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What’s been your exposure lately to professional wrestling?
Growing up in the 1970s and ’80s in Oklahoma, I discovered pro wrestling as a way to have a little diversion. It was a soap opera, seemingly made just for guys. The particular men involved would make certain cases for how they were going to win their honor, and then they’d go put each other in suplexes and half-nelsons. Totally awesome!
Before I had to leave the house for church on Sunday evenings, I could catch the first 15 minutes or so of Mid-South Wrestling. Mid-South was its own promotional thing for a while, but eventually it got sucked into the system feeding the big league, which at the time was called the World Wrestling Federation. It was on “MSW” that “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan, “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, Ted DiBiase, Junkyard Dog, the Midnight Express and the Dirty White Boys made names for themselves. Some went on to bigger things, while others were sidelined by injury or became mired in unseen and unscheduled feuds backstage.
What I remember about Mid-South Wrestling — and whether this is so is certainly up for grabs — was that the characters were played with certain shades of complexity. Not that they were getting overlooked for any acting awards, but you could turn off the TV after a half-hour or so and find yourself wondering just where these people stood. Again, maybe it was the acting; but no one was entirely good or bad; things were still up for moral grabs.
I was fortunate enough to see the Mid-South wrestlers live three or four times in Oklahoma City — pretty fun for the geeky tweener I was. And I still recall the same feeling upon leaving the arena: that nothing was entirely for certain here, but that when you got down to it, at least nobody really wanted anyone else dead.
Fast-forward a good 25 years. Some weeks ago I caught a few minutes of professional wrestling, and I was appalled beyond belief. Either I was vastly different now or else the “sport” was, and it was looking like the answer was that both of us had undergone a bit of a sea change.
From all appearances, pro wrestling now exists inside a complete moral vacuum. I know, I know — it was fake from the beginning — but this is different than just bad acting and flimsy plot lines. This is belligerently indefensible — immature testosterone theatrics, and nothing more.
On Monday of this week I was roaming the aisles at my favorite local five-and-ten when I discovered that you can buy action figures representing the current pantheon of pro wrestlers. Some came with microphones so you could pretend to shout at your enemies; but a couple were packaged with miniature folding chairs that actually dent when you whack them against other players’ faces. All are marketed under varying subsets of “aggression” — micro aggression, deluxe aggression, ruthless aggression. (Seriously, could I make this up?)
Now, you might argue that pro wrestling hasn’t really changed in its essence — that it remains now what it has always been: a poorly rendered and never-ending tale of guys doing what they do best, which is beating each other up and then bragging about it. That this is only a more muscular and serial abstraction of what happens in bars. That someone powerful thinks that might makes right and has figured out a way to squeeze a bazillion dollars out of it. That in a very crude way, this is a high-level acrobatics show requiring amazing skill and natural talent. That alpha-male domination is here to stay, and just get over it.
And I’d loosely agree with you right up until the end. Because pro wrestling actually has changed in its heart, and has ironically gone from the provision of male entertainment to the unabashed display of male emasculation.
Something in our society has changed quite dramatically since this form of pugilism emerged from the carnival sideshows of the late 19th century. That something, thanks be to God, is the advocacy of gender equality for women. It took a while, and things aren’t finished yet, but the breaking of certain barriers for women has been a source of fear for some men.
I believe what I witnessed on TV as a kid had something to do with men struggling to identify and know themselves in a changed world. What I see today, though, speaks to men who are still challenged to the core by the unseen forces of culture questioning their manhood — men who maybe feel they don’t have good choices. This form of television exploits that fear by manufacturing entertainment that demonstrates the fullest extent of a certain retreat from reality, an attempted escape from a world where we know that testosterone does not rule the day and violence never settles the big questions for very long. The world has changed right out from under us, and some of us are deeply scared by it.
So here’s this entertainment, and it gets lapped up, and down comes the money. Down come the money and the adulation and the accolades, and up go the ratings. It must seem so right to those who make it.
Right, maybe, but not by any measure beyond money. Maybe fiscally right, but certainly not righteous — and eventually they’ll have to know that their time is limited.
The Rev. Torey Lightcap is priest-in-charge of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glenwood Springs (www.saint-barnabas.info). Torey and his wife have two children and live in New Castle.
