Monday, September 15, 2014

The Canvas Stage

Professional wrestling is an assembly of blood, sweat, and dramatic flair: “a kind of gladiatorial theater in which showmanship counts for more than genuine athletic skill,” according to William Martin, writer of the article Friday Night in the Coliseum.  Most fans realize wrestling is fraudulent, which is what makes their response so interesting, Craven and Moseley write in Actors on the Canvas Stage.  The degree of understanding among fans may vary, but most willingly suspend their disbelief when watching wrestling.  Why?

Wrestling is a theatrical production, combining violence & dialogues, sweat & spandex, and real blood & fake tears.  “The emotional response which professional wrestlers seek to invoke in their audience… is significantly different from that experienced by other sports fans who want to see their favorite athlete or team win a contest” (Craven and Moseley, 332).  The “contest” wrestling fans come to see— take a grudge match, for example— is just the manifestation of the drama swirling below the surface that erupted into that moment in the ring.  Months of fighting, yelling, name-calling, and general uncouthness may have led to the match that sold out every seat.  It’s not simply two men’s physical strengths that are pitted against each other; this match is “the eternal conflict of good versus evil personified in the physical struggle for dominance.”  They yearn for some kind of poetic justice that doesn’t always come to fruition in everyday life.  The fans come to watch the drama, “the Portrayal of Life;” the actual wrestling is just the means (Not that a wrestling match is uninteresting in itself, but the larger context of the drama makes every move more significant).  Like the motto displayed in Houston promoter Paul Boesch’s office says, professional wrestling is “the sport that gives you your money’s worth.”

3 comments:

Sam Ford said...

Here, you definitely have the entertainment value as a main focus. Let's go back to the charge of the Gold Dust Trio in the 20s and 30s...to make wrestling entertaining again, for people who tired of long matches that stretched on, cards that may be uneven or not regularly promoted, etc. The idea of having a "card" of multiple matches, with a main event, etc., was new...and all was focused on "giving people their money's worth," as Ole Anderson and others have talked about...

You can start to see how "the point" of wrestling can shift if we're studying it as drama, as semiotics, as folk object, as anthropological study of the wrestlers or of the fans, as history, or as contemporary cultural text...

Gary said...

Studying and watching wrestling as we are doing has given me an entirely new perspective of the art and drama. I tend to study it more from a folklore point of view lately and it is extremely interesting.

You have all the classic, shared connections of folk groups, the high context workers group with their own esoteric communication among themselves and their transmission to the fans or public, the owner's / manager group, the fan / mark group which is exoteric, not knowing the language of the other groups. Like all folklore all the groups are constantly changing, being modified as to their group culture. You also have all this being passed on to newer generations, yet retaining or modifying existing wrestling culture in all three basic genres, verbally, contextually, and materially. There are objects such as belts, different cultures are portrayed by different wrestlers, rituals, etc; I could go on for ever. It is just fascinating.

Sam Ford said...

Absolutely. And, as far as I know, there hasn't been much work on pro wrestling from a folk studies standpoint since that 1970s work we looked at in class a couple of weeks ago. One fascinating thing is how the "industry" changes as the external audience--the fan--gets "exposed to the business," and starts to--themselves--adopt the terminology that once belonged only to "the boys" in how they analyze and talk about the drama, the in-ring performances, etc.