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It's time for change. Hello everyone, I want to give you a
quick update on where things are with Superhero Ethics. I'm coming back from my
illnesses and we will be coming back off of hiatus as of the beginning of
December. We already have a new episode recorded for you, and I'm in
the process of recording some more. We're going to do our best to keep
honoring the strike. There's some other content that we were looking at. We
also may start going to in every other week format for a little while.
Superhero Ethics just into the Strike ends with a lot of other things going on,
but we will be bringing you new content soon. In the meantime,
the next couple weeks, we're going to bring up bring back some greatest hits,
some episodes from the past. A lot of these are from a long
time ago. Hopefully many of you subscribed since then and so haven't heard of
these before. If you have, maybe you've forgotten you want to hear them
again, or if not, scroll right along. Just stay subscribed. We'll
have new content for you coming up quite soon. Please also remember the best
way to support everything we're doing is to join the membership program five dollars a
month or I think it's fifty five dollars a year. You get ad free
content, you get bonus content, not in these older episodes, but in
the new episodes that are coming out. It was a lot of the newer
episodes that I recorded, and you just it's a great way to help support
what we're trying to do here. There's a lot of work that goes into
this. I'm trying to make sure I have enough time to do it,
and you know, it costs money, it costs effort, and just that
five bucks a month can do so much to help us. Know that you
care about the podcast, that you support it, you want to keep seeing
more of it. Star Wars Uiverus podcast will also be coming back. I'll
have that announcement on an episode there, but for now, I hope you
enjoy this older episode and please stick around as a member. Please stick around
as a subscriber, and we'll talk to you soon. Hello everyone, and
welcome to the Superhero Ethics Podcast. I am Jacob Maleicheach. I'm one of
your hosts. Joining me as always is Matthew West Fox, another of our
hosts, Matthew, how you doing, Not too bad? Not too bad.
I just got engaged this week, so I've had a very active week,
and I get to have a podcast this week where I will say very
little, So it's kind of perfect. Yeah, that's going to be a
rare thing. One of these times we'll have a podcast where I don't talk
very much. Maybe ever. But today we've got two very special guests on.
I'm very excited to have this conversation because they're really the reason why I
decided to talk about this sort of thing at all. And it's a little
bit of a it may seem a little bit of a departure from what we
normally talk about because normally we're talking about superhero stories like things out of comic
books, things out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, talking about Tony Stark,
rarely occasionally talking about dared eviln Kingpin right from the Netflix MCUs that nobody ever
watches or talks about. But today we're going to talk about wrestling, specifically
this creature called professional wrestling, which includes things like the the WWE, but
also other other promotions as well other other forms of this. Uh And first
I'm going to introduce our guests so people will know who's who's who when the
voices come up. And then we're going to talk a little bit about why
this is so that people who are all like, why in the world is
this superhero podcast talking about wrestling? Uh So, first off, I'd like
to introduce Tim Abbel, good friend of mine. Tim, How's it going
going pretty well? Thank you? So, Tim, you're sort of among
my local friends group, our local friends group, right, You're you're kind
of the as we've been saying, the patient zero here, the one who
who infected everyone else with this with the passion? What got you started watching
wrestling and getting into wrestling. So there was one Friday or Saturday night where
I was channel surfing and trying to figure out what was on TV, and
I came across a television show where there were people in this wrestling ring.
One of them was holding a microphone, had his foot on another man's neck
on top of a briefcase, and was yelling bring them back or I'm going
to break this man's neck. And I immediately went, Okay, this is
very clearly pro wrestling and fake But one of my great loves in fiction is
world building and storylines and settings, and I wanted to know how they got
to this point and what came to this point and what everyone was talking about.
So from that point I sort of dove in looking for Internet places where
they would talk about this and sort of just learn everything in this weird,
wild world of people yelling that they're going to break a man's neck just in
the middle of a crowded arena. Excellent. So, so Addison, how
about you? Where do you come from in this? What's your perspective in
history with wrestling? So I've always had a massive spot in my heart for
things that are incredibly over the top. A little bit of that comes from
some small background in theater, I think, but that means comic books,
action movies, anything where just the amount of melodrama and emotion on display is
far outside the bounds of what a normal person would expect to experience. And
so Tim found out about that and said you should definitely watch wrestling and invited
me and a couple other friends over and the rest is history. That sounds
accurate on all accounts. So from my perspective, I've I think I'm the
latest bloomer within within this particular group, though one who got into it last.
But I've I sort of bit hard onto this and so to for for
our listeners, why we're talking about wrestling specifically is that while you know,
when you're looking at it from the outside, it looks a lot like a
soap opera. It has a lot of the same kind of of tropes and
trappings of soap opera. It's also very much like comic book superhero stories,
with clear heroes, clear villains, storylines surrounding them. You've got plots and
schemes, You've got people with agendas, and you've got people who are supposed
to be presenting as the right side of things. You know that they're the
good guys, they are doing good guy things. And then you've got guys
who people who are who are being underhanded or sneaky or doing stuff that shouldn't
be allowed and are getting away with it, and you know, so obviously
they're they're your villains. And as it turns out, both within the fiction
of wrestling itself but also surrounding the the business and surrounding the culture and the
fans, there are a lot of ethical considerations to dive into. Uh.
And so as I've been getting more into it, Matthew and I had been
talking and thinking, is this is this a topic? And we think it
is so from from that perspective, Uh, what are your thoughts on do
I get to chime in with my history with wrestling? Yeah? Yeah,
what's your history with wrestling? Well? And it's kind of joke because mine
is probably the I have the least connection to wrestling here, and I'm so
I'm going to sort of be the like, uh, the uh, the
new person voice, the voice of the every man here who doesn't have any
idea what you guys are talking about. But but I have an odd story
with it because I actually probably have been. I was watching wrestling a long
time ago when I was a kid, back when at least among the people
who I knew who were into wrestling. And this is the days of the
eighties when it was Hulk Hogan and Superfly, Snook and the Iron Chic and
eight million other horaly racist stropes of the sort. They weren't being honest about
that, or they were being honest, but like they were not being quite
so clear about the fact that it was obviously fake, and I remember knowing
a lot of people who thought it was real and thought it was a real
competition on the same level as the NFL or Major League Baseball. And I
liked it when I was ten, and then, you know, I got
to be a little bit older and I realized it was kind of silly and
I lost my taste for it. And I think a big part of what
intrigued me when I came back to it a lot later, mostly because you
guys were so into it, is the fact that now it is completely understood
that this is fake or not. When I say fake, I should say
it's fictionalized, That there isn't an actual competition happened where people are unsure who
is going to win in the wrestling match. That these are all scripted,
but it's a couple of few pointed out that it's a soap opera playing out.
And I'll say, while I still I've watched maybe three wrestling events over
the last twenty years, namely a couple of Royal Rumbles or WrestleMania's with you
guys between the conversations you all have been holed at having. And also I
have to be honest watching the TV show Glow, which really did a great
job of exploring the behind the scenes discussions about the heels and the faces and
how you write these stories and how you find the ethical storylines. It really
got me excited. And I'll probably be taking more of a back seat than
anyone else in this topic, but hopefully asking some questions because it's one I'm
really excited for us to talk about. And just by knowing a couple of
our other friends who are bummed that they can't be on this podcast, I'm
sure this is a topic we're gonna be returning to more than once. So
yeah, so I'm going to go to this. Glow is a great example
too, as someone who is watched that show. It does a very good
job of showing the fiction of the storylines, but also the reality of things
like injuries and racial tensions and all those sorts of things, right, And
I think it almost goes without saying if you know anything about Glow, But
obviously the gender dynamic and how it played out twenty thirty years ago is different
than how it's playing out now, and it continues to evolve. I'm not
sure it's in the best place that it can be right now, but I
guess hope Spring's eternal is sort of my catchphrase. I mean Eric Ailiff,
who was one of the friends, who a fellow judge who really wanted to
be on this podcast. He was pointing out to me that we at least
are no longer in the days of the bra and panty matches, so we've
made progress. Oh yeah, I have not gone back to watch those.
