The Allure of Mixed Martial Arts: Meaning Making, Masculinity, and Embodiment in Suburbia A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Kyle David Green IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Douglas Hartmann, Teresa Gowan AUGUST 2015 © Kyle Green, 2015 Acknowledgements Thank you friends, family, loved ones, colleagues, co-authors, and intellectual mentors. You have inspired and supported. Thank you to the Department of Sociology for generous and continued financial support (and being generally great to me). I could not have asked for a better place to spend my graduate years. Thank you to The Society Pages. I owe my vision of public sociology, my appreciation of the larger discipline, and my passion for podcasting to my time as part of the graduate board. Thank you to the amazing people who have shared my office and put up with my many approaches to distracting. Thank you to the people who have shared a table with me at a local coffee shop and put up with my many approaches to distracting. Thank you to the people who have shared time with me at the library and put up with my many approaches to distracting. Thank you to my advisers (Douglas Hartmann and Teresa Gowan). You are the reason I am in sociology. Thank you to my committee (Josh Page and Arun Saldanha) for continued guidance and inspiration. Thank you to the TASC crew. So this is how a big collaborative project is done? Thank you to all the people outside of academia who accepted my weird writing hours and constant state of being busy. Thank you to all the people who shared time on the mat, sweat, pain, blood, and conversation. You inspired me to write a book. i Dedication My dissertation is dedicated to Marsha. ii Abstract This dissertation builds on my six-year ethnographic immersion into the mixed martial (MMA) scene in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan region to contribute to our understanding of pain, intimacy, meaning making, and masculinity. In training alongside men who devote their time to learning MMA, whether for hobby, local and regional competitions, or dreams of “making it big,” I move beyond mainstream spectacle and media-fueled public crisis to further understanding of a site where a painful brand of carnal knowledge is exchanged daily. I pursue a classic sociological and anthropological goal of making sense of the seemingly bewildering, explicating the allure of the embodied, violent practice to the communities of men that fill the schools that dot the often-suburban landscape to exchange energy, pain, sweat, and blood with little hope of utilitarian reward. In doing so I expand sociology’s theory toolbox through engaging traditions and writers generally overlooked within the discipline. In each chapter I take seriously a different facet of the appeal of the sites and practice. With each exploration I begin with the writings of Pierre Bourdieu and the carnal sociologists he inspired before encountering the limits of this dominant approach to physical practice. To overcome these limitations I turn to scholars often relegated to the fringe of the discipline and place into conversation bodies of literature that rarely speak to each other. In particular, I draw on affect theory as I discuss the manner that the participants seek to discover their own corporeal limits through painful exchanges; the writings of Georges Bataille to understand an intimacy formed through shared transgressive moments and physical vulnerabilities; and scholars of storytelling as I argue that the discursive and the carnal are mutually constitutive. Taken together, my work not only offers a corrective to theories of embodiment and practice, but also tells the story where the excesses of contemporary American masculinity, in particular contemporary suburban masculinity, reveal themselves in the punches, chokes, hugs, and narrative explorations that take place on the mat. iii Table of Contents Section I. Introductions: What, How, and Why A Moment on the Mats ………………………………………………… 1 1. Preface ………………………………………………………… 3 Mark’s Stories .….……………………………………………………… 8 2. A Longer Introduction …….………………………………………… 9 And Then the Talking Began ………………………………………………… 37 3. Letting the Gym Speak: Fighting to be Affected & Tales from the Mat… 39 Section II. Pain, Intimacy, Community, and Meaning Making Returning to the Gym/Reuniting with Pain ……………………………………… 80 4. It Hurts so It is Real: The Multiple Allures of Pain……………………… 83 Buffering Differences and Muting Annoyances ……………………………… 135 5. Finding Georges Bataille: Intimacy and Community in the MMA Gym 140 Everyone has a story 181 6. Telling Stories and Making Meaning (a choke is never just a choke) 184 Section III. Concluding Thoughts: Playing with Masculinities Masculine Movements …..