Professional Wrestling Scholarship: Legitimacy and Kayfabe (original) (raw)
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2018
Chapter 1. Literature Review (Part 1) A History of Professional Wrestling and Wrestling Academia Chapter 2. Literature Review (Part 2) Stars, Celebrities and Audiences Chapter 3. Methodology Chapter 4. Results Overview Chapter 5. The Wrestling Industry and Star System Chapter 6. Inauthenticity versus Authenticity The Multiple Modes of 'Authenticity' in Professional Wrestling Chapter 7. Memories, Nostalgia and Identities in Audience Responses to Wrestling Stars Conclusion Appendix Bibliography The 1990s McMahon then shifted attention from the national to the international market. In the early 1990s, he took advantage of the new Sky satellite system in the UK to compete with British wrestling. 1 Under Prime Minister, Margret Thatcher and her free market policies, the landscape of British television shifted from a public service to a market driven industry. The result of this, was BskyB emerging as the major provider of satellite services in the UK in the 1990s to challenge the traditional national services of the BBC and ITV (Hilmes, p.59). McMahon took advantage of these changes to undercut the British Joint Promotions, who had recently lost their slot on ITV, by offering Sky recorded content at a lower price than the British organisation could offer for new content (Litherland, 2012, p.588). The higher production values and faster paced action of the high-profit entertainment company also made the British product look stale and outdated. Complacent and unready for competition, Joint Promotions was overwhelmed and WWE came to dominate wrestling for British audiences (Litherland, 2012). International success came at an opportune moment, as the early 1990s was a difficult time for WWE in the American market. In 1993, WWE was hit by scandal, including allegations of sexual harassment, a negative media backlash to its portrayal of Iraq during the Gulf War, and McMahon facing trial for distributing illegal steroids to his wrestlers. Despite being acquitted, the negative publicity and lack of creative attention given to his product led to a significant slump in audience numbers and profit. The door was open for his competitors to take advantage. By the end of the 1980s, the rights to Georgia Championship wrestling, which had been renamed World Championship Wrestling (WCW), had been acquired from McMahon by the 1 The exhibition history of the WWE within Britain is of particular significance to this project with the majority of my research respondents coming from the UK.
The Awesome Ordinary: Notes of Pro Wrestling
CAPACIOUS JOURNAL FOR EMERGING AFFECT INQUIRY, 2017
This article offers a critical, idiosyncratic take on the staging of sincerity in pro wrestling. It engages this popular cultural product as an athletic performance event, with the intention of highlighting the affective underpinnings of fans' interest in and connection with the medium. Specifically, it is argued here that the lack of legitimate competition in wrestling allows for images,
American Professional Wrestling: Evolution, Content, and Popular Appeal
Sociological Spectrum, 2005
Over the past several years, professional wrestling, now referred to as sports entertainment, has become a hugely popular cultural phenomenon. There are several reasons to account for why tens of millions of Americans are attracted to this form of entertainment, but this article centers attention on three allures that stand out: excitement, intrigue, and political incorrectness. Content analysis suggests that these three foci form the core of pro wrestling program content. The present paper identifies the macrosocial forces that explain sociologically why these themes are especially marketable today: community breakdown, social disenchantment, and political correctness.
Book Review for Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage
Popular Culture Studies Journal, 2022
For a long time, critics and scholars have debated whether professional wrestling can be classified as theatre, sports, or something else entirely. Eero Laine's book Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage acknowledges professional wrestling's peculiarity and examines its position in a stage of commercial interest. I observe that the book's title has a double meaning, as Laine not only examines professional wrestling in relation to commercial theatre (the "stage") but also considers it as a part of a global "stage" of transactions and monetization. The book is broken into five main chapters, each analyzing the relationship of theatre and professional wrestling under a different topic. Laine starts with his claim that professional wrestling is undeniably a form of theatre and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is a transnational theatre company (2-4). He then briefly traces professional wrestling's history and highlighting its carnival roots (18), but, more importantly, he acknowledges a major opposition between theatre and professional wrestling: in professional wrestling, the performers purposely enforce the idea that what they do is real (18-9). This idea is supported by a very interesting point that appears early in the book, when Laine refers to Michael Shayne Boyle's work of examining theatre through a Marxist lens and attempts to do the same for professional wrestling, as he considers both as forms of labor that lead to intangible productivity (22). From the start, the book delves into the issues that arise from the intersection of labor and spectacle in the world of pro wrestling. Also, Laine remembers to address the issues raised by so-called "hardcore" wrestling, remarking that labor is present even in the most (seemingly) barbaric aspects of professional wrestling. Laine explains that professional wrestling characters are unable to rid themselves of their past, as previous behaviors are carried throughout their legacy (39). While exploring these behaviors, he locates some particularly negative ones, such as sexism and hyper-masculinity, and he argues that professional wrestling can do better. He then compares two theater plays, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity and Trafford Tanzi, both featuring professional wrestling elements, to further elucidate the connection of theatre and professional wrestling and to emphasize professional wrestling's potential for social critique. In addition, the book makes some solid points on how the fabrication of kayfabe (maintaining the illusion that professional wrestling is real) has permeated various aspects of profit-making in contemporary society (32). Apart from similarities between commercial theatre and professional wrestling, Laine also delves into a major difference, that of branding likeness. According to Laine, a theatrical character can be portrayed by numerous actors, whereas in
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.