Hi all, welcome back to another edition of my Devil’s Advocate series, this week following up on the column Big Brother Is A Kayfabe Fan, which you can find at this link:
http://thewrestlingvoice.com/columns/stuartblack/headlines/164650610.shtml
We all know that wrestling has somewhat of a stigma attached to it. Anything from the media lambasting it on a wide scale to your friend going “You watch wrestling?” in disgust when you confess your guilty sin. Let’s face it, it’s never been the most popular thing in the world, often ridiculed for the way it duped generations into believing the stories and outcomes were real. Perhaps it will never live that stigma down. But it does have its moments where for a time ratings gradually rise, arenas sell out that little bit quicker and merchandise sales put that little bit more money in the WWE’s pocket as something is going on that makes people’s heads turn. It happens when matches and cards are at their most appealing, writing is at its most gripping and the characters are at their most entertaining. The recent moves into new styles of presenting, particularly with a more reality-based element to their writing is essentially a new attempt to be taken seriously by that group of fair-weather fans and bolster their numbers. Who can blame them?
As a fan who likes to read into the underlying reasoning behind the way the wrestling world works, the impression I often get from the outside looking in is that wrestling companies try not to bother too much any more on how they are perceived by the masses that look down on them, focusing instead simply on maximising how much money they get out of those willing to give them a chance. At the end of the day, they are kind of like the loner at school, believing you are who you are and eventually you will find those that identify with you. In time those kindred spirits migrate towards each other, so why should you worry about what others think? Why should you convince those that don’t like you to take you seriously? In principal you think it’s absolutely right to be true to yourself and not do things you believe aren’t you, but in reality that temptation to be somebody else is very much there and indeed very real. So working on that theory, as much as wrestling companies try to just be what they want to be and what they really are, surely the urge to try and appeal to those who don’t really fit must exist?
The difference comes however in that the child in school does it for popularity driven by a much needed boost in self-confidence, but whilst the wrestling company does it for the popularity also they are driven by a totally different motivator, profit. What’s more, whilst I would still discourage the child from betraying their true self, with the wrestling companies, including the WWE, I would do the exact opposite.
As intriguing as the concept is to me, I believe that no matter how much they try to force through this idea of wrestling as reality TV it will always be doomed to failure. After all, the secret’s out! We know the truth. No matter how confused we get as to whether a storyline is completely scripted or mirroring an event from their real lives, ultimately we know that we are all being manipulated by writers and they are after a specific reaction from us. The idea of reality is therefore no longer a goal of wrestling, it’s an even more redundant lie made increasingly confusing. What good is confusion to an audience? You risk that they stop caring. After all, you know what they say – fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
So why go there? If the secret’s out, why bother trying to go back to how things were before? You see, you only need to look at television in general today to realise that shows don’t have to be real to suck an audience into the story being told. Audiences can identify with protagonists and antagonists that were developed with pen and paper just as much as those developed by a mother and father who loved each other so much the stork came to visit. People watch soap operas that never pretend to be real and upon bumping into the actors and actresses involved in the street refer to them by their character names and enquire into their on screen personal lives as opposed to their real ones. The audience have not been tricked into believing the events they saw were anything more than a good, well-acted script. At the end of each episode they are shown the admittance that everything they just absorbed was a lie as the credits are shown revealing the character’s alternate identities. They even see television interviews with the actors and actresses being their true selves, or read in newspapers, magazines and online about spoilers possibly weeks ahead.
Wrestling is now in the same position as your typical soap opera, so why not do what they do? Why not end each show with credits telling us who they really are? Tell us who wrote, produced and directed each show? Conduct all interviews outside of the show as their real selves? We often see elements of the person behind the character within them anyway, but why not openly discuss the differing traits of the actor and the person they portray?
What impact does it have on how wrestling is perceived by the rest of the world? Everybody now knows that it is fake and pre-determined anyway, so they aren’t telling the audience anything new there. If anything, would they now appreciate not being treated like idiots? People would choose to get sucked into the show by choice anyway, it doesn’t change the fact that a good, well told story will attract an audience regardless. But returning to this idea of being accepted by the masses, could stopping old trends be the key to earning their approval? Could turning their backs on the now redundant kayfabe and the actually rather inappropriate presentation style of reality TV be the way to gain acceptance from a sceptical world?
It would then answer a couple of questions that under the reality format makes no sense to me. For example, if everything they do all day every day is supposed to be an extension of the persona we see on TV, then why do they have a dress code? Take Kevin Thorn from ECW, with his fangs and his blood and his vampire chick on his arm and then one day you spot him in the airport with his hair tied back, a full set of normal pearly whites, wearing shirt and slacks? Shannon Moore on a night out in his home town with a beautiful girl on each arm and looking rather normal without the make up? Nick “Eugene” Dinsmore with his jacket done up properly and reading a novel by Charles Dickens as he waits for his plane without his tongue protruding from his mouth or scratching his hair whilst he works out if he has the book the right way around? How can they do that and yet still have Vito walking around in a dress, or John Cena still in his sports jerseys? You can’t have it both ways, people! That’s exactly the sorts of contradictions that stop you from being taken seriously as a show!
The world of soap opera, which produces some of the most popular shows on TV, tells us that you do not need to blur the line of reality and fiction to suck people in. The world of drama tells us that you can make an audience suspend their belief long enough to occasionally take in an idea that isn’t all that realistic. Perhaps if wrestling groups such as the WWE start applying those concepts in the same way, they could be taken more seriously, and if they are taken more seriously, then perhaps more people will be willing to give them a try. Then everybody wins, right?
Just a thought…
“Just A Thought…” tries to think about the impact professional wrestling has on the lives of those associated with it at all the different levels. Please feel free to send any thoughts about this column, good bad or indifferent to stuart_black@hotmail.com. I will do my best to get back to you, particularly if you get me thinking myself, but even if you don’t.
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