I did not start at that point. I have no desire to go back
to it. So sort of getting so like, as we say, we're
entering into this with the understanding that at least the stories we're being told sort
of in media right are fictional, but they're still like, there's still and
I want to make sure this is understood. The athleticism it takes to do
the things that these people do is just incredible. And so it's interesting that
we have this sort of performative art form that is so physically taxing and can
often still be very dangerous, that is not ostensibly actually competitive at least for
what people see in ring, what people see that's like televised or in local
house shows. We'll get more into that, I think when we're talking about
the reality like the meta concerns. But for right now, I think the
first thing to talk about, which is the thing that's the closest parallel to
superhero stories, are what takes place like within the fiction itself. And this
sort of with the understanding that sometimes it's harder to separate problems we're having with
the fiction with problems we have with the people who write the fiction who are
technically outside of the fiction, and blah blah blah, blah blah. But
we deal with that with everything else that we talk about on here. I
think, so this is not all that different, And so I guess I'll
throw to Addison this time. What's something that you think about when you think
about ethical considerations within the fiction, within the fictional stories of wrestling. So
the big thing with talking about the storylines of wrestling is, as Matthew is
saying, it goes back to the historical big tropes that all of the wrestling
has to rely on in order to tell the kinds of stories that it wants
to tell with no information other than this guy's punching this guy in the face,
and you're supposed to root for this one even though he's doing the punching
right now. And so when I am thinking about the ethical considerations of wrestling
storylines, the things that jump to mind for me are typically the big things
that move storylines between the matches, the promos that wrestlers use to threaten other
wrestlers or threaten the audience or build themselves up, and the content of those
promos tends to be the most fraught place for those tropes, turning into stereotypes
or worse, which is never great. A recent example of this was when
Jinder Mahal was the ww champion a couple of years ago. He had a
big challenger in Shinsky Nakamura, who is a Japanese wrestler, and Jina Mahal
had several promos over the course of one night that were making fun of Shinsky's
slanty eyes and things, which is didn't go over well with the live audience,
didn't go over well with the internet audience, and that particular angle was
not broached again over the course of that storyline, but it was very troublesome
to hear at the time. Absolutely goodness, that's unfortunately not all that surprising
to hear because one of the things that he's always jarring to me is that
it seems like there's this idea that as soon as they've identified somebody as a
bad guy, sometimes that seems to indicate to them, oh, this person's
a heel, so we can have them say whatever problematic garbage we want and
it's okay because they're supposed to be the bad guy. Do you guys get
that same feeling that that's like part of the conceit. There's definitely a line
there. Acceptability of insults is the term that I really want to use there.
There are definitely places where heals the bad guys in this case will go.
That would be crossing a line if you're just talking to your friends or
giving a speech in front of a crowd at a press conference or a political
rally or something like that, Like the line is much further in that case,
but there are still lines that you don't want to cross because everybody knows
that it's fictional. This wasn't exactly a promo, but there was some There
was a match a few months ago where there was a double amputee wrestler.
He had two amputated legs, and one of the other wrestlers in the ring
at the time repeatedly called him Lieutenant Dan during the match and trying to get
heat, trying to get the crowd to boo him, But there are still
lines that make people uncomfortable, even if they're supposed to be booing. That
concept of heat is something that's I think important to bring up here, especially
for the listeners who aren't super into wrestling. Heat is when the audience is
reacting to what you're doing in any way, and there's positive heat from being
very good and wanting people to root for you, and there's negative heat for
being very evil and having people boo you. And it's fairly common to try
to get that heat cheaply by making fun of the local sports team or making
fun of your opponent in some way that is, you know, like this
not an acceptable target in the modern culture, right like, kind of like
the making fun of Shinsky Nakamuras slanty eyes, right Like. I think that
the intent was to try to get some cheap heat for for gendermer hall,
but just because it's wrong, for like, because it's wrong for somebody to
say, yeah, you're probably going to get a big reaction, but that
doesn't mean that it I guess the the cost isn't always worth it. Right,
In a lot of ways, what what they end up doing is pervading
some of these these toxic or problematic ideas in our culture that these things are
ever acceptable to say, like in jest for example. Right. And it's
interesting because I think that's a problem that comes up in a lot of other
spaces. A long long time ago on this podcast, we did an episode
actually on the ethics of live action role playing, and there was a time
where one of those problematic things that would happen in in that kind of live
action role playing, which for those who don't know, it's more where it's
like a role playing game like Dungeons and Dragons, but it's much more of
like there's much larger groups of people and everyone is standing up and wearing costumes.
Although there could be a problem even in just you know, five people
playing D and D around a table, where someone would would have the attitude
of, oh, well, my character is this terrible racist and so I'm
saying terrible racist things in my character. And in that world at least,
it seems there's been a a there's a lot that that attitude is still pervasive,
but there's a lot there's been a big move, especially from the game
publishers, to really say that's not okay at all. It sounds like within
the WWE world that there's somewhat of a move away from it, but that's
still a lot of it exists. Is that you think fairly accurate. That's
absolutely accurate. The WWE has made great strides in some directions, and in
many other directions, such as the treatment of wrestlers of color, made few
strides forward and in more specific ways, steps backwards. There's a wrestling trope,
a classic wrestling trope, which is the foreign heel, which tends to
devolve from instead of the character being a heel and being a bad guy for
the things they're doing, turning them into being a bad guy because they're not
from America, or in the case of a Japanese promotion, because they're not
from Japan. And it's popular, but it's very easy to do and really
sort of cheapens the effect of the bad things those characters are doing. Right,
Like for a long time, I mean, Russev's steak is still that
he's fourign right, but he was being billed from Russia because we were having
issues with Russia I think is the history. I'm not one hundred percent on
that because I wasn't into the product back when that was happening. Before we
get too much further, I just want to make sure, uh people understand.