Growing up in the 1970s and ’80s in Oklahoma, I discovered pro wrestling as a way to have a little diversion. It was a soap opera, seemingly made just for guys. The particular men involved would make certain cases for how they were going to win their honor, and then they’d go put each other in suplexes and half-nelsons. Totally awesome!
Before I had to leave the house for church on Sunday evenings, I could catch the first 15 minutes or so of Mid-South Wrestling. Mid-South was its own promotional thing for a while, but eventually it got sucked into the system feeding the big league, which at the time was called the World Wrestling Federation. It was on “MSW” that “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan, “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, Ted DiBiase, Junkyard Dog, the Midnight Express and the Dirty White Boys made names for themselves. Some went on to bigger things, while others were sidelined by injury or became mired in unseen and unscheduled feuds backstage.
What I remember about Mid-South Wrestling — and whether this is so is certainly up for grabs — was that the characters were played with certain shades of complexity. Not that they were getting overlooked for any acting awards, but you could turn off the TV after a half-hour or so and find yourself wondering just where these people stood. Again, maybe it was the acting; but no one was entirely good or bad; things were still up for moral grabs.
I was fortunate enough to see the Mid-South wrestlers live three or four times in Oklahoma City — pretty fun for the geeky tweener I was. And I still recall the same feeling upon leaving the arena: that nothing was entirely for certain here, but that when you got down to it, at least nobody really wanted anyone else dead.
Fast-forward a good 25 years. Some weeks ago I caught a few minutes of professional wrestling, and I was appalled beyond belief. Either I was vastly different now or else the “sport” was, and it was looking like the answer was that both of us had undergone a bit of a sea change.
From all appearances, pro wrestling now exists inside a complete moral vacuum. I know, I know — it was fake from the beginning — but this is different than just bad acting and flimsy plot lines. This is belligerently indefensible — immature testosterone theatrics, and nothing more.
On Monday of this week I was roaming the aisles at my favorite local five-and-ten when I discovered that you can buy action figures representing the current pantheon of pro wrestlers. Some came with microphones so you could pretend to shout at your enemies; but a couple were packaged with miniature folding chairs that actually dent when you whack them against other players’ faces. All are marketed under varying subsets of “aggression” — micro aggression, deluxe aggression, ruthless aggression. (Seriously, could I make this up?)
Now, you might argue that pro wrestling hasn’t really changed in its essence — that it remains now what it has always been: a poorly rendered and never-ending tale of guys doing what they do best, which is beating each other up and then bragging about it. That this is only a more muscular and serial abstraction of what happens in bars. That someone powerful thinks that might makes right and has figured out a way to squeeze a bazillion dollars out of it. That in a very crude way, this is a high-level acrobatics show requiring amazing skill and natural talent. That alpha-male domination is here to stay, and just get over it.
And I’d loosely agree with you right up until the end. Because pro wrestling actually has changed in its heart, and has ironically gone from the provision of male entertainment to the unabashed display of male emasculation.
Something in our society has changed quite dramatically since this form of pugilism emerged from the carnival sideshows of the late 19th century. That something, thanks be to God, is the advocacy of gender equality for women. It took a while, and things aren’t finished yet, but the breaking of certain barriers for women has been a source of fear for some men.
I believe what I witnessed on TV as a kid had something to do with men struggling to identify and know themselves in a changed world. What I see today, though, speaks to men who are still challenged to the core by the unseen forces of culture questioning their manhood — men who maybe feel they don’t have good choices. This form of television exploits that fear by manufacturing entertainment that demonstrates the fullest extent of a certain retreat from reality, an attempted escape from a world where we know that testosterone does not rule the day and violence never settles the big questions for very long. The world has changed right out from under us, and some of us are deeply scared by it.
So here’s this entertainment, and it gets lapped up, and down comes the money. Down come the money and the adulation and the accolades, and up go the ratings. It must seem so right to those who make it.
Right, maybe, but not by any measure beyond money. Maybe fiscally right, but certainly not righteous — and eventually they’ll have to know that their time is limited.
The Rev. Torey Lightcap is priest-in-charge of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glenwood Springs (www.saint-barnabas.info). Torey and his wife have two children and live in New Castle.
