For the revolution of the world... part i

[Guest Asplagis]

For the revolution of the world... wrestling federation...

 

Revolutions have always been difficult. The French revolution provided a mere changing of the guards with the merchant and political class taking over (in time) the respective roles of religious authority and monarchy. The proletarian revolution happened, but not quite how Marx wanted it seeing as a corrupt elitist and nationalist political class quickly overtook it. But in wrestling, people understood that it was far easier to follow the leader rather than trying to be the leader.

 

You see, wrestling has had a love affair with American mass culture for some time now, I'd pin-point the exact period as the rock n' wrestling connection. Before then you could see Nazi villains or even dastardly "communists" roaming the rings all over North America. But it took the mind of one individual, one man and his imperial ways to take what was a mere side effect of American ultra patriotism into an integral part of American mass culture. Wrestling would go Hollywood on its fans thanks to one Vincent K. McMahon Jr. and his World Wrestling Federation.

 

We will see within the following paragraphs how WWF wrestling, via Vince McMahon and his allies, began a swift ascension towards holding a privileged place amongst cultural industries. However, not as an innovator, wrestling never invented anything really, but as an emissary of mass culture in North America.

 

 The rise of Hulkamania

 

In the early 80's, a large muscular wrestler was making waves throughout America, especially the northern territories. Though wrestling analysts were visibly upset at the quality of the man's wrestling in regards to how popular he was, it remained that he was going to be big one day. As you may know, the man was Terry Bollea aka Terry Boulder aka Hulk Hogan. We will not dwell for too long on his early career, by now it is a well-known tale. Instead, we will jump to his days with the WWF and the origins of Hulkamania.

 

For the WWF it was clear that Hulk Hogan was the future of the sport (and entertainment). He had the charisma and look made famous by "Superstar" Billy Graham. He had the blonde hair, the tanned bodybuilder physique and that Californian "surfer dude"/"beach bum" quality that made northern Americans dream. But he wasn't the first or the last man to attempt emulating Graham. In fact, future Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura also dabbled in the Graham-esque look - granted it was a slightly more homoerotic version than the original. Nevertheless, Hulk Hogan's body survived illicit substances better than either Graham's or Ventura's, which in part allowed him to have a longer and more productive career then either of them. Also, Ventura was a brain dead jock with a big mouth and large biceps while Hogan was well versed in backstage political games along with having his own impressive physique. For these reasons Hogan was given the mantle of leader of the WWF's new direction. Wrestling needed it's own Rocky and Americans were clear on what they wanted to see, so it was simply a matter of finding the right man for the job and Hogan was that man.

 

Hogan brought that all-important Hollywood flair to wrestling. Though the Iron Sheik was by far a cartoonish character and a bevy of early 80's creations were veritable farces, including Hogan who was to be the patriotic hero that wrestling didn't have until now. He was the action hero, the larger than life saviour of good American morality. But more importantly, Hogan would become the ubermench of wrestling. He would become the one everyone should model themselves after. He revealed a sinister side of American culture, one that ironically enough denounces the wrong doings of others yet is itself guilty of those same crimes and sins.

 

Though we can criticize the school of Frankfurt for it's tendency to associate America with fascism a bit too easily, it is hard not to see, like Horkheimer and Adorno, how capitalist America and Nazi Germany do resemble each other quite a bit. To Horkheimer and Adorno, both the Californian surfer dude and Nazi ubermench represented highly materialistic ideals of what a human male should be, taking shape in the form of the "cult of the body". In both cases the men are white (well, one could make a case for the radioactive orange skin of some surfer dudes...), blonde and have blue eyes in their "perfect" state. Both are idolised by the populace and seen as examples of what men should be, they become the strongly established norm, but this is done differently in Nazi Germany than in America.

Whereas the Nazi regime pushed for the ubermench via brute force and physical violence, America dis it via the mass media and a mass culture flooded with images of the bright Californian superman. One does it actively via physical acts; the other operates on a more symbolic level.

 

This is not to say that Hogan was meant as a white supremacist character, well not quite in the way the Nazi regime used the terminology in any case. If anything, such behaviours would have been looked down upon and so the ethnocentrism of Hogan was wrapped in a cloak...well, make that a flag of patriotism. It was deemed acceptable for Hogan to destroy "evil" foreigners for he was doing it for America. Much like legitimate defence from some foreign threat. Nationalism relieves you of even your most atrocious acts, it always has. But Hogan didn?t just destroy foreigners...

 

Harley Race wasn?t a foreigner, nor was Terry Funk or even the Honky Tonk Man and Randy Savage. This is where we must depart from the our current analysis and look at Hogan as the product of more than mere xenophobia.

 

Hogan represented the audience that McMahon sought out. McMahon was ambitious and as any business man worth his salt knew he couldn't push anything as big as Hogan down anyone's throat, nor would he need to. The people wanted Hogan, well, the white middle class did that is. The all-important middle class American who had enough money to waste on various by-products as well as the events themselves. Politicians and businessmen alike try to get the approbation of this social class time and time again - they are the true core of your consumer base in the cultural industry and your core voters in the political world. If wrestling were to become a national "thing", then he would need to attract the middle class with a product closer to the mother of all cultural industries, Hollywood.

