Don’t Think Twice 11.15.08: Brilliant Disguise

I grew up in Chicago in the 1980’s, and as such I grew up as a fan of the Chicago Bears. Sweetness. The Fridge. Ditka. Superbowl XX. The Superbowl Shuffle. These were the heroes and hallmarks of my youth. That being said, it would only be natural to assume that I was glued to my television two decades later when the Bears returned to the big game to face off against the Indianapolis Colts at Superbowl XLI. But instead of watching the Superbowl that day, instead of cheering for the heroes of my youth, I was at the University of Illinois Assembly Hall, cheering for my new heroes. I was at a Smackdown house show on Superbowl Sunday. That, my friends, is a special kind of devotion.

I’d found out about the show after the tickets had already gone on sale, so I missed my shot at ringside seats. But I did manage to get a seat in the tenth row only four seats from the isle connecting the ringside area to the tunnel that led backstage. Fans would crowd around the isle before and after every match hoping to make contact with their favorite wrestlers, and for the most part I tried to stay out of the surging wave of fans. But after one particular tag team match I joined the fray and made my way as close to the barricade as possible. This was the first time I’d ever seen a live match featuring one of my all-time favorite wrestlers, a man that I respect as much as anyone in the business. And so as he began to walk back down the isle, I leaned forward and stretched my arm as far as it could reach. And on Superbowl Sunday 2007, I got a high-five from the heart and soul of ECW, the Innovator of Violence, Tommy Dreamer. But in that moment, as his hand connected with mine, I began to wonder who it was that had just touched me. Was it Tommy Dreamer, or was it really Thomas Laughlin? Was it the entertainer, or was it the character? Was it the man, or was it the myth?

Four weeks ago I discussed professional wrestling as not just pop culture but also as art and then planned to look at how the recent feud between Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho has brought professional wrestling closer than ever to becoming a serious form of artistic expression. But as I began my preparations for this column, I realized that there is no way to do justice to the Shawn Michaels / Chris Jericho feud without first discussing the preceding Shawn Michaels / Batista feud. Of course, there’s also no way to properly explore the Shawn Michaels / Batista feud without first analyzing the earlier Shawn Michaels / Ric Flair feud. And as I began to focus my thoughts on the feud that culminated with Ric Flair’s retirement match at WrestleMania XXIV, I realized that in many ways all three of those feuds were ultimately predicated on the dual identities of professional wrestlers. And that led me back to a pair of columns I wrote two months ago detailing how being a fan of Shawn Michaels introduced me to professional wrestling while being a fan of Michael Hickenbottom made me a fan for life.

The professional wrestlers that we see in the ring and on the screen are fictional characters, but they are given body and voice by real men and women. In fact, the term “professional wrestler” actually refers to two different occupations. Fictional characters such as Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, and Triple H are professional wrestlers. They make a living by competing in athletically competitive wrestling matches, and their success is tied directly to their ability to win those wrestling matches. In the fictional sense, to be a professional wrestler is to be an athlete much like a boxer or a mixed martial artist. But at the same time, real men such as Richard Fliehr, Michael Hickenbottom, and Paul Levesque are also professional wrestlers. They make a living by portraying fictional characters and using their athletic skills in scripted, theatrical wrestling matches. Their success is tied not to the number of matches that they win or lose but rather to their ability to entertain the fans. In the real world sense, to be a professional wrester is to be an entertainer and a performer and an actor.

One of the most fascinating aspects of professional wrestling, and indeed the very reason that it is so unique among all forms of sport, theatre, and entertainment, is that the fictional professional wrestlers and their real world counterparts are almost always considered to be the same person. Think of how strange it would be if this standard were applied to other actors and entertainers. Johnny Depp is an incredible actor, but we all understand that he’s not really a bisexual pirate. You probably wouldn’t want to have Sylvester Stallone try to save you if you were being held prisoner in Burma or have David Hasselhoff try to save you if you were drowning. And while Katherine Heigl may be one of the most beautiful women on the planet, I still wouldn’t let her take out my appendix. But for some reason, professional wresters are held in a completely different regard.

