The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Spring 5-2012 Ideological “Smackdown”: A Textual Analysis of Class, Race and Gender in WWE Televised Professional Wrestling Casey Brandon Hart University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Broadcast and Video Studies Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, and the Mass Communication Commons Recommended Citation Hart, Casey Brandon, "Ideological “Smackdown”: A Textual Analysis of Class, Race and Gender in WWE Televised Professional Wrestling" (2012). Dissertations. 550. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/550 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi IDEOLOGICAL “SMACKDOWN”: A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF CLASS, RACE AND GENDER IN WWE TELEVISED PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING by Casey Brandon Hart Abstract of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2012 ABSTRACT IDEOLOGICAL “SMACKDOWN”: A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF CLASS, RACE AND GENDER IN WWE TELEVISED PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING by Casey Brandon Hart May 2012 The focus of this study is an in-depth intertextual examination of how the WWE in 2010 and by extension contemporary professional wrestling in general represents a microcosm of modern cultural ideology. The study examines three major areas in which this occurs.