So we're gonna use some terminology like heal like face for anybody not in
the know, like that literally translated to heal villain face hero. You can
you can sort of internalize those ideas that way. The face is sort of
a shorthand for baby face. Heal is a lot I think more of a
straight line for villain. But like heels are the people who are you're supposed
to boo, and faces are people you're supposed to cheer. And the reason
why I wanted to sort of transition uh into talking about that is that there
are sometimes where we're given a character that we're supposed to boo, and here's
where we can we sort of get like it seems almost a peak behind the
curtain where what they're writing. Instead people are like, yeah, you know
that makes sense. They're right, such as the main example I'm thinking of
is Daniel Bryan, who I love, who is a vegan right like real
life is a vegan has and also ego conscious, and they sort of had
him adopt that as his heel gimmick, yelling at people for buying concession stand
hot dogs and stuff like that, And I like it felt to me,
for the for the promotional material I've seen, like the intent was that people
were supposed to be mad at Daniel Brian be like, no, don't any
way, I'm America whatever. And actually I've seen a lot of reaction that's
more like, yeah, you know, he's not wrong, we don't hate
him. Well, And that was actually one of the things I was gonna
ask is because I know, I know that often on this podcast, Jacob,
you and I the villains who you and I are almost most drawn to
are the folks like Magneto or Killmonger or some guy in Daredevil who wears a
white suit whose name I can't remember. But but we often talk about how
it's the it's the villains who we think have a point as opposed to the
mustache trailers the way you're describing, and it sounds like most WW villains are
written much more mustache Charley but but but but but that there are some that
are much more like they have a point of view that that someone could believe
could could agree with. I mean, like again, I'm still pretty new
to it. I've seen far more of the like sort of one note like
this is this person Since gimmick type characters, there are some that are more
nuanced or that have more, in this particular case, just something where there's
like a nugget of truth behind what they're saying that's not necessarily completely villainous or
wrong thinking, right, as opposed to you know, some of the I'm
trying to think of an example of a heel who's clearly just doing something bad
that is not like problematic, but is definitely like something no one's going to
agree with. And for some whatever reason, I guess Samoa Joe is a
good example, right, because he likes to ambush people before they actually have
matches and not actually fight the real matches. Samojo also likes to threaten people's
families. Yeah, sure, and that's obviously a problem. But this is
something we see comic book villains do as well, right, Like when somebody
is like, oh, I have found your weakness. You care about this
person, so I'm going to threaten them to get to you. Same kind
of thing here, right, And sometimes it plays well and sometimes it doesn't.
So anyway, not to get too digressive on this, there's a lot
more to talk about in terms of the fiction, but anything else on just
sort of what these people like, what is acceptable for people to say,
and the problems that we have when these characters are being portrayed in this way
or saying these types of things in order to get that negative reaction from the
crowd. Well, sometimes even with sensitive topics, they're handled well. I
remember one storyline a couple of years ago between two women wrestlers, Naya Jackson
Alexa Bliss, who started out as friends and then quote unquote secretly Alexa was
recorded in backstage segments insulting Ni and body shaming er because she's she's she used
to be a plus sized model and that sort of thing. Just a lot
of bullying segments which went on for a while and culminated in Naya beating Alexa
for the women's championship at WrestleMania, the biggest show of the year. And
that's a topic that there's a lot of sensitivity and people are very sensitive about.
But in this case, both of the performers have personal history with things
like eating disorders, or that sort of bullying and body shaming and wanted to
tell this storyline in this way to bring attention to that, and I felt
it was handled very well well. And then asto, you is a really
good point that I was thinking about before when you were bringing up things like
the anti Asian comments or the Lieutenant Dan comments, which is I think,
as you said, the fact that both actors in it are are on board
with it and are okay with it doesn't make it okay necessarily, But I
do think is a very important point because I was wondering an extra to me,
I would feel very differently about something like the Lieutenant Dan thing if I
knew that the person who was playing the heel went up to that disabled wrestler
backstage and said, Hey, how do you feel about if like during the
promos I use these you know, I call you Lieutenant Dan or things like
that, and I do you guys have an idea how often does that happen?
Like do they make sure that the face is on board with the way
that they're gonna get bullied and commented or is it often just as much as
a surprise to them on screen as it is to the audience. Boy,
it is really tough to know that. Sometimes I'm not privy to all that
backstage information. But they do review scripts, they do review that sort of
thing. They review their matches together beforehand with each other. So I assume
to some extent it's discussed, but I'm not sure how much. There are
some things that some performers will refuse to say. There was a recent segment
with then Dean Ambrose, who was a heel, where he was given a
script of what he was supposed to say about on hiatus Roman Reigns, who
was on hiatus due to a real life leukemia diagnosis, and Dean absolutely refused
to say a particular line that was in the script because he was quoted as
saying, it will lose US sponsors if I say this, right. So,
there are definitely instances of ensuring there's consent from all performers for certain things,
but not necessarily all the time, right, And if there is going
to be so, if there is going to be any kind of informed consent
with regard to to anything in a wrestling match, the words are probably the
thing that's going to slip your mind the most. Considering the amount of improvisation
and working from bullet points that most promos tend to be composed of. And
I'd imagine that there's a direct correlation between how popular of a character you are
with the fans and the amount of power you have to push back like that,
and that there's probably it's great when characters can say no, I don't
want to do that, but that if you're you know, a new character
who's getting their first big break, you probably have less you know, comfort
speaking up like that. Absolutely, that makes sense to me. Obviously I'm
not an insider. I don't know how it works, but from some of
some interviews that I that I've listened to, that does seem to be the
case, right, where Like people who are just breaking in the industry have
a lot less agency over you know, being able to draw those lines than
people who are more established and can use their star power. Right, and
this is also an ethical topic, right, people who use their star power
to influence what is promoted, right, what ends up in the final product.
And I mean, for a while, there were a lot of wrestlers
who had creative control written into their contracts so they could do that sort of
thing. It's definitely something that's been an issue historically yep, absolutely, and
so like this plays directly into us talking about ethical things in the fiction,
because when you get right down to it, the stories we get told are
told through a combination of the physical action taken by the wrestlers involved in the
stories and by the words they say. And Addison, I think it was
you who had said that they get like bullet points and then talk from there,
or was it Tim? I'm sorry I don't actually remember who said it.
But if there is some degree of improvisation, right, that means that
some amount of ownership of those words does go to the talent and the degree
of bullet pointing From what I've also gleaned from interviews because I'm also not a
backstage insider, is that it varies not only promotion to promotion, but also
wrestler to wrestlers. Some people are either due to their star power or just
due to having proven that they're good at improv, are given more or less
fleshed out scripts to work from, and people who are not proven to be
able to work a microphone are given a full word for word promo that they're
expected to memorize, right, and I mean from a just a structure perspective
that makes sense, right. You don't want your your show for the evening
to go off the rails because somebody who's less comfortable with improvisation, you know,
misses a line, or misses the train of thought, or loses themselves
or the you know it's doing some of the audience isn't buying into. But
it does mean that those people inherently have less agency over what they end up
saying. Right, So anyway, moving on to another it wouldn't be me,
I think on a podcast like this if I didn't at least briefly touch
on the fact that basically every conflict that any of the heroes and villains have
with each other in wrestling is solved via some form of violence, sometimes very
extreme violence, other times less extreme violence. But it's it's still a fight,
right. The idea in the fiction is that these two people are fighting
each other till usually either one person lays down on top of the other person
long enough or makes the other person go, well, if I don't do
this, I'm gonna lose one of my limbs or my lower back or something.
And talking about submissions, and I've spoken on this podcast in the past
about how you know, I'm not always super a fan of all conflicts being
resolved via violence, and yet I really enjoy this, And for me at
least, I draw a lot of parallels with with wrestling in Hong Kong action
theater things movies like Hero or like The One, or I'm just listening off
Jetly movies apparently Fearless, but also like Kung Fu Hustle. Uh. These
movies that are the parallels for me are the the physicality of the people involved
is part of the story, right, and so like because because of that,
the violence is almost inherent in Like you, I don't think you can
tell wrestling stories about violence, and that inherently feels like a problem to me,
but it's also something that I enjoy, which is something I wrestle with.
Does anybody else feel that way? Does anybody else feel like a little
bit guilty for enjoying this because it's it's being sort of promoted to you as
as violence fictional though it may be. Yeah, And I wonder how much
of my enjoyment of that is due to my brain going and knowing that it's
fake. Like I don't watch UFC or MMA or boxing or the real sports
where it's solved through punching each other in the face really hard. I tend
to look at this a lot like the stunt shows. It's something like Disney
World or un versus Studios, where there's these incredible feats of athleticism and there
is also a storyline, and just like there's a lot of violence inherent in
that sort of thing, and I think my brain ties those two things together
more than I realized when I started watching it. That makes a lot of
sense. I definitely agree that I would not watch wrestling if it was real.
