Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All Graduate Plan B and other Reports Graduate Studies 8-2020 “Racist, Sexist, Profane, and Violent”: Reinterpreting WWE’s Portrayals of Samoans Across Generations John Honey Utah State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/gradreports Part of the American Popular Culture Commons Recommended Citation Honey, John, "“Racist, Sexist, Profane, and Violent”: Reinterpreting WWE’s Portrayals of Samoans Across Generations" (2020). All Graduate Plan B and other Reports. 1469. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/gradreports/1469 This Report is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Graduate Plan B and other Reports by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. 1 2 Copyright © John B. Honey 2020 All Rights Reserved 3 ABSTRACT “Racist, Sexist, Profane, and Violent”: Reinterpreting WWE’s Portrayals of Samoans across Generations By John B. Honey, Master of Science Utah State University, 2020 Major Professor: Dr. Eric César Morales Program: American Studies This paper examines the shifting portrayals of Pacific Islanders in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) across three generations. As both a popular and historically racially problematic venue, WWE’s politically incorrect programming has played an underappreciated and under examined role in representing the USA. Although 4 many different groups have been portrayed by gross stereotypes in WWE, this paper uses the family of Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson—the Samoan Dynasty—as a case study. The WWE originally presented Pacific Islanders using the most offensive stereotypes, and the first two generations of the Samoan Dynasty had to “play Indian” or cosign onto gross representations of their people to be recognized by American audiences unfamiliar with representations of Pacific Islanders.