Abstract
The World Wrestling Entertainment Corporation (WWE) holds a hegemonic position in the world of professional wrestling. For those who lack the theatrical and corporeal talent required for the glamour of the WWE, independent wrestling offers a taste of the experience without the material rewards. The independent wrestling scene ‘consists of regional wrestling promotions with no central organization and little to no television exposure’ (p. 9). This ‘indie’ wrestling culture, and the lives of its participants, is the topic of this ethnography. Professional wrestling finds itself in a complex space between theatre and sport, often marginalized in the public domain for its fakery and apparent transgression of a dominant sport ethic that demands authenticity and meritocratic competition. Tyson Smith suggests that the reader should avoid understanding wrestling within the paradigm of sport and instead view it as a form of physical theatre with excessive physicality. The essential aim of this work is to uncover the ‘logic of practice’, fundamentally exploring why young men undertake a risky endeavour with little concern for financial remuneration and economic rationalization. A further remit of this work is to explore masculinity through a range of paradoxes inherent in the performance of professional wrestling. The elaboration of these paradoxes makes up the bulk of Tyson Smith’s book.
An introduction descriptively illuminates the act of professional wrestling, making the experience understandable to a reader with limited knowledge of the practice. A selection of participants is explored further, neatly providing details on sporting, educational and occupational histories. This bringing to life of the participants highlights some of the social and cultural contexts of the field, such as the dominance of working class, white, high-school educated young men – as well as detailing the outliers who have access to more financial, cultural and social capital. This introduction also serves the function of establishing the role of professional wrestling in the lives of these young men, and as such drives home its importance.
Pain is a central element of this book, and as such is referred to throughout the book. Four chapters flesh out Tyson Smith’s argument and can be read separately or together as a more developed proposition. With pain an underlying constant, chapters on recognition, emotional labour, hard masculinity and injury combine to open a window into the corporeal lives of these wrestlers. Highlighting the role of recognition in the formulation of the wrestler identity, Tyson Smith quotes Bourdieu in suggesting that ‘man is haunted by the need for justification, legitimation, and recognition’ (p. 41). Insisting that the majority of wrestlers have little social capital in other fields, the author explains that the recognition is gleaned from a variety of sources who interact with the performance. One of the sources is called ‘pop’, which describes the general hysteria and adoration of a crowd when the performance is excellent. There is also a brief mention of individuals’ anecdotal tales, such as Donny and the fruition of a romantic relationship that blossomed from his wrestling (p. 52). Recognition also comes from the use of technology in the form of recording matches, and most influentially from other wrestlers who the wrestlers hold in high esteem. These sources of recognition all exist because of the performance and representation of pain, an act Tyson Smith explores in his ideas on emotional labour. This dramaturgical focus details the performativity of the wrestlers in convincing the audience of the authentic experience of pain and suffering. Hence the paradox of performing pain in the absence of real pain. Attention is drawn to the difficulty of maintaining ‘kayfabe’, part of the wrestling nomenclature that refers to the ‘illusion of realness’ (p. 68), and explains how its performance is constituted by the charisma, psychology and physicality of the wrestler. There is also description of the unwanted outcome of a poorly executed move, a ‘shoot’, which refers to the situation when the wrestlers are no longer acting together, but instead one of them aims to inflict pain on their opponent, therefore re-establishing the social hierarchy. Aside from the ‘shoot’, wrestling performance and its use of emotional labour inevitably present the wrestler as a strong alpha male, and from here Tyson Smith explores the paradox of hard masculinity and the ubiquitous inference of homoeroticism in wrestling. Tyson Smith precisely describes the coping strategies that the men undertake to perform hard masculinity and the humour used to diffuse tension around a perceived link to homosexuality. A valuable asset to the social constructivist approach to gender, Tyson Smith’s book sheds light on the fragile nature of hard masculinity and some of the practices and attitudes that fall outside its frontiers. One such example of this is the admission that when a wrestler incorrectly performs a move, he often feels relief to find that his partner is not hurt and sadness if his performance led to injuring another wrestler. Of course, this is diametrically opposed to the presentation of a violent match in which the infliction of pain on the opponent is symbolically inherent, if not real. Behind all of these deceptions exists real physical pain, and Tyson Smith deconstructs the paradox of pain in the performance of professional wrestlers. The wrestlers perform highly physical moves that aim to produce the image of pain and suffering but often lead to actual pain and injury. Working from a strong literature of pain and injury in sport, Tyson Smith’s book adequately maps out a culture of risk, pain and injury in the specific subculture of professional wrestling. Often viewed as a negative to be avoided, Tyson Smith highlights how the experience of pain and injury can be a ‘seductive means toward solidarity, self-realization, status and authenticity’ (p. 144). Tyson Smith’s coverage of risk, pain and injury constitutes a novel addition to the literature on sports injuries and highlights the continual requirement of observing the nuanced conditions of specific, and often niche fields.
Tyson Smith’s strongest asset is in the way each of his findings complement one another, interlinking to provide a strong ethnographic account of professional wrestling. For instance, the chapter on masculinity provides a good underpinning for the gendered approach to pain and injury, which was also practically mapped out in the chapter on emotional labour and the performance of pain. Tyson Smith’s descriptive powers are also strong, producing vivid representations of what the world of professional wrestling has to offer. For those interested in Tyson Smith’s methodological understanding, Appendix A provides a rich reflection on both his own interpretations of the field and the effect he had upon the data. Detailing the multifarious avenues of data collection, Tyson Smith fine points his two-and-a-half years in the field, as well as noting his use of photography, emails and video recordings. Tyson Smith describes his nerve-racking introduction to the scene, where he had no gatekeeper or intermediary to ease the process. He later suggests that his identity as a white, educated man in his late twenties generally aided his collusion with the group and only occasionally was he viewed as a threat.
One of the perennial debates within ethnography is the role of theory. Some suggest a disconnection between theory and ethnography, urging scholars to analyse with a theoretical framework in mind, rather than just tell stories. At times, Tyson Smith leaves the theory to the theoretically informed reader. A Bourdieusan framework frequently underpins his understanding, but this is not explicit. An example of this theoretical persuasion exists towards the end of the book where he describes how the social capital gained from the wrestling field has little transformative capacity. Nevertheless, this is a sociological text and Tyson Smith achieves that delicate balance of descriptive ethnography that remains theoretically informed. In summary, Tyson Smith’s text is a useful tool for those interested in niche sports and subcultures. His book is a worthy addition to research on masculinity, pain and injury, and, despite being based on an activity Smith urges should be distinct from sport, would be of use to scholars of the sociology of sport. For those scholars interested in ethnographic research methods, and specifically the positionality and reflexivity of the researcher, Tyson Smith’s text will be a beneficial purchase.