An Examination of WWE Wrestling Isamu Horiuchi Claremont Graduate University
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Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CGU Theses & Dissertations CGU Student Scholarship 2012 Stylizing, Commodifying, and Disciplining Real Bodies: An Examination of WWE Wrestling Isamu Horiuchi Claremont Graduate University Recommended Citation Horiuchi, Isamu. (2012). Stylizing, Commodifying, and Disciplining Real Bodies: An Examination of WWE Wrestling. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 55. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/55. doi: 10.5642/cguetd/55 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the CGU Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in CGU Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Stylizing, Commodifying, and Disciplining Real Bodies: An Examination of WWE Wrestling A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Claremont Graduate University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Studies by Isamu Horiuchi Claremont Graduate University, 2012 © Copyright Isamu Horiuchi, 2012 All rights reserved. APPROVAL OF THE REVIEW COMMITTEE This dissertation has been duly read, reviewed, and critiqued by the Committee listed below, which hereby approves the manuscript of Isamu Horiuchi as fulfilling the scope and quality requirements for meriting the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Studies. Henry Krips, Chair Claremont Graduate University Professor of Cultural Studies Andrew W. Mellon All-Claremont Chair of Humanities Alexandra Juhasz, Member Pitzer College Professor of Media Studies Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Member Pomona College Professor of Media Studies Abstract Stylizing, Commodifying, and Disciplining Real Bodies: An Examination of WWE wrestling by Isamu Horiuchi Claremont Graduate University: 2012 This dissertation examines professional wrestling in the U.S., in particular, live and television shows produced by the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Through the examination, it addresses complex issues of authenticity, audience, commodification, and discipline in contemporary popular culture and media. I use three approaches in this study. First, I apply the theory of culture industry, developed by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, to understand WWE wrestling. I examine how the WWE thoroughly stylizes its products to attract fans and condition them to repeat the same calculable reactions. However, contemporary fans often refuse to react as the WWE wants them to. By analyzing the complex interplay between the WWE and fans, I update and re-contextualize Adorno and Horkheimer’s idea that the culture industry exerts total control over consumers. Second, I examine the recent rise of “nonfictional” narratives in professional wrestling, narratives that candidly acknowledge wrestling’s scripted nature. I demonstrate how the WWE uses nonfictional narratives to present fans new ways of finding realness in wrestling and respecting wrestlers. I also point out that, by utilizing both fictional and nonfictional narratives, the WWE has developed clever ways of balancing between offering controversial products and transmitting conservative and respectable messages to enhance its populist appeal. Third, I look at the history of professional wrestling through theories of modernity and postmodernity. I grasp it as a dynamic process in which wrestling has expressed its challenge against and ambivalence towards dominant ideologies, values, and masculinities of modernity in multiple ways. I also examine the predominance of obsessed subjectivities in contemporary WWE wrestling as a unique form of postmodern expression. I argue that obsessively competitive and self-destructive performances of WWE wrestlers illuminate the contradiction of the construction of modern “disciplined” subjects described by Michel Foucault. They also reveal that in the culture where pain and destruction of human beings are among the most desired objects, the WWE has to endanger real live bodies of its wrestlers in order to survive and thrive. WWE is a rich, problematic, and compelling cultural phenomenon that illuminates issues and contradictions of itself, and the system it belongs to. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my dissertation committee, Henry Krips, Alexandra Juhasz, and Kathleen Fitzpatrick for their guidance, support and encouragement. Every chapter of this dissertation has immensely benefitted from their invaluable suggestions and thoughtful critiques. I would also like to thank Ranu Samantrai, who was a member of my qualifying examination committee. I am indebted to her kindness and willingness to work with me on the subject—Sport and Modern Society—which was outside her specialty, yet she engaged with zeal. I also gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance provided by the Department of Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University, which helped me to write up this dissertation. I am also very grateful to my wife Miki and my daughter Mito for always being by my side and supporting me. Their presence in my life gives me strength and courage to keep moving forward. Finally and most importantly, I would like to thank my parents Nobuyuki and Noriko Horiuchi, without whose love, patience, and support I would have not been able to complete my graduate study in the U.S. This dissertation is dedicated to them. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... v Introduction The Wrestler, Professional Wrestling, and Contradictions of Contemporary Popular Culture .......................................... 1 WWE Wrestling .................................................................................................... 13 Literature Review .................................................................................................. 16 Examining Contemporary Professional Wrestling ............................................... 41 Chapter 1: Contemporary WWE Wrestling through Culture Industry Theory Introduction ........................................................................................................... 45 Section 1: The Theory of the Culture Industry ..................................................... 49 Section 2: Stylistic Features of WWE Wrestling through Culture Industry Theory ........................................................ 58 Section 3: The State of Total Control in the Ring ................................................ 77 Section 4: WWE Wrestling as a Failure of Enlightenment Rationality ................ 93 Chapter 2: Issues of Realism in Contemporary WWE Wrestling: The Promotion and Circulation of Nonfictional Narratives in the Late 1990s Introduction ......................................................................................................... 100 Section 1: Realism of Professional Wrestling: When Insiders were Obliged to “Protect the Business” ..................... 103 vi Section 2: The Transformation since the Late 1990s: The Dualization of Realism in WWE Wrestling ............................... 109 Section 3: Realism, or Making Sense of WWE Wrestling as Fiction ................ 118 Section 4: The Significance of the Increase of the Promotion of Nonfictional narratives ..................................... 132 Section 5: Nonfictional Narratives as a Channel of Political Discourse ............ 146 Section 6: Nonfictional Narratives as Repeatedly Appropriated Texts .............. 152 Chapter 3: The Modern, the Postmodern, and Obsession in Professional Wrestling Introduction ......................................................................................................... 159 Section 1: Framing the Modern and the Postmodern .......................................... 167 Section 2: Professional Wrestling as a Postmodern Phenomenon ...................... 186 Section 3: The Aesthetic of Obsession and Over-the-Top Matches in Contemporary WWE Wrestling ....... 207 Conclusion ................................................................................................... 227 Bibliography ................................................................................................ 230 vii Introduction The Wrestler, Professional Wrestling, and Contradictions of Contemporary Popular Culture The highly successful and celebrated 2008 film The Wrestler, directed by Darren Aronofsky, glorifies but also interrogates contemporary professional wrestling. Unlike previous Hollywood wrestling movies, such as Paradise Alley (1978), No Holds Barred (1989), and Ready to Rumble (2000), The Wrestler openly acknowledges that professional wrestling matches are scripted performances; it provides a detailed description of backstage discussions among wrestlers choreographing their matches. In the film, Mickey Rourke portrays the aging and battered professional wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson. Randy, a big star in the 1980s, is now living alone in a seedy trailer park, working on weekdays at a supermarket under an odious boss. On weekends, he still performs wrestling matches in local shows for much less pay than the thousands of dollars he made during his heyday. Although he often cannot afford the rent for his trailer, he is willing to buy various illegal substances (e.g., steroids) from his gym mate to maintain huge muscles that look disproportionate at his age. One day, Randy suffers a heart attack after performing a grueling hardcore-style match, and he decides to retire and have