The formula for success in the entertainment industry is tried-and-true. Simply put – give the people what they want. It is this adage that built and sustains the empire that is World Wrestling Entertainment, and has made its owner, Vince McMahon a millionaire more than a few times over.
The film, “Wrestling With Manhood: Boys, Bullying and Battering,” is a 60 minute in-depth critique of the messages produced, and therefore widely disseminated by the WWE and its programming. At the helm of this critique is University of Massachusetts Communication Professor Sut Jhally, as well as gender violence prevention advocate and UMass alum Jackson Katz.
What is interesting about “Wrestling With Manhood,” which is produced by the Media Education Foundation, a group based in Northampton, Mass., is that it is the first documentary film to seriously consider professional wrestling from a critical standpoint. It not only analyzes what it is, but what it has the potential to do.
Jhally and Katz beg to ask the question, “what does this mean?” Of course “this” refers to the often-graphic violence that depicts little to no real-life consequences, the rampant homophobia, and the objectification of females for entertainment.
The film itself is pretty standard documentary fare: expert observations and opinions punctuated by illustrative examples. However, “Wrestling With Manhood” differs in that it is almost unrelenting in its development. As the minutes pass, the examples and points become more and more explicit, driving the point clearly home.
From this, it might be easy to suspect that “Wrestling with Manhood” is very anti-professional wrestling as entertainment, but this is not quite the case. What Jhally and Katz do, in fact they merit the ability of McMahon and the industry to create and perpetuate an illusion of masculinity, while going one step further and simultaneously pointing out the more questionable fact that no one challenges the popularity of the “sport,” or even the casual write-offs that the programming is “just entertainment.”
Jhally and Katz believe there are greater cultural forces at work and therefore juxtapose their examples of actual wrestling programming with real world statistics and facts. Among them: the number of reported cases of sexual harassment, the growing problem of school bullying, and its relation to youth suicide, as well as increased youth and domestic violence.
The film is not intended to point fingers at the WWE or the professional wrestling industry as the single most direct cause of the previously mentioned public health issues. What the Jhally and Katz contend, repeatedly, is that professional wrestling and its choreographed depictions (yes, it is openly admitted to be fake) of violence are not directly responsible for bullying and creating less than ideal stereotypes of masculinity, but they are, in a very real way, contributing factors.
What was most interesting was the way in which Jhally and Katz point out the audience reactions. Wrestling is often described as a “soap opera for men,” so there is no doubt that it is dramatic and exciting. However, in the fury of excitement, the audience seems to full-heartedly embrace an idea of masculinity that is positively conservative and traditional, practically unfrozen from the 1950’s, simply because it is packaged as rebellious, real, and edgy – whatever that means.
“Wrestling With Manhood” definitely gives you something to think about. Fans of the WWE should not be particularly weary; the film probably does not provide any information that they do not already know. What it does do, however, is force a more careful, and necessary examination of that knowledge. “Wrestling With Manhood” airs on HSCN this week.
