Wrestling and Cinema, 1892-1911 (original) (raw)
Related papers
(Arm) Wrestling with Masculinity: Television, Toughness, and the Touch of Another Man’s Hand
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For decades, dating back to the medium’s origins as a commercially viable form of mass communication in the postwar years, US television programs have contributed to the many paradoxes of masculinity, revealing but also obscuring the normativizing function of cultural representations through the use of generic encoding and the compositional “logic” of male (visual) dominance. One visual motif in particular—the shot of two men sitting at a table, their hands temporarily locked as part of an arm wrestling contest—is noteworthy, given the frequency of its recurrence in a variety of fictional programming (All in the Family, The Odd Couple, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, etc.) as well as for its literal staging of masculinity as spectacle, as an object of spectatorial contemplation vis-à-vis the televisual construction of “toughness” as an inherently male attribute. If television and toughness can be said to go “hand in hand,” then the actual sight of two men joined together in a physical contest hints at the idea that intimacy is at much a part of such ritualized representations as intimidation is. Indeed, what several of the episodes discussed in this article (selected from representative television programs of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s) reveal is that a man is sometimes at his most unguarded—his most forthcoming and honest—when seated opposite another man during an arm wrestling match, a moment that is deserving of consideration as a symptomatic illustration of masculinity’s paradoxes. Inspired by the early writings of Roland Barthes, in particular the French philosopher’s essay “The World of Wrestling” (published as part of his 1957 book Mythologies), I ultimately hope to reveal how seemingly innocuous images are “invested with ideological meanings,” unwittingly revealing what they often seek to conceal.
The Awesome Ordinary: Notes of Pro Wrestling
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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,
The Spectacle of Excess: Aestheticism in American Professional Wrestling
2021
All art is quite useless," declares Oscar Wilde at the end of the audacious preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, and this essay is no exception (Dorian 1). Ideally, it will be mutually transformative, as Walter Pater believed the relationship between art and critic should be. The writings of aestheticism, especially Wilde's "Decay of Lying" and Pater's Conclusion to The Renaissance, illuminate certain truths about professional wrestling, and vice versa.
Sport in History, 2001
One of the formerly major spectator sports which has been relatively and surprisingly neglected in British sports historiography is wrestling, a sport with many varieties. These include its 'all-in' dramatic entertainment form, with its good guy 'faces' such as Danny 'Boy' Collins or Billy Two Rivers, and 'heel' baddies like Mick McManus or Hulk Hogan, found in spectator contexts from British city halls to the more mediated and Americanised events regularly broadcast on both satellite and terrestrial television. They also include the freestyle and Graeco-Roman styles of those more amateur British clubs aiming at Olympic representation, and the exotic subtleties of regional variations. These range from 'traditional' Cornish wrestling to ethnic varieties such as Sikh and Indian wrestling in the Midlands or Turkish wrestling in London. Globally there is huge interest in wrestling, especially in the USA where it is a major commercial entertainment form, attracting larger TV audiences than professional American football.
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.
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.