My notes are a little scattered, this was quite a mind-boggling couple of days! Suddenly we have a whole new cast of characters. The earth has wobbled on its axis and Big Show is a bully heel, Daniel Bryan is in charge of RAW, the authority is gone, and until this Anonymous General Manager popped up the whole company appeared to be running off the rails, booking itself last night, which was a wild ride there for a minute! This was a huge shift in the balance of power and the alignment of the WWE Universe. It’s a lot to take in.
Big Show’s apologia-turned-heel-turn was memorable, I’m totally going to transcribe it. I didn’t know Big Show had such a performance in him. This whole thing has become an amazing satire of itself. “How high and mighty all of you are!” says Show to the audience.
Erick Rowan may be more unhinged than Luke Harper. Suddenly I’m impressed by him. He was the least flashy member of the Wyatt Family, but now he is distinguishing himself.
Seth Rollins texting while Noble and Mercury pester him was a well crafted bit of stage business. Somehow Noble and Mercury have this Rosencrantz and Guildenstern effect on every scene, especially now that they are officially J&J Security. They are the ultimate wrestling satire — these scrappy little cruiser-weights providing security for these huge wrestlers. They were actually kind of handy in a brawl, but once they get in a ring they are like a couple of stooges. “They’re just a little rusty, that’s all,” said JBL. In fact they did everything wrong, revealing themselves as nothing but the thugs who do the stomping after the bigger guys lay out a victim. But still, very funny.
I suddenly realized, if I am crafting myself as the go-to girl in critical theory on the topic of John Cena, I’m going to have to watch Divas to see how he is portrayed (and acts). I’ve soooo been avoiding Divas. But AJ made reference to him giving Nicki an STD, or did I hear that wrong? Maybe she was just being mean?
Ever since it was pointed out to me on Twitter about Tyson Kidd’s kitties, he seems to me one of the most complex characters in the WWE.
And, of course, Kane working concessions! Seth Rollins a sudden desperate outlaw. Michael Cole and the Anonymous General Manager, which I missed in its earlier run. Suddenly wrestling has become a whole new animal, and I’m still finding my footing. All around last night’s show was quite theatrical, and there was some great acting. I need to sit down an transcribe Big Show’s speech, and also Bray Wyatt’s from a week ago.
I never even managed to write my notes on Survivor Series. It’s already a blur — all I really remember is that Dolph Ziggler stepped it up as the kick-out kid, and then Sting showed up as a deus ex machina. If there ever was a god to step in and solve a narrative problem, he was quite a one! Symbolically what he did was full of meaning — here is this iconic, stalwart representative of a bygone era in wrestling who appears amidst this conflict between the authority-aligned heels and the audience-aligned babyfaces. As the question of which side was more important in the WWE hung in the air, a ghost of the WCW stepped in to solve the dilemma. Sting’s divine intervention (which is really what it was) sent a message that wrestling is not WWE. Wrestling is larger than one company, and in fact the audience are not a bunch of spoiled children as Triple H casts us. The audience is easily forgotten, but it is a critical interlocking yin piece to the authority’s more prominent part of the whole. Really, when the analysis is all sketched out, Triple H’s honest condemnations of us the snarky viewers was actually an inverted tribute to our presence (when you turn it on its mobius strip).
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