Academic Psychiatry 25:125-131, June 2001
© 2001 Academic Psychiatry
Taking Professional Wrestling to the Mat
A Look at the Appeal and Potential Effects of Professional Wrestling on Children
Jim Waxmonsky, M.D. and
Eugene V. Beresin, M.D.
Dr. Waxmonsky is a resident in the McLean/Massachusetts General Hospital Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Program and Clinical Fellow in Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Beresin is the Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Residency Training Program for Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Hospital and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Address reprint requests and correspondence to Dr. Waxmonsky, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, WAC 725, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114.
ABSTRACT
Professional wrestling (PW) has gained a firm foothold in American culture and appears to be here to stay. Children comprise a large portion of its audience, much to the dismay of many parents and clinicians. Society has struggled with how to respond to their children's fascination with PW, a novel hybrid between sports and entertainment. Parents expose children to sports, thinking they will learn healthy ways of managing conflict and aggression. However, PW is not a sport. Its values are the exact opposite of traditional sportsmanship; it demonstrates to children that cheating and verbal intimidation are effective problem-solving techniques. Because PW resembles sports, children risk applying its values to legitimate sports, as well as other realms of life. Parents can prevent this association by differentiating PW from sports, and the entertainment industry can prevent it by stopping their aggressive marketing of PW to children.
Key Words: Media Column • Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
There is no denying that professional wrestling (PW) is firmly entrenched as part of modern culture. In 1999, the most-watched cable television show was the World Wrestling Federation (WWF)'s "WWF Raw," which was more popular than "Monday Night Football" with teenage boys (1). The WWF show, "Smackdown," was the second-highest-rated network TV show (2). PW is now shown in 120 countries, in 11 different languages (1).
It also evident that many children, both boys and girls, are drawn to wrestling. Fifteen percent of PW viewers are under the age of 11 (1). Children buy PW toys, watch their shows, practice their holds, and idealize their values. Although there is no denying PW's popularity, there is still great debate surrounding its impact. Specifically, many parents, teachers, and clinicians are concerned about the message that PW sends to children. PW has been criticized for its sex, violence, profanity, and advertising to children. Even such bastions of cultural morality as "Inside Edition" have hurled stones of criticism at PW (1). In fact, criticizing wrestling has become such a pervasive social trend that PW has incorporated it into its own plots. The WWF has created a character called The Censor, Steven Richards. The Censor and his followers try to "censor" (which is a WWF euphemism for beat up) other wrestlers that they find objectionable.
Television has certainly produced shows that are equally if not more violent and sexualized than PW. The problem with PW, which is also one of its greatest assets, is that it is a novel hybrid between sport and entertainment. In fact, wrestling promoters now prefer the designation "Sports Entertainment." American society has never really been exposed to such a combination before and is struggling with how to understand it. Is PW just another aggressive "extreme" sport, such as rugby or arena football, or is it more akin to a soap opera that features muscular men in combat instead of hideously wealthy socialites? The answer to this question will help determine what the potential impact of PW will be on children. The goal of this article is not to condemn PW, as it is clearly going to be a part of American culture for years to come. Rather, the goal is to analyze PW's broad appeal and predict the possible effects it will have on children who are exposed to significant amounts of it.
Wrestling, as sport, is probably one of the oldest athletic competitions in history and has a very rich heritage dating back before Ancient Rome. It is well established that amateur, or Greco-Roman, wrestling is a sport, but what about PW? Is it a sport or not? The answer to this question is critically important in determining how society perceives PW. The label of "sport" generally connotes a healthy activity that would probably be good for children. Although there is some debate about the value of specific sports such as hunting or boxing, society readily exposes children to many aggressive sports under the assumption that it will teach them useful competitive values. Sports are viewed as a wholesome arena where kids can learn values free of the anxieties of the adult world. Most adults would acknowledge that exposing children to sports is a part of good parenting, and there is substantial basis for this belief in the academic and popular literature. For example, a recent study by Pate and associates that surveyed over 14,000 teens observed that sports participation was associated with several positive behaviors. More specifically, both male and female teens who participated in sports were less likely to use cigarettes or other substances of abuse than teens who did not participate in sports. Female athletes had lower rates of sexual intercourse than those who did not play sports, and male athletes had lower rates of suicidal thoughts than their counterparts who did not participate in a sport (3). The danger is that the word sport has a very precise connotation to it of being good for kids. If we label PW a sport, it automatically gains credibility and acceptance whether it deserves it or not, and it becomes hard to preach the evils of PW when we readily accept the violence in other sports.
