From IM conversations between the minutes of 10:20 to 10:25 Feb 13 2006:
Friend: and i am watchin ecw now
Friend: 3 women are dancing in the ring
Me: yes
Friend: and a vampire just came out
Me: sadly none of this is surprising anymore
Friend: its cuz ECW is so pitiful
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5 comments:
Ah, the disaster that is the current ECW product. I'm sure I'm not the only one who misses the original ECW, and going through the "OMG Moment Archive" on WWE.com certainly brings back fond memories. Still, I remember being seriously disturbed by some of what ECW presented (think: the angle with The Sandman's son, Tyler; anything with New Jack) - to the point of questioning my interest in the promotion. Thoughts? Did anyone else feel this cognitive dissonance when watching ECW (or any promotion, for that matter)? Why do we wrestling fans stick with something that can, at times, feel so wrong to watch/support (or maybe I'm in the minority and most wrestling fans flee when they're dissatisfied with what they see?)?
Jackie, I don't think you are wrong at all, and I think that some of what WWE has done was absolutely right, that ECW's model was not perfect. Particualrly, the emphasis on a style that doesn't leave people looking like Sabu.
Unfortunately, many of the parts of ECW's product I found most appalling remains a part of the WWE product, particularly its completely superficial treatment of its female characters. We're going to be delving into ECW more deeply as the semester reaches that era, but I think this is an interesting question to pose regarding the modern product.
I agree about both the treatment of female characters and the way that characters are just not being well-developed in general by WWE. The problem is that the writing team don't put any thought at all into developing any character past two-dimensional unless they are a main eventer, and since almost no one in ECW is seen as "main eventers" anyway, that gets problematic.
Here's what I would suggest, to make the three brands three different versions of WWE. Move all the tag teams to Smackdown. Move all the cruisers to ECW, and then establish three very different styles for the three brands...all three have a heavyweight champion, and then Raw is home to the women's title, Smackdown the tag titles, and ECW the cruiserweight title.
The main problem is making ECW feel like WWE-lite. Smackdown has done a very good job of setting its own tone and pace, which makes it feel like a refreshing show the majority of the time.
All very good questions posed, Mike, and it is a reminder of why a character like Ludvig Borga was never as strong of a heel as we could have been. The main reason we were supposed to hate Ludvig was because he was from Finland. But...wait...why do we hate people from Finland? You are right that it's hard to rely on a stereotype when no stereotype is in place.
Knock the Vince Russo WWE era all you want, and I'm the first to do so in many cases, but the strength in 1997 and 1998, before things got too out of hand, is that a lot of work was done to flesh out the characters of several people on the roster aside from the main two or three.
Now, Mike, that is ironic. "The Hellraiser from Helsinki" is on everyone's minds these days, I guess!
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