New friend of the blog John Dvorak is making his debut guest post with a Barthesian reading of James Ellsworth, how great is that? This jobber who came out of nowhere becomes valued for that which is the opposite of traditional value in wrestling, what a perfect emblem of these strange times. Take a look: On Tuesday I had the enjoyable opportunity to take my ten-year old son to the SAP Center in San Jose…
Tag: Roland Barthes
My friend Tim Kail hit the nail on the head on The Work of Wrestling today with this essay about the flawed concept of “fake” in professional wrestling. Hopefully you’ll click on the link go read it after I tempt you with this excerpt: Yes, Ronda’s aches and pains resultant from her hard work and her righteous battles are legitimate. Rocky’s wounds are paint. Sylvester Stallone does not feel their pain. But the emotion experienced…
The digital artist from Texas known to the Internet Wrestling Community as Punkrockbigmouth (who sometimes admits her name is Niki) is possibly the most talented person I follow in the IWC. Her Tumblr “Absurdity” is a garden of ironic delights for these strange times. Dean Ambrose playing with baby chicks! Roman Reigns riding a unicorn and holding a kitty! The New Day getting drunk on milk! There’s so much to say I’ve sat here for months…
I have been consulting Roland Barthes as I percolate several thinky posts, and it occurs to me that I should share some of the original motivation for starting this blog. Even if you’ve read it before, Roland Barthes’ essay “The World of Wrestling” from his influential book of post-structural pop culture criticism Mythologies is great for wrestling fans to revisit. Every time I read it, I notice new things. But I also want to tell you…
Lately I’ve been interested in examining the areas in which wrestling and the creative arts overlap, intersect, inform and inspire each other. In this realm there is no better artist to write about than Rob Schamberger. Schamberger is a Kansas City pop artist who works with a variety of mediums and techniques to create stunning and vibrant portraits that capture all that is larger than life about wrestling’s superstars, past and present. Schamberger paints legends,…
Honestly, I avoided much of RAW on Monday. I was in the kitchen doing dishes and listening but not watching, in hopes of not having to see the Jerry Springer thing. I had thought surely as a species we had evolved beyond Jerry Springer. (I mean, what is this, 1999?) But I got drawn over to the TV during a few of the segments, one of which, of course, was John Cena’s powerful confrontation of…
I’m struggling to read wrestling these past couple weeks. Sure, one week I was out in the sticks without even a viable internet connection, so that threw me off my rhythm. But the more pressing problem is the shite state of affairs in the current threads of WWE’s narrative. I’ve been listening to some podcasts. It’s not just me. I’m feeling stagnant, and the smarks are getting ticked off. We’re all starting to balk about…
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…