo-liberal rationality: the dissemination of the market model to every aspect and activity of human life. Drawing on Brown’s work, the language of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) contracts, and professional wrestling’s territorial history, this article argues that contemporary story-lines in professional wrestling rationalize, economize, and trivialize the form’s very real violent labour, even rendering audiences complicit in said violence—while serving also as a potent vehicle for understanding the metaphorical (and sometimes literal) violence of neo-liberal rationality more broadly.
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From 2002 to 2004, Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward fought three boxing matches. The Ward—Gatti bouts produced a discourse that was never monolithic and oftentimes contradictory, yet many fight fans and journalists asserted that the match-ups hearkened back to a time when “White-ethnic” fighters ruled the ring. The manner in which these contests captured the imagination of even casual boxing fans revealed how modern conversations about race and masculinity operated not only within boxing circles but in American society as well. Though some critics charged that the fights were excessively violent, most boxing fans saw the contests as fantastic theater and urged the sport’s authorities to reward the pugilists. For White fans, the “vanilla thrillas” provided symbolic affirmations of collective masculinity that simultaneously indicated lingering racial resentments.
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