The pervasiveness of this phenomenon is apparent by the fact that hardcore fans, casual fans, and even non-fans all view professional wrestlers in this manner. In 2005 the fans turned on Edge and Lita because they had betrayed Matt Hardy even though it was really Adam Copeland and Amy Dumas that had slept together. In this case, the fictional characters Edge and Lita were blamed for the real world actions of the real world entertainers Adam Copeland and Amy Dumas. But in 1996 the fans frequently threatened the life of Troy Martin even though it was Shane Douglas that had, in the storyline, broken the neck of Pitbull #1, which itself was a result of Gary Wolfe incorrectly taking a DDT. In this case, the real world entertainer Troy Martin was blamed for the fictional actions of the fictional character Shane Douglas. The connection between fictional character and real world entertainer is so engrained in the minds of the fans that any attempt to separate the two is often met with disastrous results. No further proof need be offered than the WWF’s ill-advised 1996 attempt to exorcise the real world entertainers Kevin Nash and Scott Hall from the fictional characters Diesel and Razor Ramon while attempting to maintain the two characters as viable commodities.

Of course, the line between fictional character and real world entertainer can vary from quite clear to completely obscured. The clearest delineation can be made in the case of the most gimmicky fictional characters, those that resemble cartoon characters more than real people. It’s easy to tell the difference between Eddie Fatu and the savage fictional character Umaga or between Nick Dinsmore and the mentally handicapped fictional character Eugene. There’s a clear difference between Kevin Fertig and the vampiric fictional character Kevin Thorn (and whatever the hell Mordecai was supposed to be) or between Marty Wright and the bizarre fictional character Boogeyman.

But even gimmicky fictional characters can gradually become more and more similar to their corresponding real world entertainers. The fictional character Hunter Hearst Helmsley was introduced in 1995 as a prim and proper aristocrat, but over the course of the past 13 years the character has taken on more and more of the personality traits of Paul Levesque. Today, Triple H may very well be quite similar to Paul Levesque, only with the volume turned up a bit. Even the Undertaker, one of the most gimmicky fictional characters in the long and storied history of professional wrestling, has taken on some of the traits and attributes of Mark Calaway. The Undertaker’s status as a veteran leader is derived from the backstage respect that has been earned by Mark Calaway, and the incorporation of a variety of MMA-style moves and holds into the Undertaker’s offense was born of Mark Calaway’s interest in the sport.

The line becomes ever blurrier in the case of the many fictional characters who share their name and much of their personality with their real world counterparts. From Bruno Sammartino and Bob Backlund, to Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar, to John Cena and Randy Orton, it becomes difficult to separate the man from the myth when you are no longer able to refer to them by separate names. The confusion is only compounded by the fact that the fictional characters who bear the same name as their real world counterparts also often share many of their personality traits with their real world counterparts. In 2004, the face turn of the fictional character Randy Orton was a failure because the real world entertainer Randy Orton is, by many accounts, brash, arrogant, and undisciplined. WWE has recently been airing promotional vignettes concerning the injury, recovery, and impending return of John Cena, but at this point there’s almost no way to tell if they’re referring to the fictional character, the real world entertainer, or both.

And then there are the cases when the distinction between fictional character and real world entertainer becomes obscured even to the real world entertainer himself, when the real man begins to live the gimmick. Much of the legend of Ric Flair is based upon the fact that Richard Fliehr ceased to be a distinct entity long ago. Flair took over not only in the ring, but also on the road, in the bar, and in the bed. The ultimate example of this phenomenon may be, coincidentally or not, the most famous professional wrestler of all time, Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan, the fictional character, rose to heights never before attained by a professional wrestler, and in the process Terry Bollea lost himself by believing the hype. There is no Terry Bollea anymore, just Hulk Hogan. That’s what happens when even the man believes the myth.

