Copyright by Timothy John Piper 2014
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Copyright by Timothy John Piper 2014 The Thesis Committee for Timothy John Piper Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Professional Wrestling’s “Attitude” Adjustment: WWF Programming, Realism, and the Representation of Race During the Neoliberal Nineties APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Mary Beltrán Alisa Perren Professional Wrestling’s “Attitude” Adjustment: WWF Programming, Realism, and the Representation of Race During the Neoliberal Nineties by Timothy John Piper, B.A. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin May 2014 Dedication To Allison, who has borne patient witness to every iteration of this document and the mind responsible for it. Without you, none of this would be possible. Acknowledgements Without the counsel, structure, and advice offered by Dr. Mary Beltrán, this project would never have been fully realized. Dr. Alisa Perren’s insights and suggestions were also integral to the research and writing of this thesis. I wish to express my additional gratitude to Dr. Jennifer Fuller, whose passion for cultural studies and the humanities helped to mold my approach to this study and my academic career beyond it. Thank you to my entire cohort for fostering a welcoming environment, where the exchange of intellectual discourse was frequent and no idea was ever looked down upon. In particular, Aaron, Asher, Collins, and Hallie helped me maintain my sanity throughout the writing process as they provided indispensable suggestions and guidance during countless conversations, meals, and drinks. A special thanks to Matt, my academic tag- team partner, for directing me to a wealth of interesting sources, and for always being willing to engage in discussions of all manner of things related to the squared circle. Geographical distance could not stop my family from providing unending support while I toiled away on this project. Thank you to Dan, Kim, Drew, and Ashley for your constant attempts to stay connected, even as I frequently flaked in that regard. I hope that Austin, Harper, and Paisley some day have the patience to read this, so that they, too, might find merit in a life spent exploring the questions they haven’t yet found the answers to. Lastly, thank you to the two most tenacious and resilient people I know: to Therese, for giving me life and unwavering support in all of my ventures, and to Allison, for filling that life and those ventures with meaning. v Abstract Professional Wrestling’s “Attitude” Adjustment: WWF Programming, Realism, and the Representation of Race During the Neoliberal Nineties Timothy John Piper, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Mary Beltrán The WWE, formerly known as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), has a long history of showcasing harmful stereotypes via hyperracialized characters. Many academics have observed these characters and the overarching types to which they can be assigned as being indicative of the respective sociohistorical conditions in which they were produced. During the mid-to-late nineties, the WWF embarked upon a re-branding effort focused on adopting a new “Attitude” that purported to offer a more “realistic” form of “sports entertainment.” Throughout this “Attitude Era” the WWF purposely obfuscated delineations between fact and fiction, and subsequently, performers and racialized performance. Set against the backdrop of the neoliberal nineties, then – a period when America was supposedly embracing multiculturalism, the “welfare state” had been discarded in favor of fiscal conservatism, and possessive individualism catapulted to paramount importance – in what ways did the hyperracialized characters and storylines of the WWF Attitude Era reflect contemporary American cultural attitudes toward race? This study seeks to answer this question by incorporating historiographical vi work, industrial discourse analysis, and textual readings to analyze the representation of race in WWF programming of the late nineties. Utilizing an ideological textual analysis to understand how weekly episodes of Monday Night Raw and monthly pay-per-view events that aired during the years of 1997-1999 embodied and reified certain values, beliefs, and ideas, this project will look to the cultural, industrial, and political discourses circulating during the 1990s to show how they intersect with the WWF programming of the period. vii Table of Contents List of Figures..........................................................................................................x Introduction..............................................................................................................1 Examining Racial Representation...................................................................8 Academic Studies of Professional Wrestling................................................13 Professional Wrestling as Ritual, Mythic, and Cultural Spectacle ......14 Professional Wrestling and the Practice of Stereotyping.....................18 Methodology and Chapter Overview............................................................22 Notes on Terminology ..................................................................................26 Chapter One: A Menacing Presence: Racial Anxiety and the Ideological Function of WWF Stereotypes Throughout the Twentieth Century ................................28 Common Stereotypes in the World of Wrestling..........................................31 Representation and Sociohistorical Context in the WWF: 1950s-1980s......34 Racial Anxiety in 1990s America: A Compendium .....................................43 WWF Programming and The Domestic Menace..........................................50 Radicalizing the Non-White Male .......................................................51 Marginalizing the Marginalized...........................................................56 Conclusion: Considering the Branding and Selling of Racial Anxiety ........63 Chapter Two: “As the Times Have Changed, So Have We”: WWF Re-Branding, Manufactured Realism, and the Assumption of White Viewership .............65 Classical, Empiricist, and Emotional Realism..............................................69 The WWF Brand: Strategies and Identity from 1952-1997..........................71 1952-1979: The Territorial System......................................................72 1980-1985: The “Rock ‘n Wrestling Connection” ..............................74 1986-1993: Family Entertainment .......................................................79 1994-1997: The WWF’s New “Attitude”............................................83 Branding Attitude and Selling Realism ........................................................89 WWF Attitude: A Racialized Re-Branding ..................................................95 Conclusion: The Impact of a Colorblind Ideology .....................................101 viii Chapter Three: “The Ragin’ Climax”: Reconstituting Whiteness Through the Cultural, Political, and WWF Championship Discourse of the Late Nineties104 Political Climate of Late Nineties America................................................108 The Domestic Menace vs. The Rugged Individualist.................................114 The Rock............................................................................................114 Stone Cold Steve Austin ....................................................................117 Privilege, Status, and the Intercontinental Championship..........................120 Anti-Welfarism, Self-Reliance, and the World Heavyweight Championship127 Conclusion: Whiteness Reconstituted.........................................................134 Conclusion: “The Rattlesnake Rules”… Again?: Nostalgia, Erasure, and the Future of Racial Representation in the WWF/E.........................................................137 Marketed Nostalgia and Targeted Erasure..................................................139 The WWE Network and New Questions About Representation................142 Notes ....................................................................................................................146 References............................................................................................................147 ix List of Figures Figure 1.1: Timeline of the World Wrestling Federation (1952-1999).................6 Figure 2.1: The vandalized locker room of the Nation of Domination...............58 Figure 2.2: Fans get in on the “fun” by crafting their own racially-charged signs.62 Figure 3.1: The three phases of the WWF logo...................................................90 Figure 5.1: The marketed nostalgia of the WWF/E Attitude Era: (L to R) Classic Superstar “Nation of Domination” version of The Rock, WWE ’13 Attitude Era menu on PS3, WWE: The Attitude Era 3-disc DVD packaging. .......................................................................................140 x Introduction “It is not enough to say that art is constructed. We have to ask: Constructed for whom? And in conjunction with which ideologies and discourses?” – Ella Shohat and Robert Stam (1994, 180) “In short, wrestling embodies the American populist tradition. The politics of WWF wrestling is punchdrunk and rambunctious, yet it builds upon authentic anger and frustrations which we cannot ignore if we want to understand the state of contemporary American culture.”