[GWE] The Moral Component

[Childs]

Well yeah, wouldn't be healthy to have too strong a moral compass in this town.

[Matt D]

Again, it's not necessarily a moral thing with me. I mean hell, I'm going to have Buddy Rose in my top 5.

[Loss]

I think what makes Benoit a unique case is that he was the living embodiment of a wrestling philosophy a lot of us celebrated. He was supposed to be the poster boy for a certain vision of what wrestling was. There would have still been some disgust for sure, but someone like Van Hammer doing the same thing wouldn't have hit people nearly as hard in the same way.

[goodhelmet]

Pretty obvious response from a Ravens beat writer

 

Quote of the year.

[Johnny Sorrow]

"Sure he murdered someone, but what a bumper!"

 

That's fucking hilarious.

[El-P]

What I find a little strange is that people don't give two shits about Brody until his killer is brought up.

 

It's really not a matter of caring for Brody himself. It's a matter of "Do I want to actively seek out matches from a guy who most probably murdered a guy and get enjoyment out of his work ?" My personnal answer is no. Like I said, it's a case by case matter, as I know of (and understand) people who can't watch a Benoit match anymore, while I've been able to (in a broader context, again).

 

Now if you're talking about caring about the victim, indeed I have no emotional link to Brody at all while I was a fan of Woman. Plus, I am very sensitive to the issue of violence against women, so in all logic I should have had more issues watching Benoit. Like I said, my own personal question here is "Do I want to willingly search for some new entertainment from a guy who killed ?". The key points are *willingly* and *new* to me. At this point, I'd rather not.

[W2BTD]

I am going to use this as an excuse to bring back one of the things that I wrote around a decade ago in smarkschoice. The top 100 reference is to the Best Wrestler Ever poll back in the day.

 

Though I still haven't been able to watch a Benoit match without thinking "he killed his wife". I almost suceeded once (something during ECW TV) and right before the pinfall I thought ... not sure why, but until now I didn't think about him killing his wife.

 

In pro wrestling (and other industries like music) unfortunately it's too easy to find top performers who are terrible human beings.

---

 

Jerry Lawler allegedly sodomizing 12 years old girls is something that made me hate him for years and years and I couldn't even look at him without being sick. But there's a point where I realized... it's all pro wres, nobody's a saint. The father of one of my heroes in wrestling (and a fine wrestling legend by himself) was a rapist, my all time childhood idol is an asshole who gets a kick out of belittling people, and in my top 100 there's sexual weirdos who fucked young hairless boys at the arena showers, known drunks who put other people's life in danger several times, legit lunatics, coke fiends, alleged rapists, somebody who threw a hooker off a hotel window killing her, somebody who was drunk and ran over an old man also killing him, a guy who did porn with a "female" swedish bodybuilder, several guys who left their families to marry girls "in the biz" (and one of those guys started "dating" her when she was 16 or so), one of the pioneers in bringing coke to the lucha locker rooms and allegedly getting hooked many guys who would eventually become dangerous junkies and/or murderers, etc.

 

VIVA PRO WRESTLING~

 

I think I know who one or two of these are, but i'd love to see some names attached.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

What I find a little strange is that people don't give two shits about Brody until his killer is brought up.

 

It's really not a matter of caring for Brody himself. It's a matter of "Do I want to actively seek out matches from a guy who most probably murdered a guy and get enjoyment out of his work ?" My personnal answer is no. Like I said, it's a case by case matter, as I know of (and understand) people who can't watch a Benoit match anymore, while I've been able to (in a broader context, again).

 

Now if you're talking about caring about the victim, indeed I have no emotional link to Brody at all while I was a fan of Woman. Plus, I am very sensitive to the issue of violence against women, so in all logic I should have had more issues watching Benoit. Like I said, my own personal question here is "Do I want to willingly search for some new entertainment from a guy who killed ?". The key points are *willingly* and *new* to me. At this point, I'd rather not.

 

 

I respect what you're saying, but by airing your thoughts aren't you implying that the rest of us should agree with you and feel guilty for enjoying Invader bouts?

[El-P]

I respect what you're saying, but by airing your thoughts aren't you implying that the rest of us should agree with you and feel guilty for enjoying Invader bouts?