When it comes back for me is as I mentioned at the very top
of this, it's so melodramatic and over the top, and they use the
violence to serve sometimes a greater story and sometimes a lesser one. But it's
not violence for the sake of violence. It's violence for a righteous cause,
or violence for revenge or something like that. And having a full, actual
story before and after the match where that violence has consequences and was a consequence
of things is an important distinction between wrestling and actual sports. Yeah, absolutely,
because unlike with actual sports where it's only the outcome, it's only the
winner and loser that matters, and that's it. There's implications after the fact,
in particular a story that culminated at this year's WrestleMania with Kobe Kingston,
where it was basically a story about somebody who's been working, really hard,
working in the industry a long time not being given opportunities. Right, very
classic sort of blue collar hero type story structure. But the opportunities we're talking
about a specifically, you know, these in ring physical competitions, and a
lot of the storytelling around there was very violent in up to and including him
having to fight like multiple people in sequence on a given night, Right,
But the outcomes of that were always more important. It was about proving that
people saying that he wasn't good enough or that he didn't deserve those opportunities and
that's why he wasn't being given them, were wrong and that was the real
right, That was the story. It wasn't that, oh, he's super
strong and so he's going to punch everybody to prove that he's the strongest.
It was he's good at this, and it wasn't just about raw strength,
but it was about talent. Yeah, the story the violence is a storyline
beat as opposed to being the whole storyline, right, and especially since some
spots look impressive as heck, and actually when you think about how much it
would hurt, probably not a lot some but probably not all that much unless
you do it wrong, which there's some shooting star presses I have seen that
make me go, oh, that moves way more dangerous than I thought,
but only the person doing it. So I don't think that I've ever had
my eyes open for the entirety of a Jeff Hardy swanton bomb because it's so
risky. And that's the other thing, like, and so we can that
that's actually a really good launch off point to talk about unless people had more
to talk about in the fiction, we could jump right into talking about sort
of more of the real life concerns because these are these are people obviously who
are doing these as I think most of us have intimated it incredibly impressive and
sometimes very dangerous athletic feats for our entertainment. You can draw some parallels to
football, though the animal not quite the same, because American football is still
an actual sports competition. But I sort of mentally go even farther back and
think historically back to the Roman colisseum, right, and the violence sport for
the entertainment of others, people putting their bodies at risk. It's not the
same because people aren't literally trying to kill each other as far as I know,
so better right, but still a lot of concern there. Yeah.
I mean football or any sport is really a good example because to some extent
you can't always fully enjoy it knowing how much risk they're putting their bodies under,
and how horrible injuries can be to witness, and how devastating they can
be to someone's life. In some cases, I have watched much less football
recently, as like athletes are getting more and more physically impressive, it means
the injuries are more and more physically devastating due to speed and power and all
those sorts of things. And it's really tough to watch knowing that you might
see something horrible, which is a problem in wrestling too. There are definitely
spots and moves where I have to swallow hard afterwards and am holding my breath
to make sure that it goes off without a hitch and that there's no devastating
injury. Well, And in regard to the NFL, TIM, I think
you make a really good point, and I know that in recent years we've
been talking a lot in football, not just about the sort of momentary like,
oh my god, that hit destroyed that person's leg, they're never going
to walk again, which, as you're right, are awful, but also
just the growing understanding that the years of repetitive injuries, especially repetitive head injuries
and concussions we discovered ten fifteen, twenty years later have massive brain damage effects
that are causing you know, horrific life altering effects, including a number of
suicides and other just really debilitative issues. And at further in the NFL,
there has been a real pushback from the NFL against changing the safety rules to
prevent those kind of things, and that's now getting better, but it took
a while. Has there been anything like that in wrestling? Like, have
we been hearing stories about wrestlers from the eighties and nineties who are now suffering
you know, traumatic brain injury or I think that may not be the right
technical term, but from repeating, what is it called CED or there's a
CTE. Yeah, yeah, But do we have stories from wrestlers who are
who are dealing with that ten fifteen years after they retired and has the WWE.
I mean, I just as one example off the top of my head,
I'm guessing it would be much harder to pull off the storylines if all
the wrestlers were in helmets. But I don't know if anyone's ever pushed for
that, Like, what have those discussions that have happened in the NFL been
playing out in professional wrestling? Yeah, and so unfortunately, there aren't really
stories about wrestlers suffering long term effects from concussions fifteen years after they retired,
because most wrestlers don't live fifteen years after they've retired due to their repetitive head
injuries. Yeah, it's the lifespan of a professional wrestler, is It's it's
unreal and really sobering when you when you realize, Yeah, I'm sorry,
continue Addison. The conversation around things like concussions and the more dangerous spots has
absolutely evolved over the last twenty years or so. If you look back even
to the early two thousands, you see the WWE, which is from at
least in America, easily the most conservative of the promotions as far as violence
now, which is not a high bar to clear, they would have spots
with unprotected chair shots to the head, and they had more matches with like
thumbtacks and things and just the even the things that aren't especially dangerous but look
impressive because they make you bleed from the forehead. They've been cutting back on
doing that and making it look more bloodless over the last half a decade or
so, and even in the WWE, it's still there's still lots of instances
where things just don't work and it causes a problem. The most recent example
that I can think of off the top of my head is the storyline leading
up to WrestleMania this year where Becky Lynch, who is who is currently the
Women's champion, took a bad hit to the face and ended up with a
broken nose and a mild concussion from essentially of a light punch that was just
set up a little bit wrong. But heads are fragile, and so I
have to ask at this point, and I it sounds like maybe you partially
answered this question by saying that things have gotten better what you just said about
how we don't really know because most of the wrestlers from from that wrestling distinctly
shortens people's lifespan. If that was true today, I think I would have
trouble. I get My question was going to be, how do you justify
watching it? Then? If it is actually that, you know, horrific
health health health responses, it does sound like from what you're saying, it
has gotten better. Is that? Is that? Is that? Am I
understanding there? Yeah, like the wrestlers who are retiring today like Kurt Angle
who recently retired, are considerably more likely to not become statistics in the next
five years than wrestlers who retired ten or fifteen years ago. Right, we
we also have I'd be remiss to not mention this. They're more talk about
it in the wrestling fandom and professional wrestling community in general. Now in particular,
there's a very famous wrestler from from a while ago now, Rob Van
Dam RBD, who released a documentary called Headstrong. It was originally supposed to
be a documentary about something else entirely, where he was going around doing some
stand up comedy I want to say, but he was suffering some long term
CTE effects, didn't realize it was trying to just power through it, and
the documentary ends up being about him seeing doctors getting the diagnosis, going through
all of that being told like his things, like his life expectancy and what's
going to happen with his brain, his thought and his thinking and stuff over
time. Is just fantastic thing to have come out, really really really heartbreaking
that it had to happen like in a way where you can see it,
But at least there's visibility, right and thankfully there's some there's some light at
the end of the tunnel. There's some medical research into the effects of the
possible use of CB the oil to help actually recuperate damaged brain tissue, which
they didn't realize could be done before. So there's potentially a light at the
end of this. But the most important thing about this is that the community
is talking about it, is aware of it, up to and including there
was a spot on What's John Oliver's show called Last Week Tonight, Yes,
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver where he basically calls out the WWE on the
health concerns for its talent. Right. It was talked about a lot then
and there's obviously some people in the business who didn't have the best reaction to
it, but it is being discussed more now than it was back then,
where First of all, our understanding about things like concussions was was poorer.
