AN ONLINE WORK IS STILL WORK: VIRTUAL LABORS OF PROFESSIONAL WRESTLERS

The COVID pandemic’s impact on professional wrestling has come in many forms. Like other forms of sports and entertainment, professional wrestling is very dependent on physical interactions to produce content. So, what happens when wrestlers, who work as independent contractors, cannot engage in such physical labor? Fortunately, many had already been utilizing existing social media platforms as additional sources of income to supplement what they receive from their wrestling, trading on their characters and brands under neoliberal approaches to revenue generation. Their online work often aligns with their physical work, as the actual wrestling they perform is only a small fraction of their revenue-generating labor. From selling merchandise to selling themselves, the panel explores how professional wrestling uses these technologies to further their physical businesses and practices. The panel will critically explore these online activities to understand how such technologies mediate the relationship between promotions, wrestlers, and fans while also reflecting late-stage capitalist and neoliberal ideological perspectives on the Internet. This panel considers how these independent contractors have turned to neoliberal platforms and practices, even before the pandemic, to maintain a living, and the extent to which what they have done to survive operates as a template for more people in post-industrial societies operating under similar conditions.

Face vastaan Heel

Artikkeli käsittelee stereotyyppisen ”hyvän” ja ”pahan” kamppailua yhdysvaltalaisessa televisioidussa showpainissa. Showpaini on yleisöviihdettä, jossa kamppailulajit yhdistyvät teatterimaiseen esiintymiseen käsikirjoitetuissa ja ennalta päätetyissä tarinoissa. Showpaini on suureellista spektaakkelia, jossa käytetään liioiteltuja reaktioita.Tämä artikkeli käsittelee hyvän ja pahan kohtaamista showpainissa yhden erityisen kuvaavan tapausesimerkin kautta, joka on valikoitu yhdysvaltalaisesta WWE-showpainiorganisaatiosta. Tapausesimerkissä ”hyvä” (face) eli Shinsuke Nakamura kohtasi ”pahan” (heel) eli Samoa Joen sarjassa otteluita, jotka televisioitiin suurelle yleisölle ja joihin liittyi runsaasti oheismateriaalia Internetissä. Artikkelimme tarkastelee, kuinka tämä spektaakkelinen kokonaisuus rakennettiin tarinallisesti näistä elementeistä. Kysymme, miten ja millaisista osista televisioitu showpaininarratiivi rakentuu.Avainsanat: showpaini, mediaspektaakkeli, urheiluviihde, face, heel.Face versus Heel. Battle of Good and Evil in American televised professional wrestlingThe article investigates the stereotyped battle of “good” versus “bad” on televised American professional wrestling. Professional wrestling, or “Sports Entertainment” as WWE-promotion calls it, is an extremely popular audiovisual spectacle, which combines elements of sports, martial arts, theatre, and dance performances. It also uses spectacular theatrical reactions and audience participation on competitions, where outcomes are (usually) predetermined.Demonstrating a structural analysis of the narrative, the article focuses on the construction of a professional wrestling spectacle by doing a case study on a series of matches from WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), where Shinsuke Nakamura, a stereotyped “good” wrestler (so-called Face) fought against Samoa Joe, a stereotyped “evil” wrestler (so-called Heel).Keywords: professional wrestling, show wrestling, media spectacle, sports entertainment, face, heel

A new day for Hulk Hogan: Celebrity selves and racial diversity in contemporary professional wrestling

This paper considers contemporary World Wrestling Entertainment’s new racial politics in the light of Hulk Hogan’s 2015 erasure from the Federation after a leaked racist sex tape rant, and the African-American wrestlers The New Day’s rise to fame during the same period. This paper locates WWE’s actions as responses in line with a domestic media marketplace where the rhetoric of racial diversity is fetishised. In doing so, this paper combines literature on corporate social responsibility, race, and the performativity of the self in contemporary celebrity culture. This paper reads World Wrestling Entertainment’s actions as strategies through which the Federation’s corporate social responsibility is spectacularly performed, allowing it to grow and survive in the streaming video era.

WWE fan reception and shifting perceptions of masculinity in the Trump era

This article will study the world of American professional wrestling in connection to the reception of masculine tropes by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) fans. Wrestling fans, who are in majority male and traditionally come from the American working class, are in the unique position to voice, or scream, their opinions of positive or negative masculine behaviours that they see live in the ring. Since it is a scripted show (or in wrestling jargon, a ‘work’), it offers us a fascinating insight into how men view masculine behaviour as they view the action from a fictional distance. As unlikely at it may seem, I will argue that based upon their live reception of positive and negative masculine traits, modern WWE fans are surprisingly liberal in their condemnation of masculinist beliefs such as misogyny, having a hatred of oppressive patriarchal systems and, mostly recently, opposing the sleazy objectification of women. I will additionally challenge accusations that wrestling is a fundamentally misogynistic industry, with particular reference to the modern reception of female wrestlers as serious athletes, rather than erotic valets leading males to the ring, or as sex objects in general, with reference to the successful 2015 ‘Divas revolution’ and the company’s decision to rename them ‘superstars’ in all broadcasts – giving them equal status to their male counterparts.

Social TV and the WWE: Exploring the fan-to-brand relationship in a highly engaged, live-viewing, interactive online space

Social television (TV) engagement has become more commonplace as viewers seek alternative ways of engaging with TV shows and other viewers. This is especially true with televised professional wrestling; 119,506 tweets were analyzed using social network analysis during the four World Wrestling Entertainment telecasts. Results show that brand-affiliated users primarily interact among one another and not the fans themselves, despite fans reaching out to the brand, resulting in significant social stratification and low interactivity within the community. The findings suggest that when fans think they are able to join and contribute to the brand’s ongoing conversation, those fans might still be highly motivated to communicate with the brand, even if the brand does not reciprocate.

Professional Wrestling in a Time of Social Distancing

This essay offers a layered account of professional wrestling training in Florida in the months surrounding both WrestleMania 36 and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. These events draw attention to the necessity of performing bodies in the production of professional wrestling shows and the compounded somatic risks implicit in carrying out such performances. I situate the wrestler’s laboring body as a primary site of production, complicated by the risk of sharing the wrestling ring amid calls for social distancing.