Referring to professional wrestling as fake is likely to get you slapped by any serious fan within earshot, and rightly so. However, wrestling is and always will be a show, a work and a performance. As any good actor will tell you, commitment to character is the key to a good performance and, as any writer worth his/her salt will say, character consistency is a hallmark of good storytelling. In a basic sense, you have your hero and you have your villain. Even if the heros journey will lead him to become a villain and the villains journey is fated to end in heroism, the characters need to be established in their respective roles from the outset. Watching wrestling these days, youll see heel and babyface turns occurring at an alarming rate. How are fans expected to really get behind and cheer for a man that, just two weeks ago, power bombed the heros granny through a flaming table and force-fed a dog turd to a disabled kid in the front row? Likewise, yesterdays golden boy hero is now whacking wrestling legends with steel chairs and spitting at the camera...But how can the fans truly hate him when they know that next week the roles will probably be reversed once again? Essentially, too many heel/face turns over too short a period of time detracts from wrestlings believability. Imagine you watched a re-edited version of The Star Wars Trilogy where Darth Vader spent the entirety of Empire stroking kittens and donating the Empires vast funds to charity, only to resume attempting to kill everyone in Jedi. It would seem thoroughly stupid, wouldnt it? If a character turns his back on the fans, or else decides to finally embrace them, then this move needs to be momentous. It should be a watershed moment in the life of a major star, not a cheap heat seeking stunt or half-assed roster shuffle before an understaffed Pay Per View.
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long!
If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it).
I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work.
Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?)
Latcho Drom,
- CQ
