Haven’t actually bothered talking to any wrestling fans then, have you?
You think the people in charge of pro wrestling actually take themselves seriously? Have you ever actually tried watching wrestling for fifteen minutes at a time? It’s about as cheesy as a room full of Elvis impersonators with ukeleles. It’s intentionally so. It’s over the top and silly and juvenile and soap-operaish. Are you actually arguing that the WWE is too subtle for you?
Look, I’m not a wrestling fan. It’s just not my thing. I won’t leave the room if my buddies are watching it, though, and I will laugh like a hyena at parts. It’s a bit silly for my tastes – yes, I’m aware I like bad cheesy kung fu movies; yes, I’m aware of the contradiction; no, I don’t care.
I just know that not everyone who watches and enjoys wrestling has a negative IQ. I’m still not sure about NASCAR, even though I know that stuff ain’t easy. I don’t find it exciting to watch cars go around and around and around, but that just means I don’t watch it. I don’t look down on people who do.
Did Andy Kauffman (not just his wrestling stuff with Lawler, but any of his stunts) bother you for the same reasons? People wondered whether his stuff was “real” for a long time. I
It seems to me like your position is that you don’t understand wrestling fans because they like something that’s not real (let’s call it fanatsy), but people act like it’s real (or even pretend to forget that its not real - let’s call that escape), even though, in the end, they know it’s not real. How is that different than a movie (I love it when Roy McAvoy hits 12 on 18 at the Open – it didn’t happen), or TV (God, I hope Jim and Karen end up together), or a reality show (God knows they’re journalistic :rolleyes: )? I am not saying you’re a fan of these things, but it seems sort of incomplete and perhaps even unfair to single out wrestling fans when their prefered diversion invovles much more reality – I bet Benoit hurt a lot more after a match than David Schwimmer after Ross and Rachel’s breakup.
To be honest I wonder if some of the virulent nay-saying is a result of wrestling attempting to say it was real for so long. Would the detractors still be saying FAKE!!! had wrestling never attempted to portray themselves as real? If they had admitted from the outset that it was sports acting, would there be such a negative response?
I remember about twenty years ago (maybe a little less, as I’m sure I was older then 8…) I had an argument with a kid down the street who knew wrestling was real. I kept trying to point out that after getting hit in the head with a chair you would be pretty much reduced to flapping on the ground unconscious, as opposed to being easily manipulated into running across the ring and bouncing in to the ropes only to meet the receiving end of someone’s arm.
Things got a little heated and his parents, with their ‘sage-like’ wisdom settled us down and assured us that it was real.
Sometimes I think about it and wonder if they were just placating their son or if they were serious. It’s difficult to say because (no offense to them) they didn’t appear very bright.
I will admit that one of the reasons I don’t watch wrestling is because it’s scripted. I can’t put my finger on exactly why that takes away something for me, but I’ll try.
For one thing, I never liked the fake punches. Even when I was little and deeply immersed into Hulkamania culture. The kicks I could stomach, but I always detested the punches.
So one aspect of why I don’t like it maybe because some of the action doesn’t appear very real - I suppose effects my suspension of disbelief. I’m not sure if my opinion of the genre would change if the sports-actors in professional wrestling put on a completely convincing show, so I can’t say how much weight I give to this objection.
Additionally, the competition aspect is lessened. Half of the enjoyment of a football game, to me, is the complete uncertainty as to who will win. I admit that games can be predictable and that ultimately in either wrestling or football I don’t know who is going to win - but the fact that in wrestling there is a predetermined winner somehow takes a bit away from it to me.
My guess is, FSU fans think wrestling is real.
No seriously, I sort of enjoy wrestling. I don’t watch it on TV (used to a bit in college, it was popular in the dorms) and I have never seen a PPV, but I’ll download the occasional classic match. It surpasses most real sports in impressive moments of athleticism per minute. One of my favorite things about it though is figuring out what’s real. For some reason, reading about it on Wikipedia is highly entertaining.
Most of the storylines are pretty cheesy, but there’s always one or two you could kind of get into if you watch enough. (I think with a DVR to skip through the crap, watching Raw and such would be pretty entertaining.) And everyone has their favorite wrestlers. It’s certainly not my favorite form of entertainment, but I can see the appeal.
But I have to question of the IQ of anyone who says “it’s not exactly like sports, and it’s not exactly like a movie, therefore it sucks.” Are there no shades of grey in your world? Is there no room for a novel form of storytelling? You don’t have to like it, or you may think the WWE does a shitty job with it, but to question the format itself is just dumb.
I remember my senior year of high school (88’) it was common knowlege that wrestling was staged.
In our speech class one of the assignments was to do a “controversial” or “debatable” type speech, take a stance, and defend it against questions at the end.
A friend of mine decided he would pull an Andy Kaufmann and get up there and defend wrestling saying how it absolutely was real all with a straight face. I thought it was hilarious. By the end he had so many outraged students arguing with him it was great. They would come up with a counter argument and he’d dismiss them with a wave of the hand and a “you don’t know what you’re talkin about, sit down and shut up” without ever breaking character. He even faked getting so angry back at them with a “don’t make me come over there” statement and motion. He was getting kids all riled up with an act.
I just sat and laughed at the spectacle he created and noticed the teacher in the back of the room smiling away also.
When he finished he loudly sat down with an angry scowl on his face. He saw me grinning away and I gave him a thumbs up and he winked back.
Teacher gave him an A for that speech.
Jodi, do you watch The Colbert Report? I think the two are somewhat analagous in the terms you’re talking about. Stephen Colbert does his show “in character” just like wrestlers, he does interviews on his show “in character” just like wrestlers, he even did the White House Correspondents’ Dinner “in character.” Both have the aspects of reality, and yet both are fake. But I don’t see people opening threads slamming Colbert because he plays a character on television. So what’s the difference, really?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! :rents garments and gnashes teeth:
ETA: Poop! Damn my slow posting skills!
