Wrestling = Art... A Conversation

[The Man in Blak]

[Matt D]

All concepts work on this principle. Gold has value because everyone else accepts it does. If they don't, it has no value.

 

Which is in part why I think people should fully appreciate what people bring to the table here.

[BillThompson]

"But I think it's art, I do!"

 

Yeah so what? No one else does, so it isn't.

 

All concepts work on this principle. Gold has value because everyone else accepts it does. If they don't, it has no value.

 

No way around it. Narcissistic to believe otherwise.

 

Then why do you spend so much time pushing Dory as a good wrestler? You think he's good, no one else does, so he isn't.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

"But I think it's art, I do!"

Yeah so what? No one else does, so it isn't.

All concepts work on this principle. Gold has value because everyone else accepts it does. If they don't, it has no value.

No way around it. Narcissistic to believe otherwise.

 

Then why do you spend so much time pushing Dory as a good wrestler? You think he's good, no one else does, so he isn't.

Ill-advised example

[BillThompson]

 

 

"But I think it's art, I do!"

Yeah so what? No one else does, so it isn't.

All concepts work on this principle. Gold has value because everyone else accepts it does. If they don't, it has no value.

No way around it. Narcissistic to believe otherwise.

Then why do you spend so much time pushing Dory as a good wrestler? You think he's good, no one else does, so he isn't.

Ill-advised example

 

 

On my part? It fits your example perfectly. In our little eco-system here you are the only one who pushes Dory as a great worker. No one agrees with you and sees value in him as a great worker. Thus using your reductive approach to art he's not a great worker, and you're being a narcissist.

[PeteF3]

I think Dory is a great worker and part of a top-5 all-time tag team.

 

I also despise Duran Duran, but I'm admittedly a dwindling minority on that.

[JerryvonKramer]

I don't think "is this art?" and"is Dory a great worker?" are the same type of question.

[BillThompson]

I don't think "is this art?" and"is Dory a great worker?" are the same type of question.

 

I think they are, since what Dory is doing in the ring is creating art. But, it's more about how you are framing the original question. You're applying an interpretation to the question of art, one that is based on the idea of societal collective thought. I'm doing the same with Dory.

[PeteF3]

But with Dory and PWO it's an awfully limited "collective." Ask the question again at Wrestling Classics and you're not going to get "no one else" believing he was great.

[BillThompson]

This is true, but the same is true of wrestling as art. If we want to expand the ecosystem we are dealing with then I believe that the "You're being a narcissist if you think wrestling is art" argument falls apart because there will be more than enough people who think differently. I don't believe in the theory Parv is putting forth.

[jdw]

We live in a country where the most talked about/analyzed/broken down/obsessed over things are football and a TV show which has a kid being immolated so that a fire priestess can birth a shadow monster. Those are not just perfectly acceptable things to talk about and analyze and really obsess over, but if you don't, you're considered odd. NASCAR is up there. Golf is up there. For a while Survivor and American Idol were. We could have just as easily ended up in a world where ice dancing became the big thing.

 

I don't want wrestling to be mainstream. I don't want it to be sport. I don't care if it's art. What I'm arguing instead is that there's no difference between having an obsessed argument about who should be in the MLB hall of fame or who should go in the NFL draft or The Bachelor or Breaking Bad or whatever.

 

 

I believe that's what I said, with something even less big as the NFL: Boy Band / Teen Idols.

 

There's nothing wrong with being an obsessive nutty hardcore fan of What Ever. There are loads of Niches and subniches of hardcore fandom. They're all doing the same shit we're doing. I'm sure we can find SciFi / Fantasy sites and boads doing the same GWE equiv several times over. Music boards do the same thing, and go on benders every time Rolling Stone or some other group of "experts" rolls out a new "Greatest X" list. We get it in movies once a decade when Sight & Sound comes out with the poll... and then hundreds of times in between around the web when folks do various list (AFI, Entertainment Weekly, etc).

 

It's all a diversion from reality and whatever meaning it has comes from what we install into it through our discussions. That you brought up boy bands was a ridiculous comparison because that goes back to the mainstream argument, and frankly, I don't care.

 

 

Really has nothing to do with "mainstream". It has to do with a genre of entertainment that has passionate fans like pro wrestling... okay, passionate and nutty fans like pro wrestling. Both largely don't care what other people thing of the genre they a fan of: they just give a shit that *they* and their fell fans dig the stuff and eat it up.

 

You can think it a silly analogy, but they take their fandom as seriously as we do ours. :/

 

 

What the rest of society thinks has no bearing on what we do, nor should it.

 

 

Of course. Kinda like... Boy Band fans.

 

 

I care about the opinions of the people whose opinions I care about here. Going "Well, sure, let's talk about this, but aren't we nuts!" doesn't help anyone. It's pointlessly dismissive and we deserve better than that.

