THE INDIES

The World Wrestling Entertainment Corporation (WWE) brings pro wrestling into millions of homes in the United States and, increasingly, the world. These highly stylized live productions, which assure the publicly traded company annual revenue in the hundreds of millions, have made professional wrestling one of the most-watched "sporting events."

Indie wrestling, on the other hand, consists of regional wrestling promotions with no central organization and little to no television exposure. These scattered promotions operate in the background of the major league (i.e., WWE) and stay officially un-affiliated with it. Indie promotions can be found in nearly all US states but vary widely in terms of longevity, popularity, and profitability. Despite their independence of each other, the two levels overlap considerably in terms of styles, people, and histories. Modeled on competitive sport, both feature a referee, two or more fighters, a ring, and a declared winner after each match. To excite the crowd, indie wrestlers and WWE performers alike largely draw upon tried-and-true narratives, gimmicks, and stunts from professional wrestling's past.

The shows are outrageous by design. Loud, in-your-face performers turn to bashing each other's heads with steel chairs after a verbal argument. Bikini-clad women escort a wrestler to the ring and then cry when he loses his match. Blaring music, smoke, and nearly naked massive protagonists are part and parcel of the spectacle. There is bashing, bruising, and little subtlety; indeed, pro wrestling has been described by scholars as a "land of mask and monstrosity" (Henricks 1974, 178), "non-ambiguous" (Mazer 1998), and "masculine melodrama" (Jenkins 1997). Widely known is Roland Barthes's early, albeit farseeing, comment on pro wrestling: a "spectacle of excess" (1957).

The entertainment is defined by the live, immediate, unfiltered interaction between fans and performers. Without the spectators there could be no such thing as professional wrestling. Henry Jenkins IV, a cultural critic and avid pro wrestling fan, articulates how crucial this dialog is: "When I buy a ticket to a live show, I'm actually buying a ticket to have a tiny speaking part.... Wrestling is not a one-way monologue between the producers and the fans; it's a dialogue" (2005, 326).

The emotional exchange epitomizes what Elias and Dunning see as the function of contemporary sports: a ritual where we can discard self-restraint and revel in the show of strong feelings (1986). Central to the appeal is "collective effervescence"—Emile Durkheim's term (1995) for the energy experienced by individuals when an event creates a feeling of shared identity, emotion, and solidarity. With the story lines' "engaging fantasy," the creativity of the staging and props, the hyperphysicality of the performers, and the predictable yet (usually) fair outcomes, pro wrestling has all the ingredients that make violent entertainment appealing (Goldstein 1998, 223).

Importantly, the WWE dominates the entire American professional wrestling industry. While having one smaller domestic competitor that also televises shows, the WWE has remained the indisputable leader for roughly two decades. Because of this dominance, almost all pro wrestlers who move up to televised productions are at the WWE's mercy. Aside from international venues and the one domestic competitor, the WWE is, for all intents and purposes, the platform for professional wrestlers. Yet despite its prominence, the company has only 160 wrestlers under contract (USA Today 2007).

In most respects, members of the indie scene—be they fans, wrestlers, or promoters—take some pride in their disaffiliation. While they are undoubtedly envious of the WWE's power and influence, many wrestlers and fans maintain, almost as a moral distinction, that indie wrestling is a superior form of entertainment, one that is more community-based and authentic. Tod Gordon, founder of the indie federation Extreme Championship Wrestling, captured the antagonism for the WWE when he described his federation as "the Little Engine that Could" and noted that the "WWE [has] billions of dollars. We not only have no money, we're constantly in debt. But we've taken off because we deliver what we promise, without marketing and merchandising and pyrotechnics and all that other bullshit" (quoted in Hackett 2006, 23–24).

Indie promotions have come to have a reputation for "extreme" performances, with more violence and spectacle than the "family friendly" entertainment of earlier eras. The extreme-themed shows target a young male audience and emphasize "exciting, risky, action-packed sports that are culturally coded sites of individual rebellion and creativity" (Messner 2002, 82). Indie promotions commonly incorporate high-risk, dangerous stunts that use barbed wire, tables, ladders, chairs, trash cans, and steel cages as props. It is at least arguable that if such entertainment were exhibited under any other classification (aside from war), it would be perceived as criminal. As Klein found with body building, pro wrestling "combines a variety of cultural forms into something that purists have difficulty categorizing.... [It offers] an alternative to traditional athletic events by fusing physical development through training with artistic expression, eroticism, and spectacle" (1993, 44).

Story lines and characters are often derivative, exploiting well-worn, degenerate stereotypes of gender and class (e.g., the effete "pretty boy") and of course race and ethnicity (the southern redneck, the urban black thug). While this book's focus is not on how these portrayals are read and understood by audience members, racialized depictions are undoubtedly harmful in their replication of stereotypes. Nevertheless, I suggest that the depictions are no more harmful than the ordinary fare of the mainstream media that litters the airwaves.

With regard to the behavior of indie wrestlers backstage (during practice and training, in the locker room, etc.), racism exists, but it is a far cry from what certain commentators on working-class, poorly educated white men have characterized as racist. I heard outright, overt racial epithets fewer than a dozen times; in half of the cases, the comment was countered by one from a higher-status white person who addressed the impropriety and sometimes even dressed down the speaker. Furthermore, wrestlers of color are no dupes; they actively draw upon, even exploit, racial stereotypes at times. In the core group of Rage wrestlers was one who was Latino. (Two African American men were participants in the larger promotion, but they more peripheral, not core members.) While none of these men had raced-based characters, there were, for example, two African American brothers, frequent performers at Rage shows, who...