I’m an unapologetic wrestling fan. I almost wrote one of my major research projects on wrestling, but let’s all be honest here, it’s tough enough being the non-white guy who does games work. I was laughed out of a few meetings trying to write about wrestling. It didn’t stop me from using CM Punk as the perfect example of Kairos in my digital rhetoric classes. I’m a wrestling lifer, who stepped away from fandom only a couple of times (because it wasn’t cool in my teens, of course, and because I was too busy at a few points in college).
The Netflix version of GLOW gets it exactly right: wrestling is a soap opera with dudes in tights and athletics. I’ve been saying that for like three decades. And for reasons I could explain but still think are fairly invalid, people rag on wrestling as “fake” (in the face of all the entertainment we consume, like that’s really how rappers and rock stars act behind closed doors, like that’s actually how the President speaks to… wait, bad example). We consume fictional media like popcorn, but people balk at wrestling and it’s carny nature. Fine. Balk all you want. It’s your loss.
I have always thought the ability to live vicariously through wrestlers was the closest thing I’d find to super heroes. As I mentioned before– I wanted to be Spider-Man. Now *I* could never even be Rey Mysterio or Mil Mascaras, but people exist who wear masks and do amazing acrobatic feats to beat bad guys. Hulk Hogan (may his legend rest below the heap of Gawker leaks and blood money) was basically Captain America in yellow underwear with the Hulk’s name. Andre the Giant was… Goliath. When I was a bit older, Steve Austin was the angry working class hero. CM Punk was the nerd with the power to do something. The New Day are three black men who get arenas of white folks to chant along and believe in their power of positivity. It’s a place where you can read in all you want, but you also never need to read in, because the narrative is written Flintstone‘s style; it has depth and nuance, but it’s written for eight-year-olds, too.
In spite of being almost certain wrestling was a legit art, a way to lose yourself in the idea of heroes and villains (along with some amazing acrobatics and stunts, cool costumes, carefully used music and crazy school-yard insults), I was willing to accept that like many things, it was just my weird nature to cling to it. I mean the reality of my life as an academic is my “low” culture clashing with the high culture of the academy (how dare I study Batman comics when there are such amazing graphic novels? Why study a TV show like Buffy when there are amazing foreign films?). But recently, I found the ultimate litmus test.
The woman in the image at the top of this post is WWE/NXT Women’s Champion Asuka (said ASK-UH), the Empress of the Future, formerly Kana (in many Japanese promotions). She’s an undefeated superstar wrestler who has reigned as the NXT women’s champion for a little over a year. She’s, as my wife said “kind of a super hero.” After watching her in a last woman standing match a little over a week ago against Nikki Cross, Julie said to me “look at how those kids look at her. If I’d seen this when I was a kid, I’d have been all about Asuka. I’d have Asuka tattoos.”
So let me rewind back. I mentioned a litmus test.
Julie and I have been married a little over a year, as I’d imagine most of you reading this know. I’m not a person to “hide” anything from her, so she knew I liked wrestling and she watched me play WWE2Kwhatever over the years. I even made a custom wrestler of her once while she sat on my bed. So she knew I watched Raw every Monday. I cooled out on watching Smackdown and NXT because, you know, marriage and not wanting to be a weirdo. Julie didn’t have much interest in Raw at all. In fact I think she once went to do the dishes so she could avoid watching it.
Then, one night, she chose to watch with me. I asked her to stay and watch a New Day promo, because the New Day… rocks. She did, and while I doubt she can even remember given what a fan she’s become, she did so with a very clear “I’m doing this because I love you, but this is going to suck” attitude. But she… kinda liked it. And so she watched, and the next night, we watched Smackdown together, so she could see the other stars. She started to quickly notice characters she liked (Sami Zayn was the first, I think, then several of the women, New Day because what’s not to love, then quickly people like Aleister Black and Finn Balor, then the Fashion Police… she’s even a Jinder Mahal fan with me). She noticed how empowering the women’s wrestling narratives are. She… really liked it.
And the reasons she liked it are exactly the reasons I always thought people should like it– the stories, the super hero characters, the fun factor. It’s theatre. Sometimes it’s theatre of the absurd, but it’s theatre. It’s not long before you start to chant “Roman sucks!” with the fans, or even if you don’t want to do it you start to mouth along “and you can’t teach that” with Enzo Amore. It’s the closest we’ll get to having Avengers. It’s a chance to engage in hero worship and to live vicariously and to sort of walk away from reality for a minute or two. It’s a good thing.
Tonight, we watched some Lucha Underground. It was Julie’s first real experience with lucha style. Lucha Underground is kind of amazing if you haven’t seen it, readers. It doesn’t even try to pretend to be real, and as a result the stories are crazier and the camera work is more cinematic. It’s an amazing experience.
We watched the show where Sexy Star, a woman, won the Gift of the Gods championship. As the seven person elimination match wore on, I could see Julie getting more and more invested. I could sense that the commentary and the crowd reactions were getting to her. At one point she said “this is amazing, seeing all these dudes cheer for a woman to kick someone’s ass. That wouldn’t have happened 20 years ago.” Then, when Star won, Vampiro, one of the commentators, said “Star is… a hero.” And I don’t think Julie teared up, but she made the cutest sound, like what I imagine I made when I was eight and I met Hulk Hogan.
If you’re one of the people who scoffs at wrestling because it’s “fake,” I feel sorry for you. Also, if you’re into artsy fiction, go watch the steaming pile of dogshit that is The OA in Netflix while I enjoy my WWE. Tomorrow I’ll explain to you why the OA sucks, but if you want it in a sentence, here’s a preview: Imagine Keyser Soze was an emo girl’s story and her ultimate goal was to get shot while convincing five outcasts to do an interpretive dance that wouldn’t have gotten them to the second round of So You Think You Can Dance so they can create a portal to the rings of Saturn and she can be in the afterlife with her imaginary boyfriend. And fans can claim that I don’t “get” the brilliance of it, but the degrees on my wall say that you can’t argue that with me. Plus if my take on the OA bothered you, now you know how it’s felt being a wrestling fan for 40 years and trying to defend violent ballet from sarcastic hipsters. Have a nice day!