Professional Wrestling, Embodied Morality, and Altered States of Consciousness
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Professional Wrestling, Embodied Morality, and Altered States of Consciousness By Lawrence B. McBride A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Anthropology College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: S. Elizabeth Bird, Ph.D. Michael V Angrosino, Ph.D. John A. Napora, Ph.D. Date of Approval: April 13, 2005 Keywords: embodiment, practice, trance, mythology, ethnography Copyright 2005, Lawrence B. McBride Table of Contents Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………..iii Chapter One: Setting the Scene…………….……………………..…………………… 1 The Lunatic Wrestling Federation……………………………………………... 1 The LWF Story…………………….…………………………………………... 5 The Wrestling Underground Comes to My Own Hometown…...……………... 6 Monday Night…………………………………………………...……………... 7 Professional Wrestling and the Music Industry Briefly Compared……………. 8 Going Native?………………………………………………………………….18 Chapter Two: Literature Review………………………………….……....……………22 Scholarship on Professional Wrestling..………………………………..………22 Scholarship on Analogous Practices……………………………………………34 Relevant Theoretical Contributions…………………………………………….42 Habitus……………………………………………………………….…42 Technique……………………………………………………………….43 Implications……………………………………………………………..45 The Scholar’s Body……………………………………………………..48 Chapter Three: Methods…………………………………………….…………………..53 Observation: an Interaction Context…………………………………………….54 Interviews: Eliciting Narrative Accounts………………….…………………….57 Chapter Four: Analysis……………………………………………….………………….62 Adrenaline, Crowd, and Pain……………...……………………………………..67 Wrestling Fans: Multiple Audiences…………………………………………….76 Marks…………………………………….………………………………76 Smarts…………………………………………………………………....82 i In Wrestling’s Defense.………………………………………………………….87 Conclusion…………………..……..…………………………………………….93 Chapter Five: Conclusion…………….……………………………………………….…94 Works Cited………………………….…………………………………………………..99 ii Professional Wrestling, Embodied Morality, and Altered States of Consciousness Lawrence B. McBride ABSTRACT Much of the scholarly work on professional wrestling is based on the assumption that beyond a simple mimicking of sporting combat, the wrestling show is a spectacle that constructs and interrelates socially situated, morally significant categories. In this thesis, I focus on wrestlers themselves, and treat wrestling as a traditional practice that guides how wrestlers relate to their bodies and how they interact with their audience. This project was carried out using ethnographic methods of observation and interviewing. While participant-observation of three independent wrestling promotions provided context, twelve semi-structured interviews carried out with wrestlers at the Florida Wrestleplex in St. Petersburg yielded a model of what wrestlers experience inside the ring. The model emphasizes shifts of consciousness, performer-crowd intersubjectivity, and anomalous experiences of resistance to pain. Respondents describe an in-ring shift in consciousness, alternately referring to it as an “altered state,” “high,” or “trance.” After interpreting these results with reference to anthropological discussions of ritual, embodiment and practice, I argue that hardcore wrestling and the phenomenon of backyard wrestling are best understood as bodily practices that elicit altered states of consciousness for participants. By understanding what it feels like to wrestle, and what the experience of wrestling means to wrestlers, we can re-interrogate the coded messages of wrestling with regard to the practice by which they are produced. This project is intended to contribute to greater anthropological understanding of altered states of consciousness such as channeling or possession trance, as well as broader issues such as how cultural life is variably mediated by the body and by transcendent social narratives. It is my hope that by describing how they relate to their craft, this paper will humanize wrestlers, and place firmly in context some of the aspects of the genre that lead critics to suggest that wrestling contributes to social problems of violence, misogyny, homophobia, or jingoism. iii Chapter One: Setting the Scene Although most people realize that wrestling is immensely popular in the United States, it is certainly the case that I have met many people who know nothing about the phenomenon except for this fact of popularity. Since I myself fell into this camp when I began to study wrestling anthropologically, the most efficient way for me to describe the world of the people I have met through this research is to relate the story of how I first learned about professional wrestling as it actually exists in The United States. It is my intent that the following narrative will serve to set