Professional wrestling is the least pretentious art.
That’s one of the many reasons I love it. There’s something fundamentally “every man” about it, something other art critics might label “low brow”. I like to think of this aspect of the medium less as “low brow” and more as “universal”.
Sit any person down in front of a really good professional wrestling match, especially one with charismatic characters or feats of incredible athleticism (preferably both), and I promise you they will pop. You have to actively contain a positive emotional response to good pro-wrestling if your intent is to prove it’s not a respectable form of performance art. Viewed fairly, pro-wrestling’s emotional power, achieved through the skilled manipulation of expressive human bodies, is seen through the same lens as dance, theater, or oration.
Pretentiousness is antithetical to art. It excludes where art includes. It’s a vicious, ironic circle - this relationship between art and pretentiousness - a snake eating its own tail. Pretentious people, without necessarily being cognizant of it, have a faith in the superiority of their knowledge and tastes. What they think and say has more inherent value than what someone else might think and say about a particular work. Their goal is to raise their perspective up and, as a natural extension of that process, tear someone else’s down.
I’ve been an artist all my life. For me, when it comes to art, there’s no greater sin than being pretentious. You violate the principle value of the arts by attempting to transform them into an example of your superior intellect. Art does not exist so that we might bludgeon others with our great takes, it exists to help us all transform into our better selves.
Pro-wrestling tells that story, encouraging that egalitarian perspective, with appropriate gusto, occasionally even approaching the sublime. We watch our favorite wrestlers face down literal death, drag each other through broken bottles, hurl each other off cages, crash through burning tables all in the name of asserting the difference between right and wrong. The wrestlers’ successes and failures become the audience’s.
We yearn for babyfaces (heroes) to overcome heels (villains) because, if they can, so can we.
Professional wrestling is an incredibly complex form of art, a theatrical quilt that weaves together a variety of genres and mediums. And yet, partially because it’s so good at its specific form of fakeness, it’s considered base, even crass. That’s the unfortunate side effect of being a reflection of the culture, something pro-wrestling has always been, easily dismissed as a bunch of screaming, steroid-infused men or raunchy Jerry Spinger-like segments.
It’s a shame that such sights and sounds are all some people will ever know about pro-wrestling. They’re missing out. The inner-workings of the craft, which when revealed can instill a greater respect for the art and its creators, are necessarily second to the on-screen narrative. Wrestling matches, if they’re good, appear effortless when they are, in fact, highly complicated exhibitions in theatre. If you're dismissing wrestling as fake, you have to know all the ways in which it's very hard and very real to ever know why it's good. Good wrestling hides the strings, though, pushing audiences toward what I call “the moment of pop” where all disbelief is suspended and the referee’s three count is as real as any home run, touchdown, knock-out, goal, or three-pointer.
It’s impossible to be pretentious in the moment of pop.
In that moment, your spirit is exalted. You’re attaining a higher, better self, thanks to a well-timed fall, perfectly executed finisher, or grueling submission. Pro-wrestling is so focused on delivering that experience to all people that it sidesteps a lot of the psychological baggage of supposedly “higher art”. Pro-wrestling doesn’t hide that it’s mostly about good overcoming evil. It delights in the directness of that story. But it has told that story in myriad ways with varying degrees of complexity over the past century. Where some might see a carnival sideshow put on by a handful of grifters, I see a beautiful expression of the human soul that relishes the chance to make audiences think and feel in ecstatic ways.
That said, pretentiousness (best understood in art as a way of excluding people) worms its way into any art. In the pro-wrestling community this is exemplified by the gate-keeping of uber “smart” fans, traditionally young, white men, who wish to prevent the purity of their pastime from being tainted by “fake” fans. Such fans get off on being in the know, memorizing the names of obscure wrestling moves, reciting their encyclopedic knowledge, criticizing booking decisions of “The Fed”, and generally making everyone online miserable. Such fans care less about appreciating the art than they do dominating the spaces where that art might be celebrated. In so doing, they alienate would-be wrestling fans, offering no safe harbor for curious potential viewers or anyone who doesn’t fit the approved mold.
They’re best ignored (if possible), for professional wrestling, at its core, is welcoming to all. Unlike cinema or music, it does not demand foreknowledge before one is able to enjoy it. Every week, pro-wrestling auditions itself to new viewers, offering something that’s better if fully understood but simultaneously easily comprehended without knowing anything about it. This is a necessary element of a never-ending story. The never-ending storyteller doesn’t know exactly when a fan might tune in. So, in pro-wrestling, it’s always prepared for that, allowing anyone to become a fan at any time.
Pro-wrestling is so historically disrespected that, unlike arts like writing or poetry, it actually values the input of the audience and appreciates recognition. I’ve written several articles about several pro-wrestlers and they actually reached out to me and literally thanked me or shared my work on their social media as a tacit endorsement. I'm a nobody, and yet I've had the chance to get nods from the gods. I can’t say the same has ever happened about any other art I’ve participated in.
So not only is pro-wrestling not pretentious, it’s downright accessible and receptive. Few fanbases have more power than pro-wrestling fans. As John Cena once said to Roman Reigns, “they hold the keys. They always have and they always will”. Pro-wrestling promotions will course correct based upon feedback. Even the massive WWE will change the way it depicts an entire gender based upon the relentless feedback of the fans. No other medium is as quick to evolve.
This aspect of the medium, its universally appealing bent, deserves to be appreciated and celebrated. No other medium does more in an effort to bring its audience catharsis, whether in the way wrestlers sacrifice their bodies or in the way the medium harnesses the emotional power of its viewers. It’s too busy making people think, feel, and react to bother being a pretentious blowhard.
Art is for all.
Pro-wrestling knows this intimately. It’s a shining example of what happens when people stop trying to dominate one another and, instead, decide to come together in the warm embrace of joy.
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