But how did this duality and confusion between professional wrestlers as fictional characters and professional wrestlers as real world performers arise, and why does it persist? The most basic answer is that the duality and confusion exist because of the incomplete adherence to kayfabe now prevalent within the professional wrestling industry. In a world with complete and total kayfabe, every fan of professional wrestling would believe in the absolute truth and reality of the storylines, and thus every fan of professional wrestling would believe that the fictional characters were real people. The fans would never even know that there were real world entertainers portraying the fictional characters, and thus there would be no duality and no confusion. But in today’s professional wrestling industry, when “wrestling” is promoted simply as “entertainment,” when real world entertainers appear not just in the ring but also at press conferences, on late night talk shows, and even in movies, when the behind-the-scenes lives and tragedies of the entertainers have an immediate impact on the in-ring product, it becomes impossible do ignore the duality. But because kayfabe, because the illusion of sport, because the conceit of athletic competition is so fundamental to the very nature of the industry, kayfabe must continue to exist to one degree or the other. The professional wrestling industry as we know it would simply cease to exist without the kayfabe premise that the entertainers are competing against each other in athletic competition. And thus the worlds of kayfabe and reality, of fictional characters and real world entertainers, have become inseparably intertwined.

That being said, the persistence of the duality may actually be attributable less to its origins and more to the broad differences among fans of the industry. We in the IWC like to speak of marks and smarts, but these labels are only extreme archetypes. The ultimate mark would believe only in kayfabe and would place complete value on the outcome of the matches. The total mark would have no conception of the real world entertainers behind the fictional characters and thus would only be a fan of the fictional characters. On the other hand, the ultimate mark would place value only in the performances in a match and give no credence to the outcome of the match. The total smart would care little for the fictional characters and thus would only be a fan of the real world entertainers.

I would assert that we are all a combination of both mark and smart, each of us lying somewhere on a spectrum between the two extremes. In fact, I would propose that there is a professional wrestling analogue of the famous Kinsey Scale, a complete mark being given a value of 0 and a complete smart being given a value of 6. As Alfred Kinsey wrote, “The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.” And thus each of us as fans of professional wrestling are both mark and smart, some more towards one end of the spectrum, some more towards the other, and very few at either extreme.

As an example, I probably have a score of about 4 on this new professional wrestling Kinsey Scale. I consider myself a smart, and I place more value on in-ring performance than on wins and losses. And yet I would be lying to myself if I said that I never marked when one of my favorite wrestlers scores a big win. I really wanted Shawn Michaels to win the Ladder Match against Chris Jericho at No Mercy. Had I been a complete smart, a 6 on the scale, then I would only have wanted Michael Hickenbottom and Chris Irvine to put on a great show that night. But I wanted more. I wanted my favorite to win. I wanted to mark out. I wanted to be a smart while still reserving the right to also be a mark.

And so I would claim that while the duality between professional wrestlers as fictional characters and professional wrestlers as real world entertainers originated due to the incomplete eradication of kayfabe, it persists because we as fans of professional wrestling are both marks and smarts, often at the same time. Pandora’s Box has been opened, and thus we can never return to a time of complete kayfabe, a time when we were still complete marks. And yet as much as we analyze the business and critique the performances, we still cling to some trace of kayfabe in order to maintain our tenuous grasp on our ability to mark. I’ve said before that one of greatest joys of being a fan of professional wrestling is the ability to lose yourself in a match, forget all that you know of the industry, and simply enjoy yourself. That is the essence of marking, and that is why every smart still harbors a secret mark.

But our desire to perpetuate the duality of the identities of professional wrestlers may arise from something even deeper than our desire to perpetuate the duality of our own identities as fans of professional wrestling. It may arise from our desire to validate the duality of our own identities in the rest of our lives. We each have a vision of ourselves, a concept of who we really are deep down inside. We know who we would like to be, and we know how we would like to act. And yet almost on a daily basis, many of us find ourselves assuming roles that we had never envisioned, saying things that seem out of character with our own internal self image, doing things that we would like to deny or forget. We each become different people in different situations, one person at work, another person with your friends, another person with your spouse, another person with your children. Sometimes it feels like we’re losing ourselves within these fictional characters that we create just to get through the day. And so maybe we find some degree of solace in watching our heroes do the same, in seeing some of the most gifted athletes and entertainers on the planet morph into some of the most noble heroes and dastardly villains imaginable.