Tag: Russia

May 29, 2015 /

Based on my What Rusev is Saying post from months ago, Google sends me boatloads of traffic on the topic of Rusev, Lana, what they’re saying and what they’re up to. Recently I’ve had several search terms to the effect of why is rusev bulgarian again. It’s a real puzzler, isn’t it? Suddenly, after their break up, Rusev is waving the Bulgarian flag. So representing Russia was all because Lana is such a pretty girl?…

October 3, 2014 /

It is a curious state of affairs and a reflection on the liminal nature of kayfabe that WWE feels it must apologize to the people of Russia about Big Show’s satirical disrespect to their flag on RAW this week. Recall that WWE readily apologized about Lana’s mention of the Malaysian Airlines plane in Eastern Ukraine, while Lana herself dismissed the kerfuffle about what she said as “blah, blah, blah… propaganda.”  These apologies are calculated —…

July 15, 2014 /

Lana is a character who can fill a stadium with ironies that refuse to resolve themselves. She lectures us, America, about our tendency to always solve our problems with violence, that we are saviors who cannot save ourselves. She likes to tell us that our country is crumbling, warns that pride always comes before the fall. Mean girl as she is, she’s not wrong about these things. Then, inverting her lecture into a ruthless satire,…

May 15, 2014 /

I didn’t mean to let my beloved lit-smark blog go dormant the past couple weeks. I’ve just had my mind blown by Lana and her flashing of Vladimir Putin’s big head across the jumbotron, and her talking about Edward Snowden and sanctions. Lana as a WWE nationalist heel is a Soviet era cartoon stereotype, a throwback to the era of wrestling that coincided with the cold war. A petite bombshell in a power suit with…