This wrestling fan wouldn’t. But then again, I’m not a smug, self-important douchebag.
So are daytime soap operas to me, but I wouldn’t dream of insulting anyone who watches them. But again, the whole, “not a douchebag” thing.
Let me be crystal clear: pro wrestling doesn’t bother me in the least. I personally find it so tedious and beyond stupid it is hard for me to imagine anyone enjoys it, but it’s clear lots of people do. Which, y’know, fine with me. I’m no more bothered by pro wrestling than I am by asparagus, which I also personally dislike.
I think you touch on an important point, though, which is that when Andy Kauffman was doing his thing, people wondered whether he was on the level or not. I don’t think anyone is wondering that about pro wrestling.
I thought about this some more at lunch. It’s not like pro wrestling is the first entertainment form to employ the conceit that it is “real.” It’s a mechanism to draw the audience further into the story, and it’s not like pro wrestling invented it. War of the Worlds did the same thing with interrupting “news bulletins.” The 1980s mini-series The Day After, a (then) spooky-as-shit nuclear war TV film, did the same thing. So why am I okay with this framing technique (actually, unframing, trying to erase the frame of the story) in the abstract, and in the examples I’ve given, and even with Kauffman, but I dismiss it in pro wrestling?
I think for me the answer is that it’s not successful in pro wrestling. The key to blurring the line between reality and story and drawing the audience in with you, is to create and maintain a high level of realism. It feels real because it looks real and it sounds real. If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was real (as many did when War of the Worlds first aired. Pro wrestling asks the audience to make the leap of believing, in the context of the story, that what is occurring is “real” – to accept the erasure of the frame, the blurring of “off-stage” and “on-stage.” But it is so entirely, completely, laughably, obviously fake that to me, asking me as an audience member to go along with the conceit really feels like an insult to my intelligence. I can’t do it. I wonder that anyone else can, frankly. I see evidence of that others find it entertaining, but I find it so deeply unentertaining that there is literally nothing broadcast on TV I would be less interested in watching.
None of this requires me to make a value judgment of others. But honestly, neither do I see it as an art form that merits defense. There’s a reason guilty pleasures are called “guilty pleasures.” To me, pro wrestling is the equivalent of Cheetos. Love them if you want, but spare me the dissertation on how they are a nutritional addition to your daily diet. They aren’t. They’re crap. Enjoy them for the crap they are. Same with wrestling, IMO.
The other two don’t make up backstories out of whole cloth and make it seem like the backstory really happened. I’m looking at you, Mr. “Hollywood” Hogan.
Maybe IYO not much. To me, even if he is employing the same “this is real!” conceit, he is better at it because: (a) he’s a better actor; (b) the situation and his character are more realistic; and (b) it’s a comedy show, so the conceit isn’t really expected to be taken seriously anyway.
So…you just like it better? That’s okay too, tastes differ. I was just trying to make a point about the line of reality being more blurred on his show than, say, Lost or Law & Order, just like wrestling.
It’s not just that I “like it better,” in the sense of it being more entertaining, although that’s obviously true. It’s that I think it is better done; it is simply better employed as a story frame on the Colbert Report than it is in pro wrestling, because the “reality” we are supposed to buy is light-years less silly.
It’s not like talking heads in suits with personal agendas aren’t all over the TV – real ones. Colbert looks and sounds just like one, that’s what makes him so funny. Where’s the reality that corresponds to pro wrestling? Where’s all the real guys in George Reeves shorts solving their conflicts by hitting each other with chairs?
To be scrupulously honest about it, I started watching wrestling primarily because my husband does. Initially, I pretty much agreed with Jodi. However, not being a douchebag, I kept my opinion to myself about it since I didn’t know a damn thing about it.
After watching for a while, it got to be sort of interesting. Of course, it gained a lot from the fact that we generally TiVO it and make liberal use of fast forwarding technology
Now my husband and I watch the show, sit around discussing the storylines and appreciating the athleticism of the guys in the ring. For us, it’s fundamentally no different from sitting around after an episode of House or Survivor and discussing the storyline and appreciating the performance of the participants. Hell, it’s not even any different than discussing the current (very dismal) prospect of his beloved baseball team.*
*Sadly, he gets no sympathy from me on this one. I’m a Chicago Cubs fan, after all.
Oh I dunno, I think Colbert reaming out Willie Nelson because it’s “his ice cream time!” is plenty silly. So is his tracking of his “son” and exhorting viewers to stand at the border waving pieces of salmon.
Except for the forays into silliness, as illustrated above.
I am (I like to think) highly-cultured and broadly educated. A real Renaissance Man–well, that’s what my undergraduate college explicitly tried to make me. But I love the Three Stooges to death. Sure, that’s low-brow too, so I’m not going to criticize anyone for being a fan of professional wrestling. A low-brow outlet is good for you.
Look, I think we’re approaching the subject from different POV’s. I see professional wrestling as combining the pomp and pageantry of Iron Chef with the athleticism of ballet with the absurd storylines of a daytime soap. Is it silly? Of course it is. But that doesn’t make it any less fun. Does it blur the lines of reality? Maybe, but no more than other shows. I never watched it expecting it to elevate my soul or teach me a valuable life lesson. That’s not what it’s about. It’s just entertainment, and that’s all that it’s meant to be.
You may think The Colbert Report has better acting and production values, and you’re right, but that doesn’t make what I like any lesser. Hell, I like TCR too.
What I don’t understand is actively denigrating forms of entertainment that other people don’t like. Is it hurting you in some way? Is your remote not working? Why the need to tear down what others enjoy?
