Wrestling With Manhood

All of the following is taken from the Media Education Foundation’s Study Guide for this video that may be found at: http://www.mediaed.org/index_html

 

INTRODUCTION

» Professional wrestling has been immunized from serious and sustained cultural analysis largely because of its spectacular surface appeal and the common assertion that “it’s only entertainment.”

» The immense popularity and cultural presence of professional wrestling, its consistently high ratings and its aggressive promotion across a range of media channels, raise two simple questions: Why is professional wrestling so popular? And what does its popularity tell us about American culture more generally?

» The central argument of this video is that the popularity of professional wrestling reveals something larger about society, about the deep-seated norms, values and moral codes that shape our daily attitudes and behavior.

» We need to ask not only why people are watching professional wrestling, but how wrestling in turn might affect society – how it might help shape and reinforce the very tastes that WWE creator Vince McMahon has claimed simply and innocently to be serving.

 

HAPPY AND ESCALATING VIOLENCE

» The mainstream debate about wrestling to this point has involved the general issue of violence, and the specific issue of whether kids imitate this violence.

» Even though a number of high-profile court cases, the phenomenon of “backyard wrestling,” and the comments of kids themselves may seem to support the contention that professional wrestling may have a direct effect on violent behavior, the focus on “imitation” may also deflect our attention from wrestling’s more subtle and cumulative effects.

» Moving beyond simple questions of cause-and-effect, we need to ask why kids who imitate the violence they see in professional wrestling seem so willing to put themselves at risk – and more specifically, why these kids seem so oblivious to the actual consequences of actual violence.

» These questions force us to look closely at the actual stories told in wrestling.

» The stories of wrestling trade in the kind of cartoon violence that cultural analyst George Gerbner has called “happy violence,” or violence without injury or consequence.

» In professional wrestling, the effect of such “happy violence” becomes even more powerful because of the sheer skill of the actors in creating the illusion that their violence is real.

» The paradox of professional wrestling is this: The skill of wrestlers in pulling off the illusion of reality gives greater credibility to the belief that there are no real consequences to violence. In other words,

the reality of violence disappears in wrestling precisely because it seems so real.

» The fact that virtually everyone who watches wrestling knows that it is staged and “fake” therefore isn’t enough to discount its having real effects: The sheer skill of the illusion has the power to overwhelm even kids who know, and have been shown, that it’s not real.

» The phenomenon of “happy violence” needs also to be considered alongside the drastic escalation of the level of violence presented in professional wrestling. Wrestling gets more and more violent and extreme even as the actual consequences continue to be pushed out of view.

» This combination of “happy” and escalating violence may not only feed the kind of risk-taking behavior seen in the “backyard wrestling” phenomenon; it may also feed an exceedingly dangerous definition and ideal of manhood that equates being a real man with being invulnerable and violent.

 

MAKING MEN

» Culture both shapes and reflects our ideas about gender, our sense of what it means to be a man or woman.

» Given that professional wrestling is a prominent part of the American pop-cultural landscape, we need to examine the stories it tells about gender, and we need to ask whether and how these stories might feed into and off of very specific ways of thinking about masculinity and femininity.

» Examined through the lens of gender, the obvious surface violence of professional wrestling comes into focus as highly gendered, with stories about violence always linked to stories about manhood.

» What professional wrestling offers its overwhelmingly young, male audience is a traditional, conservative definition of masculinity, a masculine ideal that equates physical strength, intimidation, violence and control of others with manhood.

» Professional wrestling, in other words, models a way to be a man, demanding that we ask what effect this modeling of behavior might have on boys and young men in the real world.

» Beyond simplistic notions of cause-and-effect, we need to examine how something watched so frequently by so many boys and young men might cultivate, legitimate and glamorize certain ideas about what it means to be a man, and therefore certain behaviors that conform to these ideas.

» Bullying is one of the most commonly glamorized behaviors in professional wrestling, even as it remains a severe and persistent problem in the real lives of young people.

» Whereas in the past bullies were seen as the bad guys, or “heels,” of wrestling, today’s wrestling glorifies bullying, with the biggest bullies achieving the greatest popularity and allegiance from fans.

» With this shift, and this new equation of manhood with bullying behavior, we now have a phenomenon in which kids identify with the bully, not the victim.