 

Hollywood was for a long time the purveyor of rigid conservative right wing ideals, point in case, Steven Spielberg has made a career out of placing subtle conservative right wing messages in his movies. Jaws was little more than a metaphor for the "danger" of feminism, the left wing, science and the other side of the right wing fence, liberalism. Let's not forget subtle jabs at Arabs in Back to the Future and the Indiana Jones series. But that's another story...

 

McMahon was making a second Hollywood : taking current values in America and projecting them through the morality plays that are wrestling storylines. He tried to show America as a modern day Utopia where the hero that is Hulk Hogan would preserve the good old American way. This "American way" was of course very northern and reeked of corporate interest. In this Utopia, black men were relegated to second fiddle at all times, "good" and "evil" were clear cut, southerners were good when naive hillbillies (and thus like children) and bad when cowboys (extreme southern blue collar conservatives). "Evil" was more often than not the same as being foreign; ethnical minorities represented in highly stereotypical ways. Capitalism ruled and hierarchies were perfectably justified when "done right". Let us look at some of Hogan's past opposition:

 

 Nicolai Volkoff: represented the USSR and "communism" (adversaries of the U.S.)

 

 Iron Sheik: represented Iran (once more, adversaries of the U.S.) and Islam

 

 "Rowdy" Roddy Piper: The rowdy Scottish brawler, but also noted for his semi-racist views during his villainous days

 

 Paul Orndorff: First incarnation of the Mr. Perfect character actually, a prima donna, an individualist of the higest order

 

 Terry Funk: A wild Texan brawler, there to remind the population of how southerners are "extremists" and should not be associated too freely with "good northern conservatism"

 

 Harley Race: Monarchy, the old regime, the old guard trying to impose itself via it's age old dominance

 

 Honky Tonk Man: Like Terry Funk, represents the "old way", only, in his case that of music

 

 Randy Savage: A long time individualist who did everything for his own person, also symbolic of a dysfunctional marriage and thus a deadbeat husband who caused a divorce

 

 Zeus: The mythical danger of the black alpha male, the black athlete who hails from the lower classes and yet achieves great success. The white middle class men needed to be reassured of their masculinity when faced with black men rising to overthrow them within pro sports

 

 Earthquake and Dino Bravo: "Dumb" Canadians who tried to assert themselves as better than Americans. Would work better today actually and Dino Bravo was needed to represent Québec

 

 Curt Hennig: A young elitist, a college level athlete who lacked the proper respect for his elder and those already in place - tried to move up the pyramid of classes too fast

 

 Ric Flair: A wily old politician and Don Juan, represents hedonism and sinister craftiness

 

 Yokozuna: Japan, a country that threatened the American economy by beating it at it's own game. Yokozuna was a bloated, larger than life caricature like many others, it is rather fitting that he would end Hogan's run...

 

 Kevin Sullivan: Satan or at least an agent of the later (non WWF, but fun to note)

 

A brief look at all these characters and men show that McMahon had a clear idea of what Hogan was fighting for and whom he was representing. But this also gives us insight into the underlying desires of a conservative America. You can also see that the three tenants of Hulkamania seem to resonnate with popular ideals from the United States of the 80's.

 

 The training: a direct link to the aforementioned cult of the body and obsession with larger than life physiques and gratification of narcissic ultra masculinity present in all sports.

 

 The vitamins: referring to the wonders of empirical and medical science which provide us with the means of achieving such "wondrous physical and material perfection", but also makes no mention of social/human sciences since they often lead to philosophy, which in turn opposes the next tenant.

 

 The prayers: religion, the necessary spiritual basis, the legitimisation of the values expressed, giving men the authority needed to impose themselves upon the world by stating orders from a higher presence.

 

McMahon didn't invent the American right wing conservative value system, but he did use it in order to gain not only on a financial level, but also in terms of positioning in the hierarchy of cultural industries. By giving Americans what they wanted, McMahon was not being transparent. In other words, he was the messenger, but as with all messengers he added his own bias and twisted the message for his own gain. This might explain why the south was often a victim of McMahon's hatred. The NWA (later on WCW) represented the southern territories and with the death of the AWA and rise of the WWF in the northern ones, the ménage à trois turned into a binary opposition.

 

McMahon had to oppose Crockett and made the WWF and NWA conflict into something akin to a war between countries. Like any nation, they built themselves around a territorial sense of belonging. So by making distinction between north and south in terms of right and wrong, the WWF was only furthering it's self glorification while slinging mud at Crockett.

 

This is important to note since one could take the prior analysis of the WWF as agent of American mass culture and look at Vince McMahon as a puppet while he was in fact one of the puppeteers, albeit a minor one in the greater scheme of things.

 

But ultra patriotism could only go so far. America was consolidating its power and more and more fear its strength. It has become an Empire like the Romans, imposing its ways all over the world and having a strong tendency for conformity in the process. In this realisation, Americans begin to doubt their own institutions, be they political, religious, social or economical. Conspiracy theories pop up and "the man" becomes a dangerous Orwellian Big Brother on the loose ; shapeless and invisible, but omnipresent and omniscient. The corporate world is no longer your friend, mass downsizing took care of that a while ago. The common man feels as if suits and ties are overrated and it's time to stand up... The WWF would listen and give the world Steve Austin, the rattlesnake, the liberal right wing version of Hulk Hogan. So what'cha gonna do, brother, when the Christ of individualism alongside the great apostle Saint Russo and the church of Attitude run wild on you ?

 

Asplagis