To decide whether PW is a sport, we must first define the criteria for being a sport. Sports history expert Allen Guttmann has defined sport as a "form of play that is governed by rules and takes the form of a contest with a certain degree of physical activity (4)." Amateur wrestling clearly meets these criteria. PW is certainly a physical activity, but so are many actions that are not classified as sports. However, PW lacks rules and a sense of contest. PW certainly mimics these two aspects, just as soap operas mimic real relationships, but scripts and audience response drive PW, not rules, luck, or athletic prowess. The government has even attempted to determine whether PW is a sport. When PW became increasingly popular in the 1980s, New Jersey and several other states attempted to tax and legislate PW just as they would any other sport. The promoters of PW suddenly starting use the phrase "sports entertainment" to describe PW. The New Jersey State legislature formally defined wrestling as "a bona fide athletic contest in which the participants struggle hand-to-hand with the object of winning ... and in which any purpose of entertainment is secondary (5)." In contrast, the New Jersey legislature defined PW "as an activity in which participants struggle for the primary purpose of providing entertainment to spectators, rather than conducting a bona fide athletic contest (5)." Jim Steele, a sports sociologist, has even gone as far to say, "PW enables us to see what is not a sport in order that we have a better understanding of what a true sport is (4)." Clearly, PW is philosophically and legally not a sport. This leads to the question of what exactly PW is. What does the phrase "sports entertainment" mean? To answer this question intelligently, it is necessary to understand the origins of PW.
Professional wrestling dates back to the 1920s carnival circuits, where wrestlers would perform in front of local audiences. However, these matches did not draw well, as they were lengthy endurance battles devoid of fast-paced action. Consequently, the crowds dwindled. A group of vaudeville promoters saw potential in wrestling and began to host scripted matches with more action and flashier wrestlers. These matches were "fixed." There was a predetermined winner, with the wrestlers loosely following a script that consisted of dramatic physical feats that inflicted little real damage. Quickly, the crowds grew, and this is precisely the point when PW was born and left the arena of sports for the arena of entertainment. Over time, PW became more organized, more action-packed, and more dramatic—that is, more like fiction and less like sports. Now it is the scripts, the characters, and the drama that people tune in for, rather than the athletics. The sole purpose of PW matches is to engage the audience so that they will continue to watch. Every move and word is carefully crafted to evoke a strong emotional response, whether love or hatred, that will keep the audience fixated. In this sense, PW has evolved into a piece of fiction that rivals the latest Steven Spielberg movie or the newest television drama.
The fact that PW is entertainment does not make it inherently a subject for public concern. PW promoters have been quite open about the fact that the outcome of the matches is predetermined (of course their revelation was politely prompted by risk of possible legal repercussions). Nobody is really fooled into being a PW fan; most fans, from grade-school up, know that the winner is predetermined and that the physical combat is at least partially embellished. The fact that the debunking of PW has not diminished its appeal is really not surprising, once we realize that PW's appeal is due largely to its stories, and not its pseudo-athletics. It is hardly even defined in athletic terms anymore. One recent TV Guide summary for a PW show described a love triangle between wrestlers, while another character was the victim of a vehicular hit-and-run. There was no mention of anything remotely suggesting an athletic event; therefore, unless we knew this was a PW show, we would have sworn we were reading about a soap opera.