 

HOMOPHOBIA

» The stories professional wrestling tells about manhood are deeply and consistently homophobic.

» This anxiety about homosexuality makes perfect sense when we see it as a way for wrestling to announce and maintain its heterosexual credentials – something that takes on special importance given that professional wrestling essentially consists of scantily-clad and sweaty men groping each other for the enjoyment of other men.

» When the nearly naked women of professional wrestling grope each other, the homoerotic undercurrent gets featured as part of a storyline lifted from heterosexual pornographic fantasy.

» When the nearly naked men of professional wrestling grope each other, the homoerotic undercurrent is transformed into homophobia.

» When violent straight masculinity is set as the standard, it becomes necessary to establish the straightness of these men through violence: through insults that feminize and question the sexuality of other men, and through ridicule of stereotypically gay characters.

» The function of stereotypically gay characters such as Chuck and Billy, then, is not to demonstrate their sexuality, but the straight sexuality of everyone else.

» Wrestling’s obsession with homosexuality, whether in the form of denigrating stereotypically gay characters or denigrating allegedly straight characters with homophobic slurs, reveals the extent to which traditionally macho ideals of masculinity may be founded on deep anxieties about what it means to be a man.

 

DIVAS

» Similar to the growing prominence of stereotypically gay characters, one of the functions of the increasing number of female stars in professional wrestling is to demonstrate the straightness of the male wrestlers.

» Women increasingly have been integrated into the narratives of professional wrestling, but always within a basic structure of masculine violence and humiliation.

» One way to understand the growing popularity of the WWE is to see it as coinciding with the growing presence of women wrestlers who are there primarily to provide an erotic spectacle for boys and men.

» Because women are there mainly to reinforce the heterosexuality of males – both the male wrestlers and the males in the audience – storylines reflect male desires and fantasy.

» Breast implants are standard procedure, and the strength and athleticism of women wrestlers is allowed only within the confines of male pornographic fantasy ideals of femininity.

» Wrestling’s popularity with young men can not be separated from its emergence as, in essence, a strip show; we need to think seriously about the cumulative effects this might have on the boys and young men who come to see this as normal.

 

NORMALIZING GENDER VIOLENCE

» Female characters have become increasingly drawn into the violence of professional wrestling’s narratives.

» Through sheer repetition in these stories, the sight of women being hit by men has become normalized.

» The normalization, not to mention glamorization, of men hitting women is especially troubling given that men’s violence against women in the real world remains at epidemic levels.

» The issue here is this: While wrestling doesn’t simply cause men to be abusive to women, there can be little question that it contributes to an atmosphere in which men’s violence against women is not taken seriously.

» The fact that millions of boys and men are entertained weekly by men’s violence against women is further complicated by the deliberate sexualization of this violence – creating a situation in which boys and young men are aroused as they watch women being beaten.

» Violence against women is also commonly presented within a larger pattern and storyline that presents the violence as deserved – a pattern that mirrors similar justifications of men’s abuse of women in the real world.

» Similarly, wrestling plotlines regularly involve the humiliation of women in the workplace.

» All of this has the effect of normalizing, justifying and rationalizing larger social patterns of men’s violence against women.

» Rather than focusing on whether wrestling causes violence in a simple way, we need to ask instead what it means that stadiums around the country are full of young men cheering, applauding and laughing at the staged humiliation and abuse of women.

 

“IT’S ONLY ENTERTAINMENT”

» A common defense of WWE loyalists when faced with any sort of criticism is that “people should lighten up” because “it’s only entertainment.”

» If we agree with the common defense of wrestling as “simply entertainment”, we then need to ask: What does it mean that we’re entertained by men beating up women, by the humiliation and stereotyping of women and gay men?

» We need also to ask whether one effect of all this might be that when we see these things in the real world, we don’t take them seriously.

» The defense of wrestling as simply fun and funny, and the related accusation that those who see deeper meaning in it have no sense of humor, similarly deflects attention away from how humor can serve both to normalize brutal behavior and shut down those who are concerned about it.

» Finally, the related embrace of wrestling as simply entertainment for those with a self-proclaimed rebellious sense of humor masks this fact: That true rebellion and independence would mean standing up to Vince McMahon’s attempt to sell the deeply conservative WWE as somehow counter to traditional values.