Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Playing the "Fan" Role

I really enjoyed reading Sam's piece on the fans of wrestling (if I say it was my favorite, will I get extra credit?).  In the "Fans as Community" section,
I found it amusing that many of the fans felt that they needed to play their role in the performance for the benefit of those "true believers" in the audience, especially when all who were interviewed believed the show was not a true sporting event.  I suppose, though, that if there were smaller children in the audience, the argument could be more valid because children are more likely to believe what they see is real, or at least seem to need protection for their beliefs (like how parents seem to perpetuate the existence of Santa Claus for their kids, even after the kids probably realize that a jolly fan man doesn't sneak into their homes every year to deliver presents).  After all, all the participants in the survey were over the age of eighteen.

I wish that the author (heh) had gone into more detail about what happens when the fans don't cooperate.  This is a pretty good article about what happened the Monday night after Wrestlemania on April 9th, 2013...  Granted, that show hadn't happened yet when Sam Ford did his study in 2007.  I would be interested to see a "second edition" of sorts emerge from this preexisting research to incorporate more of what can go wrong when fans go off script.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

http://youtu.be/qCjXSUyeeRY
Link to video of RAW on April 9, 2013, for those who are interested.

Sam Ford said...

There are a few great examples to draw from, including the Goldberg/Lesnar match at Wrestlemania that fans visibly turned their backs on because they knew both guys were leaving the company. There was the night after Wrestlemania 2013. There was Royal Rumble 2014. We'll discuss that a bit today...