But also, you know, a lot of that stuff would get swept under
because that wasn't good for the brand. Right. That sucks. I don't
like thinking about something like that, but that's probably the reality of the situation.
Right. Well, there was a lot in the old days. There
was a lot of suck it up and keep wrestling so you didn't lose your
spot. And these days, wrestlers are more informed and companies are more informed,
and there's a lot more focus on safety and making sure that everyone is
recovered and good to go before they keep putting that repetitive strain on their bodies.
Like obviously it's wrestling, it's high impact, it's going to have some
damage regardless, But there's been a big push to make sure people are healthier
before putting them back in, as opposed to telling them to suck it up,
take a bunch of painkillers and go out and do it again tomorrow,
which leads to huge issues down the road. Absolutely, and none of this
actually answers your question, right, how can we keep watching this knowing that
this stuff is happening is a completely fair question, and it's something that I
pun well certainly intended to wrestle with, like it it's tough, but I
guess like these people, so I guess my stance on it is that the
people who are engaged in this, they like they want to do this right,
this is and so to what we can do as fans, I think
is make sure that we're supporting the promotions and the endeavors that actually are taking
care of their talent and champion for sane right like better health care for these
people, making sure that's part of like their contracts, their deals, making
sure that we are treating things like concussions very seriously and doing what we kind
of prevent them from happening. Like these are things that I as a fan
can support by some more supporting promotions that are doing something about that, and
by challenging promotions that clearly are doing things that look unsafe. That being said,
I'm still consuming aw and they definitely did an unprotected chair shot to the
head earlier this year, and that's already given me some consternation and they've said,
yeah, that was a mistake since then, like they which I give
them props for there, like they didn't have to say, yeah, that
was a mistake, We're not going to do it again. But they did
well, and we're talking about like the problematic storylines and kind of moving away
from the violence question a little bit, we talked a lot about the issues
around wrestlers of color and stuff like that. I'm wonder if you all can
talk to someone about gender, because I know what, like one of the
times when I it seems like every about five or ten years, I kind
of poke my head into wrestling to see what's going on. And one of
the last times I did before talking to you all in the last couple of
years was Background two thousand and two thousand and one, when a lot of
my friends at that time we're talking about it, and I remember watching some
of the women's matches and it was basically softcore pornography and and and my understanding
is that that has gotten a lot better, and no tim you have talked
about that being a lot better. Can you guys talk to someone about that?
I mean, and granted, as four guys were maybe not the best
experts to talk about this, but I still think it's worth noting what how
is gender treated in this in what at least traditionally has been of it seemly
seems like there has been a huge amount of sexism in how women wrestlers were
treated. That's that's a big topic. But to start with, several years
ago, the WWE Women's division was called the Diva's Division and the championship belt
was a purple sparkly butterfly, which, like obviously has some problems. But
since then, very soon after I started watching, and one of the things
that kept me watching was there was a WrestleMania where they announced that the Diva's
Division was being renamed to the Women's Division and that the women would no longer
be called divas. They were just going to be superstars just like the men.
They got a championship belt that was a recolor of the men's championship belt,
and they're being treated like legitimate athletes and legitimate competitors, unlike when they
were doing basically softcore pornography and being eye candy for the twenty five to thirty
four year old men watching. And I can at least speak to as a
more recent fan, most of the women's matches that I've watched play out very
similarly to the men's matches In terms of what they're doing. The kind of
like a lot of the same moves, a lot of the same physicality.
And I've seen some footage of some matches from an earlier era, and just
the way that the inering action has changed is is at least a step in
the right direction in terms of equality and in terms of treating the women talent,
excuse me, the women talent on the roster similar to the men talent
on the roster. There's that. That being said, I don't think that
the uh, from from what I've seen, there's still problems, uh with
how women are treated versus men in in the product. I think that's fair
to say. Yes, so it's it's better. It's just like with the
violent thing, it's gotten better. It's gotten to the point where I got
interested and started watching it. And one of the reasons why I was like
not at all touching this was back in the early two thousands. Whenever I
would see it on television, I would see something like this and go,
oh God, why would I ever be interested in something like this. I
remember that the few women and women matches that I watched back in the day,
hair pulling was sort of like the most traditional move, and it seems
at least like we've moved away from those days. I mean that still is
a thing. It's a real thing in UFC as well, because it is
a viable grit. But there's a difference in how you do it right.
There's sort of the quote cat fight y unquote way of doing it, and
there's the one where you're using it to move their head around, right,
And so just again changing the physical representative physical presentation matters a lot there also,
Like, honestly, the outfits are a lot less male gayzy in some
cases, not all cases, but you and in some of those cases it's
character in the outfit to intentionally be that way too, right, Lacy Evans
is who I was thinking of when I was saying in most cases while like
looking up into my brain to get my thoughts. So yeah, it's it's
treated as a deliberate character choice rather than being the default. Because Becky Lynch
comes out into the ring these days in sort of a looking like a negative
version of the jumpsuit from Kill Bill that Uma Thurman wore, right, because
it's it's yellow and black rather than black on yellow and looks rad and there's
nothing like inherently, at least from where I'm sitting, it doesn't seem like
there's anything that's inherently like designed, designed, quote unquote for the male gaze.
Right, And again, all of this is to say there's still plenty
of social problems with gender and with representation in in wrestling, particularly women of
color, although that's getting better as well, but it's a very slow progression.
Right. It seems like wrestling is still a couple of steps behind our
current, at least progressive side of our culture. I think that's fair to
say as well. But we do have superstars like Naomi, superstars like Amber
Moon who I can think of, who are women of color who are legitimate
talent on the roster, and while I might not think they're being utilized to
their fullest, they're not treated like jokes as far as I can tell.
And I know we're bouncing around here a little bit, but I know that
you guys had brought up kind of related to this. You guys want to
talk to someone about the intergender matches and sort of how that's being addressed since
is something that Addison and I have talked about a fair amount, and Tim
and I have talked about a fair amount, and it's there's a lot of
humming and hawing currently at least among us about inter gender wrestling because it does
seem like, right, if these are violence people doing violence to each other
because they're superheroes fighting other superheroes, right, that gender shouldn't play into it.
But there's there's a strong counter argument right to that. I think Addison,
can you speak to this a bit because you put it in too pretty
good words before about like what the sponsors are willing to tolerate, but also
like, like you said, there's two sides to this. The k fabe,
which is the broader fiction of the universe, is that wrestling is actually
a sporting event, and it would be very unusual and contraver if you had
women competing against men in this kind of sport, uh, in real life.