 

No. I'm just a little bit surprised by the enthousiasm, considering the backlash Benoit got (and again, some have been vocals around here about the fact they haven't been able or willing to watch Benoit since the murders, while I could, so...). My initial post also had a part of sarcastic black comedy in it, but it got lost in translation I think. Then it got all real serious, which is a good in the end thing since I believe it's an interesting point to discuss.

[ohtani's jacket]

Okay. I get it.

[BillThompson]

I separate the art from the artist. What an artist does in real life certainly informs their art, and that has to be taken into account. At the same time an piece of art can be taken and viewed as something separate from the artist's real life proclivities. Basically, it doesn't effect me one way or the other, because I can enjoy a Benoit/Invader match and still recognize they are murdering sacks of shit.

[funkdoc]

I separate the art from the artist. What an artist does in real life certainly informs their art, and that has to be taken into account. At the same time an piece of art can be taken and viewed as something separate from the artist's real life proclivities. Basically, it doesn't effect me one way or the other, because I can enjoy a Benoit/Invader match and still recognize they are murdering sacks of shit.

 

in the bigger picture, the issue i take with this is that it (perhaps inadvertently) tends to minimize the deeds done and lead to greater support for these people in general. think of all the big hollywood names digging in to defend woody allen and trash dylan farrow after she came forward with the molestation stuff...if that's what valuing art means, then art can go to hell.

[BillThompson]

That isn't defending the art though, it's defending the person. The Woody petitions basically said, "Woody is a great artist and a great guy, just leave him alone already!" I'm not saying that, for me it's that I can say, "Woody Allen is a tremendous filmmaker, but at the same time he's a despicable human being who committed some horrendous acts. As an artist Woody gets an A+, as a human he's clearly a failure." That's an important distinction to make, I think.

[goc]

I'm not taking anything but wrestling into the equation. I don't equate the performers with the people doing the performances at all. I don't ever care to find out more about the personal lives of people I watch in movies or TV either.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm not taking anything but wrestling into the equation. I don't equate the performers with the people doing the performances at all. I don't ever care to find out more about the personal lives of people I watch in movies or TV either.

I'm the same, I just don't care at all about it.

 

I've never really liked it when the details of biography colour how people look at things either. For example, sometimes you see students get really into the narrative around Sylvia Plath's suicide and really *that's* what they want to talk about and are interested in, not the work.

 

See also, Kurt Combain, Van Gough, DFW, Virginia Woolf, anyone called von Erich.

 

Are you into the person or into the work? There's a hard separation for me.

[victory]

I have a hard time seperating the wrestler and the person. Especially if they commited a heinous act like a Benoit or Ken Wayne. If I have an emotional investment in a wrestler and they commit the unthinkable I can't just turn the other cheek. Sorry it doesn't work that way with me. I can't justify giving accolades to a muderer or molester no matter how good they were in the ring. Being a jerk or a bully like Dynamite or a druggie like Kerry I can look past.

[fxnj]

The concept of knocking a guy for actions outside the ring strikes me as an incoherent position. It would firstly be inaccurate to you say you can't separate "the wrestler and the person" so much as that you can't separate "a work of art from a person." It's a key distinction to make since even in a lot of literary criticism with only 1 clear artist behind it, it's still common to examine as simply a product of the surrounding society's values.

 

That's even more apparent in wrestling as you don't just have the 2 guys in the wrestling but also crowds, announcers, production guys, etc. If you view art as simply reflecting an overall zeitgeist, it's as arbitrary to hate a match just because some dude in the ring did something you don't like as it would be to hate it for someone in the crowd did or someone not in the match at all. The haphazard application of this moral high horse to some guys but not to others because "it's not personal enough" or whatever just makes it even more ridiculous. The only way to hate Benoit's actions would be to hate the entire industry surrounding him as that's what really caused what happened.

[Loss]

The only way to hate Benoit's actions would be to hate the entire industry surrounding him as that's what really caused what happened.

 

This is an interesting point, but in a way there was an entire industry built around him. It wasn't professional wrestling at large, it was smark ideology of what good professional wrestling is. That's not the best descriptor, but Benoit was a posterboy for that in the sense that he was a great worker, wrestled all over the world and was at times kept from being the number one guy by evil bookers, lumbering big men and casual fans too stupid to appreciate a great, no-frills wrestler.

[Matt D]

I had a post that I didn't actually go through at one point talking about the general feeling in 98 when he had the phantom TV title win and people's reactions when it wasn't acknowledged but I didn't quite feel up to articulating it