 

 

Admitting that we're hardcore obsessive nutty fans isn't dismissive. It celebrates our fandom.

 

Do you really think that the Brown Coats think it's dismissive to call them obsessive nutty hardcore fans of Firefly? No. Their obsessive nutty hardcore fandom got a $40M movie made that at least provided one avenue of closure to their beloved show. They're nutty fans and damn proud of it.

 

Being nuts about something isn't always a bad thing. That we've had nutty fans of wrestlers like Lawler, The Destroyer, Colon, Fujiwara and all those British wrestlers has been a massive positive to expanding the base of what (at least in our own nutty subgenre of a subgenre of a genre) is considered a Great Worker. The people who have obsessively pushed those guys, and countless others, have been a great thing.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

I don't think "is this art?" and"is Dory a great worker?" are the same type of question.

 

I think they are, since what Dory is doing in the ring is creating art. But, it's more about how you are framing the original question. You're applying an interpretation to the question of art, one that is based on the idea of societal collective thought. I'm doing the same with Dory.

is this an apple? That's a question with a clear answer.

 

Is this money? Well that's a little trickier. It might be money for these people at this time but in other times it has no function as currency.

 

Clearly there's no "in my opinion" about it because either it's money or it isn't.

 

Is this worker great? More of a clear opinion question. A value judgement.

 

The art question is more like the money question.

[jdw]

As far as nutty fans not being a negative, but at times a wonderful thing:

 

 

 

These folks were ECW Fans before there was ECW with their glorious fun in participative watching of a movie they loved while a big chunk of the country thought not only was the movie not any good, but that they were kooky fans. Did they give a shit? No.

 

Suspect there are a few of here who saw at least one midnight showing of this and were blown away by the fun the regulars and long-timers were having with it.

 

* * * * *

 

BillThompson, on 19 Jun 2015 - 09:42 AM, said:

 

Bix, Loss, and a few others made my points for me pretty much. I stand by my statement; wrestling is art. It's something being done as a form of expression, where narratives are being built, stories are being told, and craft is on display. Denying that behind smokescreen comparisons and "Jeez, you really want to call this crap art?" or "It's a business, that's not art" is all rather reductive. Trash is art, low brow is art; the intent to make money does not stop something from being art.

 

 

Again, I offered up something else that was (i) a form of expression, where (ii) narratives are being built, (iii) stories are being told, and (iv) craft is on display. My guess is that the vast majority of people in the world don't think the vast majority of it's "expression" is art.

 

Of course we also just finished the NBA where all four of those things occurred over the course of the 82 game season and the four rounds of the playoffs. Art?

[BillThompson]

I'm only going to say this once, but I find you to be someone not worth talking to or conversing with in any way. You're wasting your time by formulating responses to anything I say, as I will not be responding back, after this one time.

[BillThompson]

 

 

I don't think "is this art?" and"is Dory a great worker?" are the same type of question.

I think they are, since what Dory is doing in the ring is creating art. But, it's more about how you are framing the original question. You're applying an interpretation to the question of art, one that is based on the idea of societal collective thought. I'm doing the same with Dory.

is this an apple? That's a question with a clear answer.

 

Is this money? Well that's a little trickier. It might be money for these people at this time but in other times it has no function as currency.

 

Clearly there's no "in my opinion" about it because either it's money or it isn't.

 

Is this worker great? More of a clear opinion question. A value judgement.

 

The art question is more like the money question.

 

 

I disagree, both the worker and the art question would fall into an opinion based realm.

[C.S.]

The "the wrestlers didn't think about it this much" talking point just isn't true. Yesterday I interviewed Ricky Steamboat for the second time and both times he had incredibly detailed explanations of his process with ring psychology, and not in the B.S. way that Raven does where it doesn't resemble his actual matches. Everything he mentioned, I could think of an example from his career of him doing exactly what he said. He even went into his psychology of working a body part and why he always worked the arm. Maybe it's not everyone, but a guy we all recognize as one of the best thinks that way.

 

Steamboat takes pride in his work, as he should. But so did Joe Montana and Michael Jordan (or whoever - pick your favorite players for this example). So does the stock boy at the grocery store. So does a secretary who keeps the office running smoothly. They're all the best in their fields. Doesn't make any of those other things art though. Plus. as others have said, Steamboat really is the exception to the rule. I'm sure he believes he's an artist and tries to create art, and he probably succeeds. Bret Hart is probably in the same camp as Steamboat. PN News, on the other hand, probably didn't think that way. But I'll use someone "good" and go with Bobby Heenan again, who also didn't think that way. Lex Luger is another example. 10% fall into the Steamboat/Bret camp. The other 90% are in "the business."

 

I think this comes down to two camps: people who see art in the way a ketchup bottle is designed (for example) and people apply that term more literally. The former would consider wrestling art because certain aspects of it have artistic merit. The latter thinks in broader terms and wouldn't classify wrestling as art. I'm going with the 90% of the people in "the business" who don't treat it that way. Hard to argue against that IMO.

