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Reflections on the Montréal Screwjob Wrestling Paul Ferstl Wrestling with Narratives: Reflections on the Montréal Screwjob The so-called Montréal Screwjob (November 9, 1997) is attributed with an unparalleled effect on the development of professional wrestling. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze this effect in the context of structuralist narratology, interpreting the Screwjob as a metalepsis in order to explain its impact on the subsequent construction and recep- tion of wrestling events. The arguably most notorious moment in professional wrestling, at least of the 1990s, is the so-called Montréal Screwjob. It took place on November 9, 1997 at the Molson Centre in Montréal, in the context of a major event of the then World Wrestling Federation: the Survivor Series. 20,000 people attended the live show, along with an international TV audience. The Screwjob is attributed with an unparalleled effect on the development of wrestling. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze the process in order to answer the following questions: Why did this incident become so famous? In which ways did it differ from traditional forms of storytelling in wrestling, and what was its impact on the subsequent construction and re- ception of wrestling events? To this end, it will first be required to give a brief introduction to the history and workings of professional wrestling and the relevant cultural and economic factors that defined wrestling in the 90s. Wrestling Wrestling has a bad reputation which according to Dalbir S. Sehmby is mainly based on five factors: “its status as low art, its historical develop- ment, its liminal existence, its spectacle of excess, and its form of hybrid media.”1 The origins of wrestling are found in popular entertainment, >...@ stemming from traveling carnivals and vaudeville-type shows. In terms of both its audience and its performers, such traveling shows occupy the lowest rung on the artistic scale. Performers begin their training through traveling venues, graduating to more respected and static stages, such as Broadway, where the audience comes to see them. Professional wrestling is linked to folk traveling shows via the nomadic nature of the business; that is, entertainers try to gather audience from town to town. What remains from its folk roots is the 1 Dalbir S. Sehmby, ‘Wrestling and Popular Culture’, in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 4.1 (2002), http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol4/iss1/5, p.2 of 12 pages. 168 Paul Ferstl huckster element: traveling shows are associated with a form of advertising that brands both the entertainer and the spectator with negative connotations.2 Nevertheless, it soon achieved some success in the 20th century. According to David Hofstede, the first time wrestling was aired on U.S. television was on 30 July 1948; between 1949 and 1951 ABC, CBS and NBC launched their own wrestling programs: “the first channel surfer could find wrestling shows six nights a week“.3 The 1950s and 1960s are generally considered the first “golden age of wrestling” -– the international breakthrough of American wrestling took place in the 1980s. Regionally based wrestling promotions, which served the market in the U.S. were supplanted by the rise of cable television and the aggressive competitive strategies of the World Wrestling Federation under its owner Vince McMahon. The WWF and its flagship Hulk Hogan achieved notable international success, with major events that brought thousands of people into the stadiums and attracted millions of television viewers world- wide. Even today, the marketing of the television wrestling shows reminds one of the carnivalesque origin of the genre. Both the performers and their audi- ence are still closely associated with low social status.4 Wrestlers are still working without health insurance and retirement plans, unions are almost unheard of. Only a few wrestlers – even the superstars of the field – are able to cross over into other entertainment sectors – the most successful recent example is former wrestler Dwayne Johnson, who rose to superstardom in the late 90s under the name “The Rock”and became a successful actor af- terwards. Wrestling is live entertainment and located in no man’s land between acrobatics, martial arts and theatre. A strong association to the circus still remains. Sharon Mazer defines wrestling as follows: [...] professional wrestling is a sport that is not, in the literal sense of the word, sporting; a theatrical entertainment that is not theatre. Its display of violence is less a contest than a ritualized encounter between opponents, replayed repeat- edly over time for an exceptionally engaged audience. The colorful characters presented and the stories told both in the wrestling ring and in the television programming that contextualizes matches are simultaneously archetypal and topical, open to straightforward readings but in that openness resistant to sim- ple readings of dominant cultural values. Although it is most often compared by scholars to the medieval moral play, or psychomachia, as in Middle English 2 Ibid., p. 3. 3 David Hofstede, Slammin’: Wrestling’s Greatest Heroes and Villains (Toronto: ECW Press, 1999), p. 9. 4 Cf. Sehmby, p. 3..
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