[QUOTE=Jodi]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Let me preface my statements by saying that I’m only speaking of my tastes, not those of ‘wrestling fans’ as a whole.
I’ve been a fan, off and on, for over 3 decades, and have watched the product change over that time. When I started watching, wrestling was a local endeavour, and worked hard to keep the conceit of reality alive. The wrestling itself was less flamboyant, so that even though it was worked (scripted), it wasn’t so over the top that is was totally unbelievable. Of course, you had some characters who were larger than life and flamboyant, but even boxing had Ali.
When Vincent K. McMahon took over from his father, he built up the circus/carnival atmosphere of wrestling. I won’t digress into a complete history, but he’s responsible for the product you see today - the bad backstage sketches, the matches that defying human physical limitations, etcetera. Over the years, I’ve watched less - I only found out about the Chris Benoit tragedy because I was flipping channels and wanted to find out who was wrestling in the main event. Sometimes, an event or storyline will grip me, and I’ll watch as it plays out, but that has decreased. Despite all that, I still like to watch matches. I love watching the cruiserweights fly around, even though they tell no story, just move from ridiculously dangerous move to ridiculously dangerous move. However, my favorite matches always came from watching guys like Benoit, Kurt Angle, Eddie Guerrero, Shane Douglas, Steve Austin (especially before his broken neck), Bret Hart and Mick Foley (an abridged list). These were people whose style was not over-the-top and made it easy for you to suspend disbelief when you were watching them. They were intense and made you believe, even if only for the 15-30 minutes they wrestled. Sadly, to get to them, I’d have to sit through an hour of bad promotions (and 10 minutes of good ones) and another hour of bad matches. As noted earlier, I really don’t do that anymore.