 

BTW, oy vey, had no idea I'd be opening such a can of worms by listing "it's art" as one of my pet peeves. This has been going on for how many pages now?

[ohtani's jacket]

Artistic works are commodities. There's plenty of people in the music business who see it as a business, as well as in film, TV and any other medium you care to name. The fact of the matter is that wrestling is in the entertainment industry and therefore closely linked to other commodities which are often considered art. There is an "art" to what wrestlers do in terms of craft and the commodity they produce can easily be called a "work." It's not a stretch for it to be classified as a "work of art." The problem seems to be with intent. A wrestler sets out to entertain people, get a reaction from the crowd, maybe get paid more or whatever it is he desires, whereas many people's image of "art" is setting out to paint the Sistine Chapel. Just because it's not of a higher calling doesn't necessarily make it any less of an artform. You can call it pop art or whatever you like. I personally think it's a limited art form (if indeed it is one) that doesn't have the depth of a comic book or even an animated cartoon, but that's because of its storytelling limitations. But it can be visceral and powerful and full of human drama. If it were all about dollars and cents, I'm not sure they would go to those lengths to create such performances. Other forms of show business don't. So, if it's not art it at least borrows from other forms of art -- like narrative and storytelling -- and therefore we can at least say it uses artistic elements even if it's Bobby Heenan doing comedy. I can understand people being careful not to over praise it, but on the other hand I can understand people refusing to undervalue it. Maybe I'll settle on wrestling being pulp fiction.

[LariatMMBOPPO]

. But I'll use someone "good" and go with Bobby Heenan again, who also didn't think that way. Lex Luger is another example. 10% fall into the Steamboat/Bret camp. The other 90% are in "the business."

 

Creating art and wanting to be compensated aren't mutually exclusive.

 

 

The way Bobby goes into detail about being a good manager shows that while he wants to be paid, he certainly cared about giving people a show worth watching.

[C.S.]

People seem to think I'm saying only "starving artists" can be real artists. No. Of course there's a monetary component. Never suggested otherwise. But when that is the primary motivating factor of 90% of the people in the industry, and the "art" aspect is way down the list, then it ain't art (IMO).

 

Whereas, to use movies as an example, how often have you heard of Clooney, Leo, Molly Ringwald or whoever agreeing to "work scale" or "give up a percentage of their profits" - or whatever it is - to get a smaller movie made. Of course, that doesn't mean every movie is a work of art either or that actors don't do big budget schlock to pad their bank accounts - they do.

[ohtani's jacket]

There are Indy workers who will work for nothing just for the opportunity to wrestle just as there are actors who will work for nothing for the chance to act. And when both actors and wrestlers are washed up they'll again work for cheap. They're comparable professions in many ways. I'm sure there have been instances of a wrestler taking a lower pay day to support a promoter in some stage of their career, but it's not an easy analogy to make as the cost of even the tightest Indy budget dwarves a wrestling show.

[BillThompson]

The comparisons you're throwing out don't wash CS. In any artistic field there are people who will work for less. There are amazing artists whose main driving force is making money and putting food on the table. None of this precludes them from being an artist. Based on what you are saying actors aren't artists, musicians aren't artists, and so on and so forth.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

 

 

I don't think "is this art?" and"is Dory a great worker?" are the same type of question.

I think they are, since what Dory is doing in the ring is creating art. But, it's more about how you are framing the original question. You're applying an interpretation to the question of art, one that is based on the idea of societal collective thought. I'm doing the same with Dory.

 

is this an apple? That's a question with a clear answer.

 

Is this money? Well that's a little trickier. It might be money for these people at this time but in other times it has no function as currency.

 

Clearly there's no "in my opinion" about it because either it's money or it isn't.

 

Is this worker great? More of a clear opinion question. A value judgement.

 

The art question is more like the money question.

 

I disagree, both the worker and the art question would fall into an opinion based realm.

 

Bollocks they do.

 

The status of something as art isn't a matter of opinion. For example, there are certain things that aren't art: science, for example, explicitly isn't art. Nature, for example, explicitly isn't art. So it is a concept that has some sort of stable signification in something other than someone's opinion whereas "is this worker great?" only exists as an opinion.

 

I think you are confusing the fact that art is subject to interpretation and that we can have opinions about works of art with art itself.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Science can be art. Nature can be considered art depending on your belief system. Anything can be art.

[JerryvonKramer]

Hippy crap.

 

Science is definitively not art.

 

Nature is definitively not art either.

 

Don't talk shit now.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Hippy crap.

 

Science is definitively not art.

 

Nature is definitively not art either.

 

Don't talk shit now.

The limits folks instill in their own minds based on "rules" that are just made up by other folks are so fascinating.