Call for papers of possible interest to PWOers

[JerryvonKramer]

Dear colleagues,

 

Call for contributors for an essay collection on professional wrestling and performance, edited by Broderick Chow (Brunel University), Eero Laine (The Graduate Center, City University of New York), and Claire Warden (University of Lincoln).

 

Scholars in many fields (notably, anthropology, sociology, sports studies, and media studies) have taken up professional wrestling as a field of inquiry. However, the form has generally only been acknowledged as performance in a rather broad sense, either reading it through a myriad of forms and genres (from the medieval morality play to an outworking of Artauds Theatre of Cruelty) or simply noting its theatrical qualities in order to distinguish it from competitive sports. This volume aims to critically reassess professional wrestling as a mode of performance in more specific terms by both connecting it to contemporary models of performance analysis and focusing on particular case studies.

 

Two principles thus shape the volume: 1) performance studies/theatre studies is an ideal theoretical lens through which we can understand professional wrestling, and 2) wrestling is an unique performance form that provides new and innovative insights for the broader field of theatre and performance.

 

To these ends, the editors seek contributions addressing the following:

 

· Plays about or involving professional wrestling

 

· Pro-wrestling and performance/visual art

 

· Performing gender and sexuality in wrestling

 

· Queering wrestling narratives

 

· Wrestling and folk culture/working-class culture

 

· Wrestling and industrial change

 

· Professional wrestling as an archive of performed/embodied politics

 

· Race and wrestling

 

· The theatricality of scripted athletics, promos, and the commentator/narrator

 

· Performer/audience interactions

 

· Performance/liveness/mediation and the wrestling event

 

· The performing body

 

· Nationalism and professional wrestling

 

· Professional wrestling costumes

 

· Spectacle and professional wrestling

 

Also, the editors welcome proposals for essays taking up other topics provided there is a clear focus on wrestling and/as performance. In addition to essays on English-speaking incarnations of pro-wrestling, the editors are especially interested in essays that address the myriad global forms of professional wrestling such as lucha libre and puroresu.

 

To propose an essay for the volume, please submit a 300 word abstract and a brief bio or CV by September 26th, 2014. Accepted submissions will be due mid-2015. Inquiries are welcome.

 

Broderick Chow: [email protected]

 

Eero Laine: [email protected]

 

Claire Warden: [email protected]

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm thinking that it would almost be rude of me not to write something for this. I've just sent them a polite little note explaining that I'm a fan etc., and asking for a bit more info. I've mentioned a few things in the email almost as a kind of litmus test to see what level of engagement these guys have with wrestling (i.e. are they really fans?)

 

I could write about pretty much all of these topics.

 

Plays about or involving professional wrestling - well, there's the scene at the start of As You Like It, but I think this is a weak-ish topic.

 

Pro-wrestling and performance/visual art - hmmm ...

 

Performing gender and sexuality in wrestling - there is a lot to say here.

 

Queering wrestling narratives - Gorgeous George, Adrian Street, Jim Cornette in MidSouth, Lanny Poffo, Goldust ...

 

Wrestling and folk culture/working-class culture - so much to say on this. Dusty Rhodes, son of a plumber, the Austin character, Big Daddy in England, rich men / snobs / intellectuals as heels ... massive topic ...

 

Wrestling and industrial change - not sure exactly what they mean by this. The industrial revolution is a bit early for pro wrestling, no?

 

Professional wrestling as an archive of performed/embodied politics - yes, big topic. Evil Nazis, evil Russians, Hogan on top in Reagan's America, Austin on top in Clinton's / "the me generation" of the 90s when Kurt Angle was a heel, etc. etc.

 

Race and wrestling - Harley Race and wrestling? Again, huge topic, could go down the route of Bobo Brazil, Sailor Art Thomas, Thunderbolt Patterson, etc. Then there's The Terrible Turks and wrestling's virtually entirely constructed version of the middle east. A lot to write on there.

 

The theatricality of scripted athletics, promos, and the commentator/narrator - I'm not sure what an academic paper on this would look like, but the thought of doing serious analysis on promos and commentators is vaguely amusing.

 

Performer/audience interactions - again, a very big topic at the heart of pro wrestling.