the stage for the analysis of my interview and observational data. Beyond that, I also hope to indicate that wrestling can be profitably approached by anthropologists as a cultural phenomenon. While news media coverage of wrestling often treats it as a human interest story, I want to show that wrestling is an activity that organizes life in meaningful ways for wrestlers and wrestling fans. As such, systematic applications of anthropological method and theory are appropriate for its understanding. The Lunatic Wrestling Federation I was raised in the town of Normal, Illinois. The Bloomington-Normal community, (we call them the Twin Cities,) just reaches a population of 100,000 souls, counting the students at the two universities. I attended one of these colleges, majoring in anthropology at Illinois State University. I was completely absorbed by my studies, and by a tightly-knit group of anthropology students, within which my education was fleshed out conversationally in philosophical debate and anthropological speculation. During the winter of my first semester, one of our group organized an overnight road trip for the lot of us. We were to head to her home town, a small town in the far southern reaches of the Chicago suburbs. The main attraction of the trip was going to be a wrestling show—something called the Lunatic Wrestling Federation. Our host explained that when she had been in high school, some of her friends had formed a wrestling federation “in their backyard.” I had never watched wrestling on television for more than a minute in my life, and I had no idea about live shows, or that local promotions even existed. But I was intrigued by what my friend told me and I went on the trip, two hours drive, north on I-55. What I saw on that trip was a Lunatic Wrestling Federation show. The group had paid for one night’s use of a local community center that looked like a typical high school gymnasium—a huge room, bright as day with fluorescent lights, with bleachers on the sides and a concession stand with hotdogs and soda. The center of this room was occupied by a professional looking ring: a square platform raised to about waist level, with black metal posts rising at each corner. Three ropes wrapped in athletic tape ran around the ring, fencing it in. There were several types of LWF fans in the audience. Here and there was a father bringing two or three young boys with him. But most of the crowd consisted of high-school aged individuals, many of whom employed black trench 1 coats and black jeans to achieve the “gothic” look that was the popular expression of oppositional youth culture at the time. The show itself featured a troupe of young men, (I guessed that, on average, their age was about 22, or 23 years,) performing the ritualized combat that I recognized from what little televised wrestling I had seen. Even though the matches were obviously scripted, with pre-determined outcomes, there was a Referee in the ring, and a paramedic at ringside. The LWF was obviously a wrestling federation in its own right, rather than a simple a lampoon of the televised shows. The LWF wrestlers had invented their own characters rather than simply imitating the famous personalities of the WWF, for example. Even though this was my first LWF show, it was evident that the action fit into what wrestlers call a storyline-- a narrative that continued from show to show, tracing the rising and falling fortunes of the individual wrestlers. The story line connects the shows, providing context for the fighting and maintaining fan interest--an aspect of the genre that often brings up comparisons to television soap operas. The wrestlers entered the arena from an entry-way constructed of piles of gym mats. They passed through this entrance transformed into their wrestling personae just as an actor seems transformed upon entering from stage left or right. As each wrestler came into view, his (they were all male) theme music would blast from a P.A. and ring announcer/color commentator Billy Whack would introduce him, giving his name, weight and hometown. It was usually obvious at a glance whether the entering wrestler was an honest, sportsmanlike hometown hero, or a cheating, arrogant villain, delightful to the audience as an object of vehement ridicule. The heroes seemed to display a vaguely punk rock style, in a handsome, heroic way. But the defining characteristic of the heroes was that they were honest, which is to say they did not cheat in their matches. They displayed a genuine appreciation for the supportive reaction of the crowd. The villains were as a rule more outrageous and cartoon-like than their opponents. They hated, or were indifferent to the crowd, and lost no chances to perform this dislike; constantly calling out and mocking individual audience members, especially