Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/16/wwe-smackdown-without-an-audie.html
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Reality is 95% Kayfabe
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It certainly is now. I hated professional “wrestling” when I was eight, and you’ll never stop me from being contemptuous of adults who watch it.
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/queues laugh-track
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I hated it when I was a kid too, because it marked the end of Saturday Morning Cartoons. But today I appreciate it for what it is: Kabuki Theater for Americans. Or maybe more directly: Soap Opera for Guys.
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I enjoyed the hell out of it as a kid, especially back in the days when Andre The Giant was still around. Later on when i was in college i still enjoyed it but it had become less kitschy and more of a melodramatic spectacle and i stopped watching. I do have respect for what they do and i don’t think there’s anything wrong with those that still like it. As you say its like a soap opera but with more punching and on a conceptual level i’m all for it.
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The kind of theater it makes me think of, is the old burlesque vaudville shows, only for deeply closeted homophobes.
Drape enough macho posturing over the homoerotic imagery, and it makes the ideal fig leaf.
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It is A LOT like John Oliver with no audience.
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I liked it when it was Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, and all the front rows were full of little old ladies who were really into it. We all knew that they wanted to get into the ring and hit the heel over the head with their umbrellas and handbags, and I don’t know why it was never set up. It was probably because the promoters knew that we were hoping it would happen some day, and we would stop watching once it had.
I never liked the US versions.
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I always forget - which one is supposed to be Hercules?
What’s really interesting from a performing theatre aspect is watching the wrestler look out at the crowd to try to elicit certain reactions and then kind of sort of realizing there’s no crowd to cheer or boo and seeing the really excellent performers roll with it and the less main event style lower card guys getting really thrown by it.
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Empty arena matches are a thing! (CW: for violence, especially considering that one of the contestants is Terry Funk the king of hardcore)
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Ironic, as professional wrestling is huge in Japan.
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If a comedian says his line in an empty theater and no one laughs, is it still a joke?
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Hit me right in the memory feels!
It has similar unsettling feel to it like David Lynch movies.
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Easy! Easy! Easy! Easy!
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You know what’s weird? Samuel Beckett once drove Andre the Giant to school, as he was neighbors with his family…
Although Snopes said it’s a bit overblown, as he would drive many of his neighbor’s kids to school:
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