And so there's uh, the concern about that perception of violence of from
men against women in the in the universe where you're pretending that you don't know
that this is fiction. But then on the other side, because it is
fiction, Uh, there is the angle where it's completely reasonable in any action
movie to have ah, say, Vanessa Kirby and the Rock have a fistfight
in fast and furious. Absolutely, in fact, you know those are fun
scenes, right, But in part of this, like, right, that's
that's the point I was ineffectively attempting to articulate, right that the issue seems
to be, or the issue that the promotion of, at least that WWE
seems to be having, is that there's a way, because of the conceit
of the fiction, a intergender match is going is going to have some quantity
of a man doing violence to a woman, and within our culture right now,
there's problems with that, right, and that has to do with some
historical stuff and has to do with some very real problems that have been pervasive
in our culture for a long time. And so because of that, they're
sort of straight straight away from that. Now. Interestingly, there have been
some somewhat more recent examples of intergender wrestling, but usually it's the women doing
violence to the men and the men not doing much of anything too. The
women in turn sort of as a I, you know, putting their hands
up, I can't do this type thing, which has its own kind of
social problems, right, because that can you can see that as a well,
we don't want to show men doing violence to women. You could also
see that as that uh, incredibly archaic idea that, oh, women are
too fragile for for men to physically interact with, and so you can't you
can't do that. There's no way they'd be able to take a hit from
a man kind of thing, which is dumb and gross stupid. But right,
you've got those two things, one of which is problematic and one of
which you can at least understand. The the fundamental idea behind why they don't
want to do it or why they're cautious about it. There's an oft discussed
reason I see floating around about the reason why promoters or companies don't want to
do intergender wrestling is they feel it is too close to domestic violence, which,
like is reasonable and seems fine on the surface, and then if you
dig a little more, you realize things like, not all relationships are a
man and a woman, and not all domestic violence is man on woman and
or physical at all, and it trivializes the experiences of things like men in
gay relationships who experience domestic violence or other similar situations. So while it's a
reasonable thought on the surface, it it is just very trivial and doesn't really
fully answer the problem. And this does seem like one more area where the
questions that are coming up ian wrestling really mirror are the questions that are coming
up in a lot of the other kind of media we talk about. I
mean, you just mentioned scenes where the rock and a woman actor can get
into a fight on screen, and it's okay that, at least I've never
done like a formal study, but certainly from everything I've seen and read,
that's a pretty rare that's a pretty recent development. You know, ten years
ago, if there was a badass woman villain who had to be taken down,
you can almost guarantee that the hero would have a badass woman's sidekick,
and then at the final fight, the guy would be fighting the guy villain
and the woman would be fighting the woman villain. So so it's interesting to
me how many of the discussions we're having are really kind of similar to the
same discussions happening about these similar questions in comic books, in video games,
in superhero stuff, in science fiction, et cetera. Because, as it
turns out, it's it's it's cultural right, and as this is this this
fiction is also a part of our culture, and it sells itself to the
populace at large. And so if they don't think the populace at large is
ready to accept that, they're not incentive to sell it. And Tim,
I just wanted to say, excellent point, and I'm really glad that you
brought it up, because it's easy to sort of live within your own limited
experience and not think about the fact that those sort of assertions only pass like
the most rudimentary, quick pass intellectual analysis. It's really important to always analyze
things from outside of one's own experience, to think about, well, does
this past the smell test if I remember that people aren't all like me.
So thank you very much for bringing that up. So sort of shifting from
so, there's way more social concerns within wrestling that aren't related to gender or
to minorities. There's obviously plenty there, in particular like the fact that,
as we talk earlier, the use of some minorities often as a as foreigner
characters who are almost exclusively villains because they're not American and therefore that means they're
bad or whatever. Like, yeah, that's that still happens sometimes. But
there's also other issues such as where promotions choose to spend their money or take
their money right. And I think we wanted to talk for a little bit
about some of the things that the biggest, the biggest franchise of all of
these, the one we've been talking the most about, the ww has been
doing that because it's also an ethical problem. Yes, so this was one
of the main topics of John Oliver's segment on last week Tonight about WWE.
But it's their shows in Saudi Arabia that are paid for by the Saudi government.
WWE took large amounts of money from the Saudi Arabian government to put on
shows in the capitol and other cities in that country and promote them and talk
about them and in some cases talk about how great and progressive Saudi Arabia is.
And there's a lot to unpack there, in particular, how many,
just ballpark figure, how many women's matches do you think are at the Saudi
Arabia shows? As the person with the least amount of knowledge about this,
Matthew, what do you think? I would be amazed if there was a
single one. My guess is that there is absolutely no women wrestling allowed in
Saudi Arabia. Not only that there are not women allowed in the audience at
these shows. Not only that, but at the first Saudi Arabian show,
some of the female wrestlers came up in the arena on an advertisement, and
the Saudi government got very mad about it. So here's a here's a very
clear they're doing a bad thing, and we want to call them out on
it. Right, there's no part of this it is acceptable. They also
used the Saudi Arabia show to sort of, I guess test pilot bringing back
Hull Cogan, a very bad human being that shouldn't be paid talent anymore because
he said some very bad things and has never even attempted to retract. Uh
ugh. So yeah, a lot, a lot of bad to unpack,
and just this one thing particularly, I think it's offensive because of the like
you were saying, Tim about how they're like running these these promotions for the
show, talking about how progressive this this cover this government is right, Like
yeah, like there are We could do an entire podcast on the issues with
WWE's Saudi shows, from the lack of women to the several wrestlers who said
no, I'm not going there by choice, to the at least one who
was banned because he's Syrian of Syrian descent. Jesus, there's I know at
least one person. One host of a wrestling podcast that I listened to,
has boycotted WWE since they started doing their Saudi shows. It was a line
that she did not want to cross, that she felt was too far,
And I don't blame her for that. I know that I've started watching less
WWE and started watching more of other promotions since that's been a thing, because,
like again, the only real influence we have fans have is our attention,
right, our tension, and our money, and so like, other
than calling them out on things like this that are a huge problem that need
to be talked about at the forefront as a this is ethically unconscionable, right,
The only other things we have any agency over. The only things we
can do to try to make it hurt is to take those things away,
our tension and our money. And you know, when when you enjoy something
like this, it's tough, Matthew. You and I have talked at length
about some other properties we've enjoyed. For example, in our Harry Potter episode
where when something about the creator came about that. We are not at all
happy with how that, you know, influences our enjoyment of the product itself,
of the art in that case. Right, And I see this as
sort of a similar problem where there's a lot going on that I enjoy.
There's a lot going on that actually is like reasonably progressive. We have Kobe
Kingston is currently your champion. Still, Yes, he hasn't dropped the belt
yet, right, still your champion. So we have we have a black
person who's the men's champion on one of the promotions. It's fantastic, uh,
And got that at WrestleMania. Right, We've got the women's rosters at
a point where they're uh, you know, they're the main evented. The
women main invented WrestleMania this year. They were the very last match. Right.
Something that I think historically is that that never happened before. Right,
this is the first never happened before. Right, So there's there's progress being
made. But you know, sometimes it's like you go three steps sport and
some thousands of miles to the east, I guess, and yeah, it's
yeah, so it's it's tough. Uh, And it is a again a
real ethical problem when we're talking about enjoyment of these stories that we have to
consider the real life implications. There's a saying that we have in tim Andized
friend group, which is that Enderwagan is a chicken sandwich, and that is
referring to both the indefensible position of the author of the Enders Game series and
also to the indefensible positions of Chick fil A, and how it's challenging to
support the provably delicious chicken sandwich and very fascinating content of the Enders Game novel
without supporting the creators of them. And wrestling is a absoluteolutely massive chicken sound.
It's so big, yeah, And I appreciate your phrasing it that way,
because I like I am someone who, for example, has I haven't
touched Chick fil A in more than a year and hope to never do so
again. But there's also other ways in which I do spend my money that
I know other people would would disagree with. I certainly stuck around as an
NFL fan for a much longer time than many others, and the way you're
all describing it, to be honest, I think I would have real trouble
spending giving any of my attention to the WWE, given the kind of stuff
you guys are saying. But I also think that that part of the point
wh I was starting with is that we don't live in a there is no
such thing as morally pure consumerism in this economy, Like it's just not possible.
