The Construction and Performance of Race in American Professional Wrestling
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THE DARK CARNIVAL: THE CONSTRUCTION AND PERFORMANCE OF RACE IN AMERICAN PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING Nicholas Porter A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2011 Committee: Dr. Montana Miller, Advisor Dr. Dalton Jones Dr. Kristen Rudisill ii ABSTRACT Dr. Montana Miller, Advisor The aim of this thesis was to analyze the presence of race in American professional wrestling. Wrestling is a performance form, and draws much of its inspiration from the culture of the American nation. It reflects cultural trends through its wrestlers, who portray characters designed to appeal to a mass audience. However, its predetermined or “scripted” nature implies a huge degree of control on the part of its producers. Everything in wrestling is a pre-meditated and as such representations of cultural issues such as race can be interrogated for the cultural mentality that lies behind them. My interest falls in investigating how race was and is displayed within wrestling, and how the performance today addresses this complex matter in an increasingly multicultural American audience. An underlying theme is that the construction and depiction of racial wrestlers is the result, or avoidance of, of crucial changes in the wider American culture. The actual formation of wrestling characters—and the negotiations non-white wrestlers have to make between their racial identities and the nature of the characters they portray—is a recurring theme that I believe vital to a deeper analysis of the subject. The focus of my thesis is a chronological one. I begin with wrestling’s emergence and development between 1870 and 1920; its establishment as a white-dominated sport; and the presence of a few select individuals who challenged the prevalent racial hierarchy of the period. I next progress to the arrival of wrestling on regional television between 1948, and analyze the development of racial wrestling characters on television through to 1983. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the period 1983 to the present, when wrestling has become established as a national entertainment presence and non-white wrestlers perform before a vast national audience. iii My conclusions are that American wrestling, as a field that draws heavily on its cultural surrounds, must reflect the evolutions in American race relations. The necessity of presenting valid multidimensional non-white characters is essential for wrestling to continue to evolve as a cultural form relevant to its changing cultural surrounds. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the vital contributions of Dr. Montana Miller, Dr. Dalton Jones, and Dr. Kristen Rudisill, all of whose expertise and advisement helped this project reach fruition. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER I. WRESTLING FORMS ITS OTHERS ........................................................... 23 The Black Pioneer ...................................................................................................... 25 Mind and Body .......................................................................................................... 34 The Exotic Touch ....................................................................................................... 37 CHAPTER II. SOUND AND VISION ................................................................................. 44 The New Others ......................................................................................................... 47 Black and White in black and white .......................................................................... 52 Roots .......................................................................................................................... 60 Tremors ...................................................................................................................... 63 CHAPTER III. MADE MEN ................................................................................................ 65 The Death of Regionalism ......................................................................................... 66 Hyperrace ................................................................................................................... 79 Wrestling’s Representations from the Dark Side....................................................... 90 New Horizons?........................................................................................................... 102 CONCLUSION. TRADITION AND RECONFIGURATION ............................................ 109 WORKS CITED .................................................................................................................... 118 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1 William Muldoon ....................................................................................................... 24 2 Viro Small .................................................................................................................. 25 3 Jim Mitchell ............................................................................................................... 47 4 Art Thomas ................................................................................................................ 48 5 Bobo Brazil ................................................................................................................ 58 6 Kamala ....................................................................................................................... 68 7 Ernie Ladd .................................................................................................................. 69 1 Introduction. Within the cosmos of American performance entertainment, professional wrestling occupies a peripheral position. Its present incarnation is that of a quasi-fantastic spectacle emphasizing exaggerated personas, a degree of physical appearance only obtainable for the devoutly image-conscious, and an intricate pantomime of choreographed and improvised violence. Deliberately fantastic, wrestling purposefully straddles a line between masterfully- arranged showpiece and shallow fakeness. Watching wrestling in the States today, either the multi-million dollar globe-conquering empire that is World Wrestling Entertainment or one of the innumerable “independent” promotions that stage intimate shows in small venues across the land, the viewer must suspend his disbelief in order to get the most enjoyment from watching the performances. Behind the mystique of expensive pyrotechnics and lasers transforming colossal sports arenas or a cheap, rented dry-ice machine injecting some color into the starkness of a high school gym, wrestling contains the same complex DNA as many of the other cornerstones of American performance. The connections to traditional folk performance, Vaudeville, and Jim Crow have been obscured with wrestling’s transcendence into the popular consciousness as an extravaganza of color and vibrancy. American entertainment has always drawn upon the confluence of representations that swirl within its social fabric. Race, perhaps more than any other socio-cultural phenomenon, remains an enduring staple of different performances, one with an intensely debated history of popular representation serving to accentuate its continuing status as a point of heightened social urgency. The subject of race abounds with controversy and contradiction and to this day a very public phenomenon, embedded within American history and infused with generations of visual 2 signification. The various readings afforded race in the popular media offer up a multitude of different opinions on the subject, and many performance media have been the site of meditations on its continued significance to American life. Wrestling’s relationship with race is one that on the surface appeals tellingly undeveloped. The lurid characters that are the hallmarks of American pro wrestling in 2011 imply a simple approach—one of shallow figures not appropriate to deep social commentary. But behind first impressions wrestling stands at an important junction between race and performance. Questions of racial equality and advancement have always leant themselves to visual representation and wrestling, with its glamorizing of the body, is a deceptively insightful medium. It may not appear the most sensitive medium for such powerful discourses such as those regarding race but its history, as this thesis will attempt to illustrate, is intertwined with a compelling collision of spectacle and relevancy that provides much hidden insight into the culture of the nation. What wrestling shares with its fellow performance media is an evolutionary path steeped in a performance tradition that came of age prior to the advent of the production techniques which would turn it into a profitable enterprise. Emerging in the eighteen-sixties, wrestling would develop throughout the remaining decades of the nineteenth century. Before the bright lights and meticulously-honed showmanship were pioneered, wrestling was a travelling show, a carnival attraction that would roll from town-to-town across impoverished Middle America. The contests, at first legitimate tests of sporting and athletic prowess, gradually morphed into a semi- choreographed pastiche of sport, a shady practice that bore distinctly carnival-style overtones of deception and under-handed business chicanery.