What is really so bad about PW? Is it not just another television show that grabs ratings through sex and violence? Clearly, it is that, but it is also something more. PW is different from soap operas, video games, or horror movies because PW closely resembles sports, and, despite the effort of the New Jersey legislature and a handful of academics, the public—including parents and children—largely views PW as a sport. Even educated health professionals have fallen into the trap. A study featured in the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) newsletter looking at the effects of television violence on children did not include PW shows. The researchers included comedies, movies, dramas, music videos, and cartoons, but excluded sports, news, and "entertainment sports programs." The study did not label PW as a sport, but it did categorize it with such entities as baseball and golf and separated it from other fictional shows (6).
The danger in categorizing PW as a sport, other than offending sports sociologists and possibly the New Jersey legislature, is that the powerful connotations associated with the word sport will be applied to PW. As noted above, for many parents, "sports" is akin to saying, "kid-tested and approved." PW is not a sport, so it should not get this benefit. It is the id run wild, a virtual overflow of primary-process, where sex and violence rules and where steel chairs are the most effective problem-solving device. It teaches the exact opposite message of sports and is, in many aspects, the antithesis of sport, or "The Anti-Sport." However, children and adolescents will be likely to view it as sport because it looks like other sports, and consequently they may then apply PW's values for conflict resolution to other sports as well as other aspects of life. This may be particularly true for younger children, who do not have the cognitive capacity to understand the highly dramatic, fictional underpinnings of PW.
For adults, this concern may not be a significant issue, because they can appreciate that PW is really fictional violence, and not sport. However, children are immersed in sports in our culture from a very early age. There is an expectation that children will learn, from sports, rules for managing aggression and how to compete in a controlled fashion. This is a reasonable expectation, because in sports there are rules that serve as boundaries for aggression and rules that ensure the champion is the entity most deserving of victory. It is hard to find any other aspect of life where criteria for victory are so clearly defined and rigidly adhered to by all participants. Certainly, such criteria do not exist for relationships, careers, or—dare one say it—presidential elections.
Sporting events are essentially controlled conflicts between two entities, whether they are schools, cities, or nations. Such conflicts could not safely occur in other realms. The referees and commissioners are there to strictly enforce the rules and are normally granted an almost religious respect by the athletes. To quote the old baseball adage, "There is no winning an argument with the umpire." Henricks described each sporting event as a series of "critical moments," such as "the bases loaded with a full count" or "fourth down and one," which are mediated by the unifying force of the referee (7). A repeating cycle of opposition and unification is played out on the athletic field just as Freud described the interplay of intrapsychic conflicts. The battle is then decisively resolved, and a champion is crowned who will reign until the next season. The athletes have no recourse but to accept the champion, as they are bound by the rules. The event typically ends with a show of friendship between the two players/teams. Once the game has ended, so too does the aggression between the athletes. Any aggression outside of the playing field is quickly stopped and severely punished by the governing authority.
If the rules of sport are removed, what is left is uncontrolled primal aggression, where the most violent and persistent attain triumphs. This is precisely the case of PW, "The Anti-Sport."
It is the "antisportiness" of PW that presents the greatest danger to children, not the vulgarity, violence, or nudity. To truly understand this, one needs an understanding of the psychology of PW and its value system.
PW is basically a reincarnation of the classical morality plays of ancient Greek dramas. Henricks argues that the basic plot of a professional wrestling match posits physical force as the singular effective way for settling the dispute between good and evil (7). These two opposing forces will meet in the ring, usually with some story surrounding their confrontation. The story lines often involve classic mythological themes, such as the son rebelling against the father, or the damsel, kidnapped by the villain, who now requires rescue.
