As each year passes, more facets of popular culture become somewhat like wrestling: a stage-managed reality in which scripted storylines bleed spontaneously into actual events, with the fuzzy line between fact and fiction seeming to intensify, not diminish, the viewer’s obsession with the melodrama. The modern media landscape is scattered with reality shows that viewers know that are not real; that basically, is professional wrestling. In the same vein as soap operas, melodrama can be established in abundance within professional wrestling’s storylines, wrestler persona types, and physical action. Professional wrestling is overly exaggerated and is used to appeal and to arouse a desired emotional response from the audience. Once the wrestler
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Wrestling focuses on melodrama as a primary underlying theme that plays out inside the ring, outside the ring. This key to the impact that wrestling has on humanity and popular culture. As Roland Barthes, French literary theorist and philosopher, professional wrestling is like “perfect intelligibility of reality,” “a pure, full, and rounded nature (Barthes 25). Susan Sontag wrote “Notes on 'Camp '” Professional wrestling is much like ‘Camp’ as she writes, “the love of the exaggerated, the ‘off,’ of things-being-what-they-are-not in many ways” (Sontag 1). Professional wrestling is half-theater, half-steel chair shots to the head. Professional wrestling may never be commonly understood. Each adult admirer of professional wrestling has met those people who turn their heads and ask, “You do know it’s fake, right?” Well, sure. As Sontag, Camp is much like professional wrestling in principle, is a “way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon.” (Sontag 277) Professional wrestling which holds as its “metaphor” the notion of “life as theatre.” (Sontag 280) “of artifice and exaggeration,” (Sontag 275) “stylization,” (Sontag 277) “travesty”, impersonation, theatrically,” (Sontag 280) “glamour,” and a “glorification of character” (Sontag 285). It is not a secret that professional wrestling is like a theatrical play, but the secrets do not diminish its spectacle, melodrama, and theatrical aspects. If people know professional wrestling is not really a sport, then what is professional wrestling and why is it so interesting to its fans? These words were spoken by director and producer, Barry Blaustein, in his
Wrestling focuses on melodrama as a primary underlying theme that plays out inside the ring, outside the ring. This key to the impact that wrestling has on humanity and popular culture. As Roland Barthes, French literary theorist and philosopher, professional wrestling is like “perfect intelligibility of reality,” “a pure, full, and rounded nature (Barthes 25). Susan Sontag wrote “Notes on 'Camp '” Professional wrestling is much like ‘Camp’ as she writes, “the love of the exaggerated, the ‘off,’ of things-being-what-they-are-not in many ways” (Sontag 1). Professional wrestling is half-theater, half-steel chair shots to the head. Professional wrestling may never be commonly understood. Each adult admirer of professional wrestling has met those people who turn their heads and ask, “You do know it’s fake, right?” Well, sure. As Sontag, Camp is much like professional wrestling in principle, is a “way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon.” (Sontag 277) Professional wrestling which holds as its “metaphor” the notion of “life as theatre.” (Sontag 280) “of artifice and exaggeration,” (Sontag 275) “stylization,” (Sontag 277) “travesty”, impersonation, theatrically,” (Sontag 280) “glamour,” and a “glorification of character” (Sontag 285). It is not a secret that professional wrestling is like a theatrical play, but the secrets do not diminish its spectacle, melodrama, and theatrical aspects. If people know professional wrestling is not really a sport, then what is professional wrestling and why is it so interesting to its fans? These words were spoken by director and producer, Barry Blaustein, in his