Author: Professor Kayla Fabienne

October 29, 2015 /

Artwork courtesy of Punkrockbigmouth (punkrockbigmouth.tumblr.com) Another wonderful wrestling writer has stepped up to help me keep Spectacle of Excess afloat while I grind away on the novel I’m translating. Barry F. Hess offers an insightful look at the relationship between wrestling and Shakespeare here, touching on a number of concepts about the bard and the business that I never noticed before: Two of my most favorite pastimes in life are reading William Shakespeare and watching…

October 6, 2015 /

For my final nostalgic reblog of this Mercury Retrograde, I wanted to share this post about the classic essay that inspired this blog: “The World of Wrestling” by Roland Barthes. I felt pretty feisty when I wrote this, like I still had to defend my project of what I’m calling “wrestling theory and criticism”. I’ve finally moved past that anxiety so many of us have over thinking wrestling is important, worthy of critique, emotionally resonant,…

September 29, 2015 /

This little post about Eric Rowan has enjoyed a surprisingly high volume of search engine traffic since I wrote it nine months ago. Most of the search terms were something to the effect of “is Eric Rowan really that smart,” but people also googled about his artisanal grapes and wine-making, his classical guitar, and his Rubic’s Cube. In essence, everyone was thinking what I was thinking — the sheep-masked Wyatt just didn’t make any sense.…