 

Performance/liveness/mediation and the wrestling event - there's a lot written on this in terms of sports crowds, quite a long way from my area

 

The performing body - ditto

 

Nationalism and professional wrestling - see above on race

 

Professional wrestling costumes - LOSS!!!

 

Spectacle and professional wrestling - think of The Undertaker's WM entrances.

[tim]

 

 

Wrestling and industrial change - not sure exactly what they mean by this. The industrial revolution is a bit early for pro wrestling, no?

Watts and the oil glut!

[JNLister]

Cite Roland Barthes -- punch in balls.

[PeteF3]

I'm thinking that it would almost be rude of me not to write something for this. I've just sent them a polite little note explaining that I'm a fan etc., and asking for a bit more info. I've mentioned a few things in the email almost as a kind of litmus test to see what level of engagement these guys have with wrestling (i.e. are they really fans?)

 

I could write about pretty much all of these topics.

 

Plays about or involving professional wrestling - well, there's the scene at the start of As You Like It, but I think this is a weak-ish topic.

 

There's The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, a full-fledged wrestling Off-Broadway play about an Indian wrestler who's forced into a terrorist gimmick.

[Matt D]

Wikpedia says that Adnan lies in Minnesota and is 75. It's your job to go interview him and do a paper about how an Iraqi and an Italian American became Native American superstars and how Strongbow was really terrible at it.

[dawho5]

Didn't Loss have a section of his e-book dedicated to the Snowman and his quest for acceptance in the racist Memphis promotion that was more than a little bit of a shoot on both sides?

[anarchistxx]

 

 

Plays about or involving professional wrestling

 

Famous UK playwright John Godber wrote a play called 'Wrestling Mad' that toured 2005/2006 in the north of England. I saw it, can remember very little about it though. He was also responsible for stuff like Bouncers that is on the school curriculum, think he is the third most performed playwright in the UK.

 

A rather scathing review: http://johnbakersblog.co.uk/wrestling-mad-a-bad-play/

 

"The play was terrible. Had it been written by an unknown it would never have been staged. The characters were one-dimensional. There was no tension. The dialogue was unconvincing and patronising. The author had nothing to say. It was embarrassing to watch the talent of an otherwise able cast, castrated by an unworkable script.

 

I don’t wish to be ungenerous but leaving this play in production and touring it simply to meet contractual deadlines does no one any good, least of all the reputation of the dramatist."

 

The BBC review is more generous http://www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/content/articles/2006/05/25/wrestling_mad_review_feature.shtml

[anarchistxx]

The problem with academic analysis of wrestling is that you are putting weeks of thought and years of knowledge into micro analysing a scene that might have taken thirty seconds to write, by a booker who has forgotten it next week. An essay on "Nationalism and professional wrestling" would really have to stretch the depths of interpretation to find something to say, because that subject is presented so bluntly and unimaginatively on television e.g. evil foreign heel, hero American face. I suppose you could juxtapose that with wrestling from around the world, but aside from Lucha and Puro the shows are too niche and minor to really be worthy of serious deconstruction, unless you are really trying to get down to the base of the subject.

[PhilTLL]

 

Wrestling and industrial change - not sure exactly what they mean by this. The industrial revolution is a bit early for pro wrestling, no?

Watts and the oil glut!

That's how I read it. Business, demographic, story, character etc changes relative to economic changes, perhaps in particular geographies.

[JerryvonKramer]

The problem with academic analysis of wrestling is that you are putting weeks of thought and years of knowledge into micro analysing a scene that might have taken thirty seconds to write, by a booker who has forgotten it next week. An essay on "Nationalism and professional wrestling" would really have to stretch the depths of interpretation to find something to say, because that subject is presented so bluntly and unimaginatively on television e.g. evil foreign heel, hero American face. I suppose you could juxtapose that with wrestling from around the world, but aside from Lucha and Puro the shows are too niche and minor to really be worthy of serious deconstruction, unless you are really trying to get down to the base of the subject.

No, it won't be like that. It will be much more removed looking at how nationality is constructed within wrestling. How stereotypes are used. How "America" is defined and how various foreign places are depicted.

 

It's less an analysis of what the "booker has written" and more a general reflection of the politics and the culture. What's it saying about the mentality of the product and of its fans, etc. etc.

