Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Might All Be a Work": Professional Wrestling at Butlins Holiday Camps Mocked as a "B-plus player" by WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) Authority figures Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, Daniel Bryan is small for a wrestler.He does not have the muscle-bound look of a Hulk Hogan or a Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.And yet he has become a firm fan favorite.Bryan, like a number of the most technically gifted wrestlers, began on the independent circuit before joining the more lucrative and high profile WWE.As part of his apprenticeship Bryan toured Japan and Britain, finding his way to the famous Butlins 1 holiday camps where he introduced himself as the "American Dragon."He later reflected on his experiences: England!I spent a lot of time at Butlins' holiday camps.Literally wrestling for kids.I'd get up there, wearing a mask, singing the American national anthem, and they'd be, 'Booooooo.'I was the bad guy.See how many times I'd get tripped up, fall on my face.(Muldoon)For Bryan, Butlins was a training school, a space of antipathy even if the boos were in response to fictional storylines and pantomimic scenarios.In the twenty-first century, many professional wrestling fans engage with this unique sport-art through screens, watching on television, through the internet, or, since its inception in 2014, through the WWE's own subscription-based network.From a performance studies perspective, much has been written in recent years about the tension or cooperation between the live and the mediatized.In a sense, wrestling can be understood as the always already mediatized live performance par excellence.Its storylines, sets, and characters are established as much for (if not more for) the through-screen audience as for the spectator watching live.Philip Auslander has, of course, controversially claimed that mediatization is less a threat to
Source: The Journal of Popular Culture
DOI: 10.1111/jpcu.12699
Author: Claire Warden
Language: English
Topic: Sports, Gender, and Society
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2884820235