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SMACKDOWN
Entry 12 of 18 | show all | print this entry |
It's Thursday Night, and I'm watching WWE Smackdown on TV Tiga (TV 3). Tonight's card features "Booker T," a massive black man who shakes his dreads over his face in exaltation as he struts to the ring. He is introduced by his personal cheerleader, a curvaceous young black woman wearing a slinky gown and a Miss America Crown. Booker T's opponent this evening is Chris Benoit, a "Joe Six-Pack" type and veteran of the pro-wrestling circuit. Chris is smaller, with a five o'clock shadow and a receding hairline. Judging by the enthusiasm of the crowd, he needs no introduction. I am amused by the fact that many of the people who revere Benoit (ben-wah) probably loathe the French.
Sometime during the last several years, executives in the pro-wrestling industry decided to drop the façade: these days, even the television commentators refer to their event as sports entertainment, not sport. This is a fair description: professional wrestling in its present form is an impressive athletic (and social) exhibition. And it sure is entertaining. I, for one, am transfixed.
(After Benoit leaps from the ropes to bodyslam Booker T's head into the mat, things look bad for Booker as Benoit moves in for the pin. But no! Booker's cheerleader leaps into the ring with a folding chair lifted over her head, poised to swing at Benoit. Benoit quickly dispatches of the chair, but is distracted, allowing a rejuvenated Booker T to ambush him from behind! Benoit, spent, succumbs to the pin. The cheerleader beams and jumps up and down. The crowd roils with anger. What controversy! What injustice!)
The people at WWE are not dumb, and they probably do not have dreadlocks or five o'clock shadows (they may have receding hairlines). They have succeeded in transforming the ring into the Roman Coliseum. There is the same athletic grandeur and showmanship. There are gladiators, and there are underdogs (read: social minorities). It is a battle of egos, of right against wrong, a clash of civilizations. The audience is wrought with indecision and emotion. One can only imagine that the spectators standing ringside feel the same way about Booker T as the Romans felt about the Christians.
Or maybe they just like watching huge men pretend to beat the crap out of each other.
(The undisputed World Champion, Bautista, has worn down his opponent. He turns to the crowd and pounds on the ropes. A man possessed, he gives a thumbs-down gesture to the audience. (This happened after I wrote the previous paragraph, I swear!) With a flourish, Bautista finishes off his opponent, who lies limp on the mat. The audience screams itself hoarse.)
I went to a live WWE RAW show this past spring at Penn State with one of my best friends, whose dad is a very successful freelance writer for professional wrestling magazines. One of the matches at that show featured a wrestler with Middle-Eastern features and his turbaned manager. The crowd hated him. The manager stuttered through a plea for respect in broken English: "We are not terrorists. We only want respect." The crowd booed even louder. It was compelling theatre for everyone in attendance, playing each person's visceral emotions from a slightly different angle. I silently cheered when he won his match.
It is embarrassing to realize that this episode of WWE RAW was probably aired here, and I wonder how people here feel about the man representing their religion to lower-middle class America. I wonder if they realize that it is all scripted, and I wonder how they perceive the role that professional wrestling plays in American society. I wonder if they would hate us so much if we didn't create these institutions to reinforce and justify our intuitive insecurities regarding other cultures.
I am torn about whether such a categorically inaccurate portrayal of minorities should be allowed. I believe, conditionally, in free markets - of capital, of goods, and most importantly, of information. It is the latter that forms the basis of the freedom of expression that has been immortalized, even deified, in the U.S. constitution and around the world. But free markets (for information or otherwise) are only optimal given full information and perfect competition; that is, a free market may not be the best if there is only one person selling. If Booker T or the Middle Eastern wrestler are an effective "information monopoly" with respect to those in the audience - if professional wrestling is their only source of information about black people or Muslims - then the optimality of a free market does not apply, just as under monopoly or oligopoly conditions in more traditional realms of economics.
The solution is better education - access to "information markets," if you will. If people had general access to objective, comprehensive information, they would be free to choose the source they felt was most credible, and professional wrestling could respond to demand for sports entertainment in whatever way is the most compelling and profitable without contributing to damaging structural flaws in the American worldview. It is this structural change that is the problem. Markets should be left free to ebb and flow, but when they begin to make lasting changes on the fundamental conditions of an economy (or a society), it is time to consider greater regulation. But how do you regulate information? Would it be undemocratic or unconstitutional to require WWE to commit a certain percentage of its profits to multicultural education? What individual or body can credibly certify that their portrayal is damaging at all?
Now if you'll excuse me, Smackdown is still on.
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