4. How To Stay True To The World Youve Created
Game Of Thrones is a fantasy television show, based upon a long running series of epic fantasy novels. And despite its massive mainstream appeal, the show is still dancing with the girl that brought it to the party the genre and format remain unapologetically fantasy. Theyve even got an out that they decided not to take: as they deviate from the plot and characters in the novels season by season, HBO and the showrunners could easily have toned down or even removed references to certain clichéd fantasy tropes, like the dragons, the weird magic and the elder races. Instead, not only do said references remain, but arguably theyve actually strengthened them by writing additional scenes and set pieces specifically for the show featuring fantasy tropes. Vince McMahons WWF/E has long outlawed the use of wrestling and wrestler to describe its product and its performers, preferring sports entertainment and superstar/diva. Partly its from the 1980s and early 1990s, when he was still trying to convince US authorities that his business shared more in common with showbiz than with sports or MMA: it helped with the legal argument that they shouldnt fall under the same kinds of regulation and taxation as sports (what we in the UK refer to as the Jaffa Cakes debate). Partly its simply to differentiate Vinces company from the southern rasslin promotions that were his rivals for his first two decades at the wheel. Somewhere in his head, McMahon is still fighting and winning the Monday Night Wars, on his own, like a carny Conan The Barbarian. Its worse than that, though: he keeps trying to move the company away from wrestling, diversifying its output, rebranding its performers from wrestlers, through sports entertainers, to multimedia stars in their own right - as if trying to make that WWE Superstar tag a real thing in real life. However, its a fact that none of his businesses outside of professional wrestling have succeeded in any sense whatsoever (with the exception of WWE Studios, which now turns a profit - thanks not to him, but to some savvy executives who figured out that keeping the budgets low and making clever distribution deals could make their money back even if they tanked at the box office, or were never released theatrically). If his extensive list of failures should have taught him anything, its that he needs to stop being embarrassed to be in the business that made him so massively bloody rich: and that professional wrestling isnt a dirty word (its two, but hey).
Jack Morrell
Contributor
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
See more from
Jack