The 'John Cena' character on WWE programming is one of those polarising figures in popular culture, like Kanye West, Donald Trump or that muppet that's going out with Noelle Foley. You know the drill - some of us like him and some of us don't, and that's okay with John and with WWE as a company, for that matter. In real life of course, John Cena (without the scare quotes) is a bona fide sweetheart with a tireless work ethic second only to Vince McMahon's own. He's officially the best thing ever to happen to the Make-A-Wish Foundation: he's performed over 500 wishes in eleven years, or around 1 a week for well over a decade. Even fans that hate his character on TV can't help but admire and respect the real life guy's devotion to charity work and kids all over the world. Yup, John Cena is a lovely, lovely bloke. Is he, though? Not to say that I have any inside scoop on the man, but that's the point: neither do any of the rest of the people who insist that he's a great human being for doing all this charity work. In point of fact, John Cena has become a multi-millionaire before the age of forty by doing one thing really, really well. That thing is not wrestling: it's portraying a single kid-friendly character on television, constantly and with good humour in the face of booing and worse. In a normal job, you'd stay in the boss' good books by working unpaid overtime: coming in early, going home late, that kind of thing. Well, Vincent Kennedy McMahon has slept four hours a night for forty years and takes meetings from the gym, so the boys have to go a little further to impress him. Something like dressing like a children's TV presenter five days out of every seven for a decade... always returning from injury a month or two early... doing and saying anything and everything required of him with no complaint, no matter how stupid... oh, and becoming the world's greatest superhero to impressionable young children. It's likely that John Cena: Make-A-Wish Hero is just as much a work as John Cena: Fake-Ass Marine, John Cena: Bad White Rapper or John Cena: Never Giver Upperer. That's not to say that his charity work isn't a wonderful thing, because it is: I know if my daughter was in that awful position, she'd be over the moon to get that kind of personal attention from one of her heroes (although I like to think she'd pick Cody Rhodes, Bayley or Samoa Joe over Cena). No, make no mistake about it, the work the Make-A-Wish crew do is fantastic... but there's no sense in canonising Cena over his part in it, when we don't know the man personally and when we can't escape the fact that it's a very real part of his job, as the face of WWE, to participate in it just as he does.
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.