Zengota (8) considers individual wrestlers more akin to comic book characters than to any type of athlete. They are shallow-but-familiar stereotypes that dress in garish costumes and perform superhuman feats of strength and endurance, often using special, almost magical submission holds. A good portion of the story line is developed to set up the wrestlers as immensely powerful heroes or villains that the audience can love or hate but could never emulate. The wrestlers have evolved into champions of good and evil. The hero abides by the rules (for a little while, at least) and upholds the honor of the people. He thrives on the cheers of the spectators, getting stronger as they yell louder. The villain is completely evil. He is the bully who preys on the weak and humiliates people at every turn, but who will typically run or resort to tricks when confronted with a real challenge. He taunts and degrades the audience, evoking loud rebuttals from the crowd.
Unlike most team sports, there are no hometown favorites in PW. The heroes are the same in New York as they are in Los Angeles. However, heroes can become villains, and vice versa. The conversions are immediate and dramatic. The hero-turned-villain is especially hated because he has abandoned the fans, whereas the villain-turned-hero is praised and admired because he has seen the error of his ways and converted. At the most primal level, the fans are actually rooting for the triumph of good or evil as much as they are rooting for an individual performer. They are rooting for the hero that they always wanted to be or the villain who acts out their hidden aggressive fantasies.
Besides being mythical, the wrestlers are immensely simplistic stereotypes of images from the current culture. The villains typically will hail from the country that is presently in conflict with the United States, such as Russia or some nation in the Middle East. When ethnic enemies run out, PW reverts to other stock-character types, such as the ghetto ruffian or the pretentious aristocrat. PW also makes use of racial and sexual stereotypes, such as the wild African savage or the effeminate homosexual. Because of the exaggerated and simplistic nature of the PW stereotypes, it is quite easy for children to deduce that the villain is the villain because he is from the Middle East or because he is from the ghetto, which can create dangerous associations in their naive minds.
PW maintains the pretense of sport. There are rules, referees, championship trophies, and commissioners in PW, but as Henricks (7) stated, PW is based on a "quite systematic transgression of norms and values." The villains will violate the rules from the beginning and either receive a verbal warning from the referee—or their violation is simply ignored. A wrestler never gets disqualified for using an illegal tactic or refusing to break a hold. In fact, the success of the villain is directly correlated with his willingness to break the rules. Typically, the champion will abide by the rules and be constantly frustrated by the cheating of the villain. The hero usually only wins when he abandons the rules and resorts to villainous tactics. The rules are nothing more than a burden to the hero, an annoyance that needs to be discarded in order to win the match. This pretense of rules presents an even scarier message than if PW were to have no rules at all. In a free-for-all, one would expect the strongest or smartest to win, but in PW, the winner is the one who can most efficiently bend the rules to his advantage. PW sends the message that deceit and cheating are the key to victories—not strength, speed, or intelligence.
Likewise, PW has referees dressed in the standard garb of officials, black pants and a striped shirt. Referees in PW were originally added to pace the matches so that they did not run too long or end too quickly. The referees tend to be very small, older men who are dwarfed by the wrestlers. In modern times, they have also taken on the role of court jester. They are invariably ignored and are often mocked or even physically abused by the wrestlers, much to the delight of the fans. At times, the wrestlers themselves serve as referees, and they inevitably favor one wrestler over the other and openly help one side to win. In any sport, physical contact with the referees results in an immediate and severe penalty. In PW, it is a strategic and laudable maneuver to knock the referee unconscious. PW also has commissioners. In sports, commissioners are the ultimate authorities who are supposed to update the rules to keep the game fair and settle disputes between teams/athletes. In wrestling, however, the commissioners have become a part of the story line and have even wrestled, themselves. They hold grudges against wrestlers and often break or blatantly change the rules to guarantee that their favorites have an advantage. In the WWF, various members of the McMahon family, who are the real-life founders of the WWF, serve as the commissioner and governing body. However, the McMahons have come to resemble the Ewing family of "Dallas" fame. They are as villainous as the wrestlers and certainly do not act as keepers of the peace.