 

What I worry about with these sorts of things, however, is that there is a disconnect and an academic distance between actual wrestling fans and the people writing about them. That's one of the reasons I might write something, because I'd be talking as both a fan, and an academic -- and so there'd be at least one essay in there that writes from a position of internal appreciation.

 

I can imagine essays being written that more or less bury wrestling as being misogynistic, racist, homophobic, jingoistic, xenophobic, and so on. While there is no doubt truth to some of that, it's not the whole picture. And I think there are more interesting things to be said that merely pointing that out.

 

Incidentally, they've written back to me and it seems like they are keen for me to get involved, but let's see.

[fxnj]

I think the reason wrestling doesn't get much academic attention even compared to something like boxing is pretty clear just by looking at that topics list. From what I've read most academics who've watched wrestling seem fixated on things the nationalism shit and don't pay much attention to the brilliance of the ring work. Which is a shame since a book could probably be written about the depth behind something like Misawa/Kobashi 1/20/97.

[pol]

There's no semiotic framework for interpreting wrestling matches themselves. I'm not sure that there can't be one, but there isn't right now and that makes it pretty hard to do any kind of meaningful analysis on that aspect of wrestling.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I think the reason wrestling doesn't get much academic attention even compared to something like boxing is pretty clear just by looking at that topics

Or cause boxing is real and wrestling is fake.

[Exposer]

I wrote a paper in Mass Media Perspectives on cultural stereotypes in professional wrestling about two years ago. Of course, it focused more on the negative than the positive.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm thinking of writing something about male pride in the Magnum TA vs. Tully feud.

 

I honestly don't want to write something that is going to bury wrestling or be snooty about it.

 

Maybe I could look at several feuds that highlight male pride in different ways: Flair vs. Steamboat, Flair vs. Funk, possibly Jumbo vs. Tenryu.

 

In all seriousness, if they really want this to work like the analysis of drama, then it makes sense to start looking at the very best stuff and the richest stuff first.

 

......

 

Then again, it seems a lot easier to do something like "Terrible Turks and Evil Sheiks: Pro Wrestling's Construction of the Middle East"

 

There's a reason for this. Literary theory has built-in tools to deal with topics like that. Feminism, gender theory, post-colonial theory and so on.

 

But it seems to me very easy and almost a little passe to do something like that.

 

What I can't envisage is whether the other people contributing to this are actually going to be referencing specific wrestlers and feuds or just speaking about it in a very general way a la Roland Barthes. "One wrestler, the heel, will attempt to elicit boos from the crowd" -- that sort of thing. Hard to say. I certainly worry about contributors to this volume not knowing their shit -- I mean aside from anything else, if they are only referencing Cena or Hogan or whatever, it belies a lack of scholarship.

[JerryvonKramer]

Another thing I worry about is the general assumption that all wrestling crowds are made-up of racist, sexist idiots. There needs to be some way of explaining that even heels who are very loudly booed might have the respect or even affection of a given audience. The Sheik, for example, in Detroit.

 

Wrestling is often crude and unsubtle, but I think precisely because of that it's too easy to be un-nuanced and make overly sweeping generalisations about it.

[Graham Crackers]

I'm thinking of writing something about male pride in the Magnum TA vs. Tully feud.

Does anyone remember which DVDVR issue has the Magnum vs Tully review where Dean explains how they are Southern archetypes?

[Indikator]

In case anyone wants to do something that is slightly about fans and gender:

 

I found a tremendous tidbit in a pre-WWI newspaper from a Latvian newspaper (in German) from 1910 in which the current events in St. Petersburg, Russia were reported in a column.

 

It mentioned that wrestling shows in St. Petersburg had a predominately female audience while ballet shows had a predominately male audience and only concerts had an evenly mixed audience.

 

To be precise:

The male ballet audience was described as "rich men" but I assume that the female wrestling audience wasn't exactly poor themselves as afaik wrestling shows in general in Europe back then were geared toward an upscale audience as venues were rather small and gambling was often enough pushed as well. In the column entertainment establishments were described in general as "dreadfully expensive". It will probably take a long while until I have enough information about wages and the cost of living so I'll have to trust such sentences for now.

