Working Loose: A Response to “Donald Trump Shoots the Match” by Sharon Mazer

Warden, Claire; Chow, Broderick; Laine, Eero

doi:10.1162/dram_c_00764

Cited by 10 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Writing in the inaugural issue of the Professional Wrestling Studies Journal, for example, Michael Scibilia (2020: 1) draws out the 'political and cultural lineage' between Vince McMahon and Donald Trump, identifying in the latter a 'fusion of politics and professional wrestling [that] took McMahon's brand and persona to the highest level of politics in America'. The most significant interventions, however, involved a debate within the theatre and performance journal TDR: The Drama Review between Mazer (2018aMazer ( , 2018b and Warden et al (2018). Provocative and valuable, these papers set out competing normative visions of a politics imbued with the 'ethos of wrestling'.…”

Section: Professional Wrestling Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For Mazer (2018a: 195, 175–176), ‘the pro-wrestling-ification of Donald Trump’s presidency and the American body politics’ is troubling; identifying similarities between Trumpian politics and the worst of pro-wrestling, she worries that ‘Spectacle trumps truth’ with ‘the unreal violence of the game now the all too real brutality of the current regime’. Warden et al (2018: 202), in response, repudiate the equation of Trump’s politics and pro-wrestling, identifying within pro-wrestling ‘a means of challenging current political discourse’. If, they argue, we watched politics like pro-wrestling fans, approached work as pro-wrestlers do and celebrated the recent rise of women’s wrestling and diversification of the ‘sport’, then ‘we wouldn’t have a Trump presidency .…”

Section: Professional Wrestling Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Kayfabe, Smartdom and Marking Out: Can Pro-Wrestling Help Us Understand Donald Trump?

Moon

2020

Political Studies Review

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Donald Trump has enjoyed a nearly 30-year relationship with World Wrestling Entertainment as a business partner, fan, in-ring performer and 2013 Hall of Fame Inductee. Noting this long running involvement, it has become a widespread contention that Trump’s style as a political campaigner owes a debt to his experiences within the world of professional wrestling. Taking such claims seriously, this article argues that an engagement with concepts developed within professional wrestling studies would benefit political studies by offering new analytical approaches for the study of the political phenomenon that is Donald Trump. Providing a brief introduction to professional wrestling studies, this article outlines how the concepts of kayfabe, smart fandom and marking out help address a key question for political scholars: how to explain a cynical American electorate’s engagement with and emotional investment in the campaign of such an obvious political fraudster.

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Section: Professional Wrestling Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Professional Wrestling Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kayfabe, Smartdom and Marking Out: Can Pro-Wrestling Help Us Understand Donald Trump?

Moon

2020

Political Studies Review

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Populism as Para-politics: Play, Affect, Simulation

Kølvraa

2022

Methodologies of Affective Experimentation

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Between antagonism and eros: the feud as couple form and Netflix’sGLOW

Chow

Laine

2019

Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory

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The trope of feuding women is often characterized by a slippage between the representational and non-representational worlds, between character and performer. Ruth Wilder and Debbie Eagan, the protagonists of Netflix's popular television program GLOW, are contemporary representatives of a form of antagonistic "coupling" that includes celebrity "beefs" (Cardi B and Nicki Minaj), German drama based on English history (Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I in Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart), classic films (All About Eve, 1950, dir: Darryl F. Zanuck) but which stretches back at least to 18th century theatre (see Nussbaum 2013). Ruth and Debbie, played by Alison Brie and Betty Gilpin, are both actresses, and best friends. While Debbie has made a regular appearance and apparently a good living as an ingenue in a long running soap opera, Ruth has not had a break and finds herself in an endless cycle of auditions and scene study classes. In the pilot episode of the series, Ruth auditions for a women's wrestling promotion, but is unsuccessful. Immediately following the audition in the wrestling ring, she is confronted by Debbie, after Debbie discovers that Ruth has had an affair with her husband. As the pair physically fight in the ring, the show's director, Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron) sees the possibilities of capitalizing on both Ruth's willingness to fight and on the established feud between the two women. Framed by the peculiar theatricality of the professional wrestling ring, the fight highlights the slippage between the supposedly representational in-ring violence, and the "real" feelings of enmity between the former friends. "Is this real?" another aspiring wrestler asks, watching them fight. "Who the fuck cares," answers another.

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Working Loose: A Response to “Donald Trump Shoots the Match” by Sharon Mazer

Abstract: The day I realized it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience.

Cited by 10 publications

References 10 publications

Kayfabe, Smartdom and Marking Out: Can Pro-Wrestling Help Us Understand Donald Trump?

Kayfabe, Smartdom and Marking Out: Can Pro-Wrestling Help Us Understand Donald Trump?

Populism as Para-politics: Play, Affect, Simulation

Between antagonism and eros: the feud as couple form and Netflix’sGLOW

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