Laying The Smack Down On Machismo in the WWF

"A man is a god in ruins."- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If Mr. Emerson would be alive today and could witness how much men in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) were like the "gods" he could have been talking about, he might become addicted to people like The Rock, or "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. Week after week, both WWF television shows, Smackdown and Raw is War, are in the top five television shows in the Neilsen ratings. Professional Wrestling, with its fast and high-flying acrobatics, glitzy costumes, and hot talk, works and looks quite different from amateur wrestling (Mazer 1998). With the amount of machismo that is currently shown in each episode of Smackdown and Raw is War, the question becomes simple. How does the typical viewer become so addicted to this type of programming that shows raw power though bodyslams and piledrivers and by how they speak? The purpose of this paper is to explain how the viewer would want to watch this type of programming, and why their addiction becomes so apparent. I will address this question by examining multiple episodes of Raw Is War, Smackdown, an episode of Saturday Night Live, and a taping of Wrestlemania X-Seven.

Much of the machismo shown in the WWF takes place during an interview. In an interview, the villain insults the hero or promises some unwarranted personal attack on the hero. The hero, wishing to defend his honor (repair face) agrees to fight the villain in a well-publicized match on the wrestling circuit. In this match, the villain, using illegal means, manages to beat the hero. In a post match interview the hero challenges the villain to a grudge match at some upcoming town on the circuit. If the villain wins the grudge match, it is again though illegal means. If the hero wins, it is decisive, and ends with the total humiliation of the villain. The villain, in a post-match interview then swears revenge on the hero and the entire sequence begins again (Ball, 1990). This constantly happens in the WWF and more recently, at this past pay-per-view Wrestlemania X-Seven. In a pre-match interview between Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) and Steve Williams ("Stone Cold" Steve Austin), "Stone Cold" mentioned to The Rock that it was a must for "Stone Cold" to win. The Rock returned to say that The Rock would give as much as he could to win this important match. Eventually during the match, Vince McMahon (Mr. McMahon) comes down to the ring to hand Stone Cold a chair to injure The Rock and win the WWF World Championship title. In the post-match interview with Jim Ross (Jim Ross), Stone Cold explains that he needed Mr. McMahon for an insurance policy because he needed to win the match. Previous to this match, Stone Cold had been a "babyface" (or hero) but after this match, he became a "heel" (or villian). After the interview, he proceeded to show the fans how much of a heel he became by attacking Jim Ross and leaving him in a bloody mess (Personal Tape).

In a fascinating book, Mazer (1998) explains that wrestling, which is referred to as "Sports entertainment," is a sport that isn’t sporting or a theatrical production that is not theatre. It shows the ritualized encounter between opponents shown over and over for the audience. Wrestling is pointed out as a "Masculine Melodrama" in which live and televised performances externalize emotions, mapping them "onto the combatant’s bodies and transforming their physical competition into a search for moral order" (Mazer, 1998). The performances structure both from the nineteenth century theatre and the feminine version of melodrama, which is the soap opera. Rather than simply reflecting and reinforcing moral clichés, professional wrestling puts contradictory ideas into play, as with its audience it replays, reconfigures, and celebrates a range of perfomative possibilities (Mazer, 1998). One example of this fact happened on both Raw Is War and Smackdown when Mr. McMahon asked his wife, Linda McMahon (Linda McMahon) for a divorce and then started "dating" Trish Stratus (Trish Stratus) while putting Linda into a sanitarium with heavy medication. Realizing that he may lose half of his money, he does not continue with the divorce but continues dating Trish. Eventually, Linda snaps out of the medication and gets revenge on Mr. McMahon during Wrestlemania X-Seven in the middle of a match between Mr. McMahon and his son Shane McMahon (Shane McMahon). Prior to this match, Shane had purchased WWF’s competition, World Championship Wrestling (WCW), from Mr. McMahon. This event made Mr. McMahon very ferious and made a match for Wrestlemania X-Seven, which became a horrible street fight. During the match, Linda kicked Mr. McMahon in the testicular region of his anatomy. A week later, on Raw Is War, she demands an official divorce in the wrestling ring while Mr. McMahon is on his knees asking for her forgiveness. Such action makes the average male interested in these story lines (Personal Tape).

Most of the matches made in the WWF are based on story lines. It’s been shown that matches become made during a story line, which is based on the typical "the babyface versus the heel" match. These matches make the audience very interested in the show. They cheer for the babyface and taunt the heel. What is at stake in the squared circle in each individual performance and what is sold to, as well as celebrated with, the audience is nothing less than an underlining idea of a homogeneous community of men. These men whose differences are always understood to be superficial, are a kind of drag overlay on an essential masculinity (Mazer, 1998). An example of this recently happened on an episode of Raw Is War, when Paul White (The Big Show) interfered in a match with Kane and Kurt Angle. After The Big Show came out to help Kurt Angle, Kane’s brother The Undertaker came out to get The Big Show. Later in the show, a match appears between The Undertaker and The Big Show (Personal Tape). When matches appear out of nowhere, the average viewer will continue watching just to see if other matches will be made.

Professional wrestling has become a pop-culture phenomenon, a megabucks marketing success story (Livin 1999). Most WWF superstars (or characters) have come on multiple television shows to promote their company. Most recently, Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, where some of his friends (Mankind, The Big Show, Triple H, and Mr. McMahon) came on to help him. During certain skits on the show as well as the opening, all of the guys appeared to bother him and to scare the actors on the show. In one example, after a skit when the show would go into commercial, Mankind, The Big Show, Triple H, and The Rock would come out and try to "beat up" an actor on the show (Personal Tape).

This ritual has two major advantages over the traditional one-act dramas. First, it provides long-term motivation. When a particular hero and villain climb into the same ring, the fans know the background of the feud, and further, have relatively deep insight into the characters each represent. Second it provides assured and continued fan participation. Just as the "serial adventure" provided a cliff-hanger ending assuring that movie fans of the thirties and forties would return to the theatres next week, wresting provides perpetually unresolved long-term feuds which assure regular attendance at arenas (Bell 1990). Each episode of Raw Is War and Smackdown has story lines that will guarantee that you should find out what will happen on the next show.

In conclusion, though the interviews, story lines, and being part of pop culture, WWF entertainment shows the greatest amount of machismo on television today. There are multiple other examples of machismo though shows like Raw Is War and Smackdown, even in the pay-per-views, but these examples and reasons are what make WWF programming the top five shows on television today! I may be bias with the paper, but simply I am a wrestling fan. I am sold with the story lines, the interviews, and the matches that make up programming for the fans to view week after week.

Bob Levin. "A Groin-Grab For Ratings," Maclean’s. 26 July 1999: 52.

Michael R. Ball. Professional Wrestling As Ritual Drama In American Popular Culture. (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1990) 126-127.

Raw Is War. March 19, 2001. Personal Tape (2 hours).

Raw Is War. March 26, 2001. Personal Tape (2 hours).

Raw Is War. April 2, 2001. Personal Tape (2 hours).

Raw Is War. April 9, 2001. Personal Tape (2 hours).

Saturday Night Live. Personal Tape (1 hour 30 Minutes).

Sharon Mazer. Professional Wrestling Sport And Spectacle. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998) 3.

Smackdown!. March 15, 2001. Personal Tape (2 hours).

Smackdown!. March 22, 2001. Personal Tape (2 hours).

Smackdown!. March 29, 2001. Personal Tape (2 hours).

Smackdown!. April 5, 2001. Personal Tape (2 hours).

Wrestlemania X-Seven. April 8, 2001. Personal Tape (3 hours).