 

So basically in Czar era Russia rich noble women lusted over wrestlers and rich noble men lusted over young ballerinas. And nobody was ever paid to have sex with such noble human beings *cough*

 

Meanwhile in the US you had this (Tim Hornbaker research)

 

Salt Lake City, Utah: Monday, March 27, 1911
(Colonial Theater) ... World Heavyweight Champion Frank Gotch b. Jack Leon (2-0)
(25:00, 10:00) ... Mike Yokel failed to throw Danny Keefe and Adolph Lindroos both in
30:00 (Yokel beat Keefe in 8:00, but was held by Lindroos through the remaining time) ...
Otto Ross and Alex Swanson drew (15:00) ... The Zimmerman Twins (Floyd and Lloyd)
boxed an exhibition to a draw ... (promoter: Harry Heagren) ... (referee: Willard Bean) ...
(large crowd in attendance) ... (paid receipts: $4,361)
...............................

...............................

...............................

The newspaper claimed that the show drew the
"most magnificent crowd ever seen at a sporting event in Salt Lake City." Among those in
attendance were Mormon Church President Joseph F. Smith, Anton Lund, and John
Henry Smith. "Several" women were also present.

[JerryvonKramer]

I've been emailing back and forth with these guys. I very deliberately named dropped stuff like Magnum vs. Tully or Jumbo vs. Tenryu as a kind of litmus test to see where exactly they are coming from.

 

I was mildly disappointed by the reaction which I half expected. Namely, that this is a book for an academic audience and they want to write about things that would be of interest to them. In other words, they want to keep the discussion of wrestling on a general and vague level and not get into specific matches or feuds. I think this is a real mistake, for all sorts of reasons. Anyway, they have said that they are "very interested" in hearing my thoughts on how wrestling connects with my "work on Shakespeare or critical literary theory or how that body of work might come to bear on pro-wrestling".

 

I was a bit dubious to be honest. However, I still feel like I have to do something. I thought I'd share what I wrote back to them -- it might spark more interesting discussion here than it does in the email chain. For what it's worth, I do think it's too easy generalise about wrestling fans and wrestling in general, and anything I write for this thing is going to be along these lines. I don't want to be an apologist for wrestling, but I don't want to allow it to get buried either.

 

I've had a think about this. Wrestling is a unique hybrid of theatre, sport, magic trick / illusion and freak show or carnival sideshow, in four roughly equal parts. Any analysis of it as performance somehow has to do justice to all four aspects.

 

I've written a lot on cultural materialism, and I think that wrestling most obviously lends itself to cultural materialist readings focusing on class, gender, and race. But unlike Shakespeare, at least ostensibly, wrestling is nakedly ideological because characters are designed to elicit boos or cheers from a partisan crowd in a mostly straightforward morality play. However, I think that when this sort of thing has been attempted in the past, it has far too readily assumed that wrestling audiences function at the level of a stupid and reactionary mob, which is to say that it is easy to assume they are racist, sexist, homophobic, and so on -- whereas, in fact, the relationship between the audience and individual wrestlers is more complex. Every wrestler retains the capacity to "turn" and crowds are able to embrace characters they once hated -- and this includes "evil foreigners", wrestlers with gay gimmicks, and so on. Wrestling audiences have a remarkable capacity to "forgive" past misdeeds. The very same characteristics that got a given character boos will now elicit cheers. And this mallebility is often overlooked if you look at only a single performance. In addition, although the crowd might boo a given wrestler, it is also possible for them (at the same time) to hold great affection for them. So it is not possible to draw glib conclusions about their morality or ideology simply from their reactions. Perhaps owing to its roots in the carnival sideshow -- although it appears xenophobic, reactionary, and so on --wrestling is in fact strangely inclusive. Boos can actually be an audience's way of showing acceptance, because true rejection by the crowd in wrestling is met by general indifference, not by boos. Riots were generally caused by outrageous villainous acts, not by blind prejudice.

 

In addition to all that, race, nationality (and sexuality) in wrestling are incredibly fluid: a Canadian can become a Russian over night, an Italian can be a Native American, an Hawaiian can be Japanese, etc. Again, while on the face of it this might seem offensive and racist, in fact it is a tacit acknowledgement that there is no real difference between races.

