WWE's Monday Night Raw is retooling itself a bit, and because a revamp of a venerable brand is generally something to write home about, Slate dispatched TV critic Troy Patterson to write things up. I'm not entirely sure where he falls on the redesign, or the show in general, but I have a couple of quibbles, one general, one specific. First, I should say, I really enjoy Monday Night Raw. I don't watch it every night, but I catch it fairly often, and check in on the plot lines online so I'm updated. I have paid to watch professional wrestling live, and I can attest to the loudness of the fireworks, the scariness of The Undertaker, and the deep and abiding pleasures of watching men pretend to bash each other about while drinking a beer the size of one's head and sitting in the nosebleed seats with a bunch of enthusiastic Latino families who are rooting for Rey Mysterio. So, when Patterson wrote this, I sort of shook my head:
I tuned into the WWE's Monday Night Raw hoping to see elbow-smashing women attired in Zac Posen and men wielding Acme anvils, among other treats. Embracing mainstream celebrity culture, Raw now extends its hospitality to special guest hosts. Bob Barker, Floyd Mayweather, and, of course, Al Sharpton will be dropping in soon.
Not a chance. No matter what circus schools there are out there preserving juggling techniques, no matter the charms of The Big Apple Circus (and they are manifold), the WWE seems to my mind the purest remaining incarnation of the menace and entertainment of the true old-school circus ethos. It's one of the few forms of entertainment where you're pretty much guaranteed to see something amazing, something grotesque, and something that turns you on. The Undertaker is the incarnation of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Mr. McMahon has to be one of the great all-time entertainment hucksters (dude died in a storyline, and the company told CNBC with a straight face that he was actually dead. Given that WWE is a publicly-traded company, that is a commitment to kayfabe.) . No matter what rebranding they go through, WWE is far too smart to throw that all away.
Second is a far more serious error of critical judgement. Patterson writes:
"Obviously the fix is in," said Randy Orton, who simmered quite attractively—vulpine eyes, superb skull, tattooed arms rocking with his breath. This is the place to include a paragraph and a half of cultural-studies boilerplate on how the spectacular homoerotics of the ring speak to the self-identities of young heterosexual males, but I'll leave it at saying that Randy Orton can pile-drive me anytime.
Oh, honey, no. Randy Orton is a heel inside the ring and a person of dubious character outside of it. And in any case, how can you fall for that thug with a Cro-Magnon eyebrow line when John Cena is anywhere near a wrestling ring? It may be that I'm a Boston girl, and so I'm going to side naturally with the Red Sox fan from Western Mass. It may be a long-latent attraction to wildly stereotypical All-American boys coming unexpectedly to the fore. It may be that I find the dude's attempt to have a rap career kind of adorable and sad and sweet. It may be the work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Or it may just be that the dude actually smiles, not just glowers. I seriously doubt that Cena will make it in the real world beyond B-and-that's-generous movies like The Marine and 12 Rounds, or that he deserves to. But that's kind of beyond the point. In its own weird, refracted way, professional wrestling is America, from the doofy white ethnic stereotypes like Rowdy Roddy Piper, to the manufactured conflict with Iran, to the co-option of lucha libre. And in this funhouse version of the United States, John Cena is Steve Rogers.
Updated: The NPR interview with Cena that can be found here is delightful. Thanks, Leee.