PW also has championships and title belts, but controversy surrounds every victory. As all great works of literature have shown, good or evil never completely triumphs, but rather there is a perpetual series of battles between these two powerful forces. The same happens in PW—there is never a clear victor; instead, there is a series of rematches and disputed victories that would make even a professional boxing promoter envious. There is always some controversy surrounding the champion's victory that will force him to fight again. Often, it is unclear who exactly is the "winner," as the person who won the match will get beaten senseless by his opponent after the match has ended. Since the wrestlers have become such grand icons of good and evil, a simple 1–2–3 pinfall would not be an adequate resolution for the crowd. As Zengota described, a clash of such gigantic forces must have a climatic ending; therefore, the one requirement is that somebody has to be humiliated, whether it is by being beaten into pseudo-unconsciousness or by some other incredibly humiliating act (8). Such acts have included having trash strewn on the loser, spray-painting him, or even simulating oral sex over the loser's hapless body.
The other main tenet of wrestling is that verbal intimidation leads to success. The wrestlers who win are the ones who evoke the loudest crowd response, whether it is positive or negative. Therefore the rudest, loudest, and cruelest villains float to the top because they evoke the most anger from the fans and keep them watching on a regular basis. This connection nicely demonstrates for children that verbal intimidation and bullying will lead to success and that these tactics are a very effective way to get one's needs met. Hence, the main concern should not simply be that children are reciting vulgar phrases that they learned on PW but that they might actually think that telling somebody to "suck it" or spraying them with beer will help them to achieve their aspirations and gain the admiration of their peers.
In summary, PW is The Anti-Sport because traditional sporting values lead to predictable failure in PW, whereas the systematic cheating that leads to success in PW would result in a lifetime ban in any other sport. PW's message is just as compelling for children who know that PW is "embellished." For most school-age children and older, the greatest danger of PW is not that they will slam their friends through the kitchen table—because most children know that an oak dining room table will not break in half like those on TV. The greatest danger is that they will deduce that verbal intimidation and cheating are a successful combination for negotiating life's challenges. For children who have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality, the dangers of PW are much more concrete. Children below the age of seven or older children with developmental delays are more likely to directly mimic the wrestling moves they see on TV, because they do not have the cognitive capacity to deduce that the outcomes will be much more serious in real life.
So what should parents do when their children want to watch endless hours of PW? Many parents have banned their kids from watching any PW, ignoring the fact that children can easily access PW outside of their homes. Some parents try to solve the PW dilemma by telling their children that it is fake, thinking they have ruined the appeal of PW for their kids. Unfortunately, that is like telling kids there is no Santa Claus and then expecting them not to want presents on Christmas. Just as most kids know Santa is mythical, they know that PW violence is simulated. However, this revelation does not diminish their interest in it, nor does it make them less susceptible to the messages of PW. Other parents have become completely exasperated, concluding there is no way to protect their children from the onslaught of PW—and wait in fear for their children to become the next generation of professional wrestlers.
Even though parents cannot effectively shelter their children from PW, they do have significant power when it comes to shaping the impact of PW on their children. Parents need to be realistic and accept the fact that their kids are drawn to PW, as it has many attractive features, such as comic book-like characters, lots of action, and suspenseful plots that evolve in a dramatic fashion. The parents' role should be to teach their children that PW is The Anti-Sport, because children will not be able to make this distinction on their own.
First, even if parents are fans of PW, they need to realize that it will not teach their kids anything useful about good sportsmanship or about controlling aggression. If parents choose to watch PW, they should do so on their own time; children will interpret their parents' interest as a sign that it is okay for them to watch PW.
Second, without being overly critical, parents need to combat PW's message of intimidation and rule-breaking. To do this, they need to sit with their children and watch these shows and explain to them that PW is entertainment, just like a movie or Saturday morning cartoons. They need to identify the differences between sports and PW. Most importantly, parents need to emphasize that successful tactics in PW are unacceptable, unproductive, and often illegal in any real-world venue, whether it is the athletic field or the schoolyard.