And every just every piece of media we encounter, every everything we decide
to spend our money on or spend our watching time on or any of that,
there's some degree of more compromise. And it sounds like, at least
that each of you, in your own way is sort of asking those times
questions and asking yourselves about what part of this experience will you or will you
not consume and how does that play into other things you will and won't spend
your money on. Yeah, And the struggle especially comes because of how big
WWE is. They often vacuum up independent talent or talent from other promotions because
WWE is quote unquote the big leagues. So there's a line between wanting to
support the people and not wanting to support the company. And it's just a
very tricky balance that I struggle with a lot. Is there such a thing
as a woke wrestling promotion there are. You really have to look on the
independent circuit for the most part there, but there are several indie promotions.
I think one I heard about in the Chicago area is called Rise that focuses
on female wrestlers and queer wrestlers and put on a show for pride called Pride
and Joy that I heard gushing things about from some of my other wrestling podcasts.
I wish I could go watch that stuff. That sounds great, But
generally speaking, it seems like the more, the bigger, the more mainstream
is probably the right word. I guess a promotion gets the more glacial their
response is to social change and social progress. Like the one of the newer
promotions that e W is sort of in a unique position because they're hypothetically still
starting up there on an on ramp, and so they've got some things going
for them. They've got a I don't know if this is an actual first,
but I think it's. Uh. Is Nyla Rose like a first for
transgender wrestler or is that just the first big name that's a transgender wrestler.
I believe she is the first trans wrestler who is getting attention on a stage
as large as this, sure, but I mean it would be wild if
if she was well not but not completely out of the realm of intellectual possibility,
right because we know how these things behind the scenes supposedly act as almost
like a carnival apparently in terms of how how you get your gig right and
how you keep it, And so I would absolutely believe those are some very
backward social ideas that would keep people, you know, legitimate talent out of
the business for backwards old reasons, right but right, so there there's there
are some examples, but like there's there's this danger, right of token ism,
of being like, oh, we've got the one, uh so that
then we're good. And that's not okay either. Right, you got to
treat all potential talent uh equally and not just have right and I'm not saying
that's the case with Nyla Rose. When you when you see the island in
the ring, I like, she's very impressive and is like one of the
Like there's nothing about the presentation of Nyla Rose that treats her any differently than
any of the other women on the roster. And I love that as far
as I can tell. At least more about her size, I think,
and that's just more has to do with her ability to deal damage, much
in the same way that we uh like we see promotional material around Bronze Stroman
who is a very large man, emphasizing the fact that he's a very large
man. Right, But it's still the case that again, these are these
are sort of exceptions and not like it hasn't reached a point where you can
point to I think many, many, many examples of progressivism in these different
promotions, and part of that is that I think a lot of their fan
base doesn't agree necessarily with all of these social ideas, and they're probably paying
at touch to their bottom line. This is all speculation on my part.
I'm not saying it's right. I fundamentally disagree with it, obviously, But
there you have it, and you can also sort of see this in some
of the stories they tell, right. One of the things I had on
our notes here to talk about was a lot of the story beats are still
coming from ideas that are part, at least in my mind, are part
of toxic masculinity. You've got this story. More recently so, Becky Lynch,
who we mentioned earlier and Seth Rollins are in a relationship outside of the
fiction, right, and they've decided to utilize that in the narrative. And
part of the way they've utilized it, they had a position where somebody did
a violence to Becky and Seth Rollins got you know, super angry, violent
upset and railed on the person to you know, a big pop from the
audience. But that that sequence of events is inherently problematic because of where it's
come from in our culture. Am I making sense? Or am I am
I on an island? Here? It is definitely problematic in a vacuum because
they can't breathe, and and the the counterpoint to that is that earlier,
in that same storyline, and prior to that, a violence was done to
Seth, and Becky was the first person to uh uh see red in that
way, right and defend their relationship, right. And I don't know if
that makes it better, but it is definitely it means that when it happens
to Seth, it was even right. Unfortunately, because of the gender dynamic
in our culture right now, it's harder to see them even back to back,
right, It's harder to see them the same way because we don't have
like it hasn't been an an equal thing in our fiction, right. I
don't know of many movies where you see sort of that that quote traditional gender
role unquote. That is a very loaded term, right reversed. But the
the so I agree that it's made I do think it is made better because
they are at least do they're they're presenting it in sort of an equal way,
that both of these people are like this, and that does a little
bit to make it seem less like it's about gender. But you know,
it's still the case where when I saw the first thing, the one thing
you were talking about, I was all like, yeah, Becky, go
get them. And when I saw the other one, I like got a
little squick in my stomach where I was like, hmmm, not sure I'm
into that. Well, and this lets me bring up kind of one more
question that I kind of fortunately have to disappear. So I'll ask one more
kind of nice, small, easily digestible question that you'll just take thirty seconds
on. I'm sure one of the conversations that I hear a lot in regard
to wrestling is that it is meant to be kind of a almost a satire,
at least today, that it's meant to be almost you know, a
satire of toxic masculinity and of male performance and ness, you know, particularly
in that how much it goes in that it clearly goes so far over the
line from manly men doing manly things into straight up homo eroticism and and and
just kind of almost making making fun of that idea of like the jacked guy
and I'm wanting but I also but the flip side being that it seems to
be one of those things where there's a really good irony there, but but
it's really easy to miss it too, And so it becomes that kind of
question of, like, what's your moral stance when you are trying really hard
to make fun of something and doing it in a way that a lot of
people aren't going to get the joke and are going to think you're just one
more time saying yay, men are manly men if they have bigger muscles.
What what what's your guys kind of take on the to what to what extent
the irony here is intended? And whether that that kind of justifies it in
some way. One of the big problems with satire as an art form is
exactly that you need the audience to be in on the joke in order for
it to function as you intended. And so even if there is a contingent
in the writer's room at the WWE that is deliberately writing things as a parody
of toxic masculinity, I don't think that it is fair to say that wrestling
is in any way a satire just because the vast majority of the actual week
to week viewing audience doesn't see it that way. Yeah, I I one
hundred percent agree. If the presentation was such that a majority or even a
significant contingent of the audience were viewing it in that fashion, then it playing
as satire makes more sense, right. This is what people have chosen to
consume it as. And so even if it wasn't intended as a satire,
you could argue, because of the subjectivity of art, that it's sort of
de facto satire. But that's sort of not what's happening, at least right
now for some people. I know some people who do view it that way,
and I'm not saying that their interpretation of the story is at all wrong.
More that I agree with Addison that the the way that the fandom generally
seems to be consuming it is a lot more straight up and down as it's
presented, rather than as like a veneer that is making fun of a lot
of the stuff underneath, because there are part of that is that are deliberate
comedy spots where you are intended to, you know, be in on the
joke, which makes the stuff that's played more serious not really seem like satire
to me again my perspective on it. And with that, I need to
step off. But guys, has been awesome conversation. I've completely wrecked your
outline, but please go on and continue and I'll look forward to hearing the
rest of the conversation later. Absolutely take care of Matthew. We probably only
like I just yeah, we're just going to talk about the cultural expectations thing
I think, and then go out from there. Thank you for your time.
Always nice talking with you. This is sort of a last point in
the outline. It's one I wanted to make sure we talked about because I
think it's a it's sort of a sideways look at this, and it's it's
sort of playing to a point that Tim made earlier or or yeah, where
we're we're looking at things that aren't major, Like not everything is made for
us specifically, and sometimes that means that there are conceits that aren't a part
of our culture, right, and so there are just like we've got a
bunch of different wrestling here in the States, there's also a bunch of wrestling
that happens over in the UK. It's very popular in Japan, it's very
popular in Mexico with Lutra libre wrestling. So sort of springboarding off of that.