 

At the same time, of course, promoters have always played on their audience's political fears in order to generate heat -- in much the same way as tabloid newspapers have done since their inception. Like the tabloid audience, wrestling crowds have traditionally been working-class. They tend to dislike show offs, those who flaunt their wealth, those who are arrogant or stuck up, those who are born into privilege, petty officials, and people who fancy themselves as "intellectuals". They root for the underdog. They are generally patriotic and fear perceived threats on the sovreignty or prosperity of their nation. Hence, in America and Britain, during the period after World War 2, there were a lot of Nazi and Japanese villains, during the Cold War there were Russian "comrades", and after the Iran hostage crisis and during the Gulf War, there were Middle Eastern threats. Wrestling will exploit whatever is in the zeitgeist and more or less reflects its audience's values -- which at any given time are, simply put, not coherent and subject to change.

 

Much more than theatre, wrestling is a symbiotic "give and take" beween the wrestlers and the audience. A promoter may have a particular vision (even a moral or ideological one), but the wrestlers must control the crowd and also react to them. The course of events is much less fixed than it in is during a play. The wrestlers have more freedom than actors and (historically at least) most of their performance is improvised (or "called in the ring"). Likewise, the crowd are in a unique position to dictate events. If they cheer someone who should be getting booed, often the promoter has to reposition them and change their plans. And what elicits a cheer or a boo is not always ideological; it can be an intangible -- the way someone carries themselves, or looks, or the sorts of moves they do.

 

I could write something along these lines. It would be a cultural materialist approach to wrestling, with a particular focus on crowd dynamics. But my aim would be to do more than a 1980s-style "exposure" of wrestling's ideologicial underpinnings (which strikes me as being "obvious" and not very interesting) and to get at the complicated relationship between the crowd, the wrestlers, and ideology. What do you think?

[Loss]

I think it's worth pointing out that at least in a major league wrestling company in the United States, there has never been a "gay gimmick". There have been effeminate gimmicks, but they have always been too afraid to actually use the word "gay". The effeminate gimmick is meant to play on audience homophobia, but I can't recall a wrestler point blank ever actually being gay by saying he was attracted to men and declaring himself.

 

It sounds like they are looking to cover material that has already been covered many times. I'm reminded of this nauseating book:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Wrestling-Spectacle-Peformance-Studies/dp/1578060214

[JerryvonKramer]

I might just tell them to stick it, and write a book just by myself. I don't see why people who know absolutely nothing about wrestling think they can write a book on it.

 

Their refusal to get into specifics wouldn't be tolerated if the topic was more exalted. Imagine writing a book on Shakespeare where you don't actually get into specific plays. All it boils down to is the fact they know performance theory, and they don't know wrestling. That's all it is. You might call it a lack of basic research.

 

I wasn't really thinking about doing anything on wrestling ever in my career, but this has got me thinking that if it's going to be done, I'd prefer for it to be done right.

[tim]

I'll tell you the paper I REALLY want. A sociological explanation of the different behavior of wrestling crowds. Why are wrestling crowds more tepid today than they used to be? Why are northeast cities more rowdy than the South? Why are places like Chicago and NYC so much more "smarky" even though the rise of the internet should have equalized the smarkiness of wrestling crowds nation wide? I want theory, history, demographics on this.

[dawho5]

That's actually something I would really be interested in reading about.

[pol]

I'd really like to see a paper on the interplay of the real and fake in wrestling. I think two popular views of wrestling among non-fans are 1. it's a fake sport that purports to be real and 2. it's a fictional reality just like any other, but neither of these actually get to the heart of what wrestling has historically been.

 

Some things to explore:

 

1. Why, even in kayfabe, is the Montreal Screwjob a bigger deal than any of the hundreds of other screwjobs that have happened before and since?

2. Worked shoots in general.

3. The UWF-i vs. New Japan feud... shoot-style guys doing spots where they refuse to cooperate with the New Japan guys' fake pro-style offense, even though the shoot-style guys were also fakes. On what level was the audience supposed to take this? On what level did they take it?

4. The general presentation of real shooters in wrestling (thinking of Brock a few years ago pretty much calling Cena a fake pro wrestler).

 

I'd love to see literary analysis applied to this stuff, especially stuff from the kayfabe years. I think the way wrestling purported to be a legitimate sport yet would constantly undermine that facade in an effort to convince you that this time it really IS real is fascinating.