Children should be encouraged to develop other interests if they are almost solely devoted to PW. However, parents need to be realistic and not try to substitute piano lessons or the math club for PW. A child who is drawn to PW might enjoy participating in a legitimate sport or another stimulating activity that is rule-based and does not have PW's anti-sport message. The martial arts, for example, are excellent alternatives, since they embrace control, self-defense, discipline, and respect. To be successful, the transition needs to be gradual and subtle. Parental attempts at forcing children into activities are rarely successful; instead, parents should expose children to a variety of activities and let them select the ones they like the most.
Parents also need to recognize that there are many factors that will influence the effect of PW on their children. Parents should monitor all of the TV programs their children watch and not just PW shows, paying special attention to those with violent or other adult themes. The methods used within the family for resolving conflict are critically important determinants of how children will handle their own conflicts. Any child who repeatedly witnesses aggressive physical or verbal confrontations between his or her caretakers is more likely to engage in such acts. Rules at home should be fair, clearly explained, and executed as consistently as possible. Also, parents should be aware that children with difficult temperaments and those with impulsive, externalizing behavior disorders are likely to be more susceptible to the effects of PW. Children who participate in legitimate sports may be more adept at distinguishing the difference between PW and sports.
The entertainment industry also has a role to play. It needs to recognize the potentially deleterious effects of PW on children and stop aggressively marketing PW shows and merchandise to them. PW shows should be targeted only to mature audiences and not be included in Saturday morning television schedules. Likewise, PW merchandise should not include action figures or others toys designed for young children. The conclusions reached in this article should not lead to banning PW from television; there are many other offensive TV shows that would be better gone from television before PW.
By itself, PW will not increase the prevalence of conduct or antisocial personality disorders. Adults, for the most part, have the capacity to recognize that the tactics and values of PW are not acceptable in the real world. They can safely watch PW for what it is, entertainment, albeit violent. PW's impact on children, however, may be quite different. Children do not have the luxury of being fully able to make the distinction between reality and fantasy, and may not be able to separate the "rules" of PW from the norms of daily life. Hence, the entertainment industry needs to take this into account when considering the broadcasting of PW. The standards for children need to be different from those for adults.
This author (JW) feels compelled to end by saying that I enjoy PW and have been know to watch a few minutes now and then, even outside of research purposes. However, sometimes I think that I may have to cut back, as my wife says I am becoming a little too aggressive when playing Scrabble. I guess she does not find it amusing when I yell, "Do you smell what The Rock is cooking?" whenever I get a triple word score.
REFERENCES
- Rosellini L: Lords of the Ring. U.S. News & World Report, May 17, 1999, p 52
- Meltz B: Wrestling with WWF. Boston Globe, Jan. 20, 2000, pp E1, E4
- Pate E, Trost S, Levin S, et al: Sports participation and health-related behaviors among U.S. youth. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2000; 154:904-911[Abstract/Free Full Text]
- Farrey T: Wrestle with this [25 paragraphs]. Pro Wrestling's Grip on America [online series], 4, April 2, 1999. Available at: http://espn.go.com/otl/wrestling/day3_part1.html [5/17/200]
- McCallum J, O'Brien R: Scorecard: Pro Wrestling is Fake. Sports Illustrated March. 23, 1997, p 23
- Shifrin D: Three-Year Study Documents Nature of Television Violence. AAP News, August 1998 (from http://www.aap.org/advocacy/shifrin898.htm
- Henricks T: Professional wrestling as moral order. Sociological Inquiry 1974; 44:177-188
- Zengota E: Versus: Archetypal Images in Professional Wrestling. Quadrant 1991; 24:27-39
This article has been cited by other articles:
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M. J. Bernthal and F. J. Medway
An Initial Exploration into the Psychological Implications of Adolescents' Involvement with Professional Wrestling
School Psychology International,
May 1, 2005;
26(2):
224 - 242.
[Abstract]
[PDF]
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