Uh, I believe Addison, you were the one who added this point
to here. Is that correct? Yeah? So, so, uh,
what what was your what are your thoughts here? What did you want to
what do you want to bring forward into the discussion about the the idea about
the different cultural expectations and the different lines they might draw. Yeah, so
this was sort of driven by an experience that I've been having with a different
over the top fictional property. Uh. The Yaka is a game series,
uh and uh it is ah a lot like wrestling in that it is very
melodramatic and you solve all of your problems by getting into brawls with various people.
And like wrestling, it has a lot of very troubling h representations of
women and especially the LGBT plus community, which is in my experience with other
Japanese media pretty par for the course, and as a result, Japanese wrestling
is not immune to that. And the subject that I wanted to sort of
approach there is what kind of responsibility do you have as a viewer to contextualize
things when the mainstream that it was intended for is not the stream that you're
viewing it in, right, So thoughts on that, because I have some
right I'm curious Tim and an Addison, as people who have consumed a lot
more Japanese wrestling and lutually break currently than I have, how do you feel
about it? It's because it's a different culture and comes from a different context.
It's really weird to understand how I'm supposed to feel about some of these
things. For instance, in Mexico and Luca Libre, there are two classes
or archetypes of wrestlers that we don't really see in America, and those are
the minis, which are little people wrestlers, and the exoticos, which are
basically drag queens wrestling men dressing up like women and acting like women and wrestling
in a very similar fashion as drag queens performed to my understanding, and the
first times I saw this it felt incredibly offensive because of how much of a
joke they were treated as. But I don't don't have the Mexican context of
knowing where this representation comes from and whether it started out as insulting and has
changed to kind of embracing these differences, or whether like it's still just a
joke right at least the way it was presented in the the one promotion I've
watched in Lucha Underground, the announcer at least was talking like this was like
a really cool thing, and everyone was really excited to have someone who was
part of the exotico culture in their promotion, and the fans were, you
know, cheering and applauding, and it seemed to me to be presented more
as a like this is something they celebrated, rather than this is something that
they liked having around so they could laugh and mock it, but not being
a part of the culture. That's harder for me to say for sure,
right because i'd actually know, and I think that given the rise of the
Internet making it considerably easier to find literal libra and Japanese wrestling. As you
mentioned, Tim and I have been watching a lot of New Japan, probably
the best known Japanese promotion, because they have an online subscription service, the
same as the WWE does. Triple A, which is one of the better
known Mexican promotions, has a Twitch channel where they stream a lot of their
shows, And so it's so much easier now to find these things that you
need to know how to handle them, right than it was even five years
ago. Right, And that's also why it's important to to acknowledge and to
understand some cultural differences that may be jarring to you, right, giving your
given your background. But and you're right, I think the accessibility plays a
lot into why, like first of all, why we can talk about it
at all, right, but also why we can have these sort of different
presentations and within each of theirs. I hesitate to call them microcosms, because
Japan certainly isn't micro and neither is Mexico, but within their own subcultures to
our global culture, right, having things that having presentations and perceptions that we
look at a particular way, but they might not, or it might be
treated completely differently, or it might be okay in their culture and for us
it's not, or or we say well, why aren't they doing this and
it's actually going to be unconsortable for them to do it there. So that
was a whole lot of vague words to say I agree with with the idea,
and also to sort of you know, when you're watching any of this,
if if anybody decides to get into this and you're seeing something coming from
one of those other places, remembering that you know, not everybody is is
the United States and that there's there. Sometimes the differences are just like seem
comical or strange. But like I think the minis are great. I love
it when Mascarita Sagrada shows up on on Lucha Underground, I want him to
win a match. But other than that, like he did beat Son of
Havoc, I believe did he oh right when Son of Havoc was on that
giant losing streak. So okay, a little bit off topic, but yeah,
the the the reason why I made that statement was that like, for
me, representation and the way that I sort of pH test like strip test,
whether or not a promotion is treating their talent as equal to their other
talent is whether or not they let them win. Ever, Right, so
until the very finale of Luca underground cage was oddly mistreated. But as the
largest man on the roster. Yeah, I mean he's built as just this
massive monster of a man, and yet wasn't doing a whole lot of that
winning thing, which you know that that speak because yes, the as we
discussed is all fictional, so the winning is sort of scripted, but it
does do something story wise to legitimacy, and that sort of plays into our
ideas of the legitimacy of those people as equal to the other competitors. Right,
And so that's like sort of a broad metatopic as well, the idea
that if you have somebody who doesn't do a lot of winning, that makes
it seem to the fans like they're not as good as everybody else who is
potential, who is winning matches, and so's there's sort of a conceit that
they have to have in order to make them legitimate. They have to actually
manage those results in a way that makes it seem like everybody has a chance.
I think, unless people have more to talk about on that particular topic,
I think we're ready to share closing thoughts and do a wrap up.
Is there anything you wanted to talk about on that topic or on others that
we didn't get to touch on. Well, as you can see, this
is a very light topic with very few points of discussion, and that's clearly
everything we can talk about on the subject. One percent. We're done,
We've talked about. Nobody ever has to do this discussion again. We've covered
all of wrestling until next year when there's more of it. Right, Addison,
anything anything else you want to talk about or want to make sure that
we discussed before we wrap up. No, I think everything that I had
thought about going into this, and also lots of other things have now already
been said. Awesome, outstanding. Well think I want to thank both of
you for coming on and joining us for this discussion. Don't think it would
have been nearly as profitable if it was just me like mansplanning wrestling to Matthew
for several hours. So it was a lot. It was a more organic
discussion. You each had a lot to contribute that I really appreciated. If
if you're interested, if anybody have has an interest in continuing the discussions,
with you after this? Is there any way that you want to give out
for people to contact you? So, Tim any any Yeah, I don't
use it much, but I do have a Twitter that is at awble Tim
that's at au b e l T. I m on Twitter. Most of
what I have on there is retweeting stuff people who are way smarter than me
talk about. But if you want to start a discussion about wrestling or the
ethics thereof, or if you want other media within wrestling that discusses these sort
of things, I'm very happy to talk about that. Awesome And Edison,
how can people get in touch with you if they want to? So?
I am at demollet on platforms d A m U l l e T.
I've got a Twitter, I've probably got a mastered on if I can remember
the password, neopets forums, whatever. If you see somebody with that name,
it's probably me. And then as always as for me, I am
bots are people too. On Twitter. The R is the letter R.
The rest of the actual words. Matthew is caped ethicis on Twitter and we
also have the Superhero Ethics Twitter as well as the Superhero Ethics Facebook group.
You can join the to help join in on some of the discussions we've been
having. We've had a couple of people respond to our Harry Potter episode or
to what in the world did we do before Harry Potter? My brain doesn't
work anymore because I'm an old person. The episode, yeah, the sort
of the Sunset MCU episode, right, So, but really, any of
the topics we've talked about, there have been many posts having discussions. It
is a Facebook group, which means that one of the admins has to approve
you, but we have a policy of auto approving and then deleting spammers,
So if you want to come in, you're fine. If you're a spammer,
well you are a robot, so I do acknowledge your agency as a
person, but I'm still going to have to boot you from the group to
keep our word count down and make sure the topics can float to the top
of people's views that people actually want to talk about, rather than whatever you're
trying to advertise. So apologies, but that's the way it's got to be
in this harsh and cruel world, my robot friend, Otherwise, I'm gonna
be kicking it to Matthew to you sort of a post recording outro but by
behalf of myself, Tim Mobble and Addison, thank you very much for listening
and have a good day. I heard a lipsmack, but not a swallow