……………………………………………… 235 7. Masculine Reflections: Towards Fluidity and Embodiment …………………….. 237 Bibliography ………………………………………………….………… 249 iv *A Moment on the Mats* The grappling coach finished demonstrating the move of the day, a more advanced transition from back control to a choke that involved hooking the other person’s leg while they are crouched on all fours, and then sort of somersaulting over them, taking them with you and exposing their back and neck. After a few demonstrations, and again breaking down particular aspects of the positioning of the leg that would make the move work or fail, it was our turn. The instructor divided us into pairs while hitting play on his mp3 player, letting the mid-90s rock signal that the time for talking was over. The pairs were generally chosen by weight and skill. The only exceptions to this was the partnering of the only two women in the class—one a tall, black teenager whose dad brought her to her first class the week before and a smaller white woman in her late 20’s who had trained for over two years out on the east coast—and Farid and I. Due to being the only women in the gym, Camille and Laura were almost always training partners. Farid, the lone Arab-American in the gym, was a relative newcomer, and he outweighed me by at least fifty pounds. No one there knew exactly what Farid tipped the scale at as he seems self-conscious of his weight—usually wearing a baggy sweatshirt throughout the class even on a sweltering hot day like this one and possessing the type of stare that dissuades people from asking questions—but guesses usually fell in the 230 pound range. Farid volunteers to let me drill the move first, getting down on the mat on all fours. This is not a surprise since his talent was only matched by his lack of confidence and whenever he learned a new move he would let his partner figure it out first. The first time, my foot gets caught in his baggy shorts and I manage to aggravate my long injured big toe—a common malady for those training in MMA. I make a joke about how his baggy shorts give him a defensive advantage, and, after he realizes it is a joke and not an accusation, we share a laugh. I try the move four times, feeling like I am only turning him over because he is letting me—no, assisting me. Then, it is his turn. He drills his moves with an unspoken seriousness, getting a little more fluid each time, and always seeking assurance after with a quick “that feel right?”. Between the moves, as Farid plays out what he is going to do in his head before moving into action, my attention drifts to the group next to us. A short, stocky computer programmer with a baggy shirt covering his big belly is laughing loudly with his two partners—a tall classically trained pianist in a form fitting rash-guard and a gangly teenager with unkempt hair who is recovering from a self- described “severe” meth addiction. As I try to follow the piano player’s story about getting in a wrestling match at a fancy NYC wedding, Farid’s weight brings me back to the matter at hand. Each time he begins the move I feel a sharp ache and get a sense of the impending collapse of my lower back. I focus on tilting my hips forward to better strengthen my posture, hoping he will transition to the roll quickly and not stall with his weight directly on top of me while figuring out how our bodies might connect. The instructor walks over to the laughing group to see if they need help with the move but soon he too is drawn into the story and laughing along with them. He seems much more entertained by the re-telling of the rapidly escalating event—now involving an additional wedding party member, rain and mud, alcohol, and torn dress pants—then by the others groups following his instruction and repeatedly drilling the technique that he had shown. Again my attention returns to the task at hand as I am flipped over and a strong forearm slides across my throat, lifting up my jaw and finding space to forcefully stop the flow of ! 1! blood to my brain. I tap his arms quickly, three times, signaling that the move worked. He releases me and I return once again to all fours, a little slower than the previous time, wishing that I was training with someone much lighter and a little less sweaty, or that the drilling would come to an end. As I wait once again, bracing myself for the impact, I note that the chorus of the Pearl Jam song emerging from the boom box seems strangely fitting for the moment at hand, if a bit clichéd:! ! I, I'm still alive Hey I, but, I'm still alive Hey I, boy, I'm still alive Hey I, I, I, I'm still alive, yeah! July 2012 – Immortal Mixed Martial Arts and Grappling Club ! 2! 1.