I have been thinking about the deeper meaning of tables in professional wrestling for nigh on fifteen years, my friends. So I’m watching with interest as New Day further develops their “Save the Tables” gimmick. My last post was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Somewhat. A thought experiment, shall we say. But I’m serious about tables, and so is the New Day. Here is a transcript of their “Save the Tables” promo from Smackdown this week: Xavier Woods:…
Tag: metaphor
I am increasingly taken with Bray Wyatt. Those other two Wyatt’s still function as little more than cultural stereotypes, especially the one who wears the creepy sheep mask. The sheep mask, the red flannel shirt with the cut-off sleeves, the dingy brown work jumpsuit, the red ZZ Top beard and the generally greasy veneer: these are all indicators of characters we have been programmed to disdain. We know without being told they are from the…
I know exactly when professional wrestling evolved into text for me. It was a late summer evening in the mid-nineties at a WWF house show in Indianapolis with one of my college professors, who was prepping a pop culture course called “Good and Evil in Professional Wrestling.” He saw wrestling for its literary goodness – a stadium spectacle rich in metaphor and conflict allegory, a coming together of archetypes rooted in the deeper traditions of…