Abstract
R. Tyson Smith’s ethnography of independent professional wrestling is both a tragic tale of the absurdities of postindustrial American masculinity and a tender look into the formation of a trust-filled, intimate community. In Fighting for Recognition, Smith offers a valuable case study to tease apart paradoxical elements of masculinity.
The men who make up Smith’s Fighting for Recognition are far from the images we might expect—this is not Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt in packed stadiums. This is the story of the men who perform on mats and between ropes that temporarily occupy high school gymnasiums, community centers, and veterans’ halls. As Smith details, these are not men who need to fight, at least not in the classic sense of earning an income. The majority are white, working-class men with supportive parents and a decent education. For many, wrestling threatens their jobs and relationships through injury and the time spent in the gym. Even dreams of making it big fail to explain the allure, as hopes of being signed to bigger leagues are short lived among these men.
To make sense of a practice where risk of injury is high, pain is unavoidable, and chance of money and fame are low, Smith becomes a constant observer. In doing so, he takes us into a world that most know little about, providing vivid descriptions of the backstage interactions necessary for the masculine drama that is professional wrestling. Here, Smith’s decision to not become a participant, as has become vogue in recent combat sport-related research, allows him to achieve the submersion necessary for critical insight without being drawn into lengthy explorations of the carnal dimensions. This is a reminder of the advantages of not becoming a full participant—the absurd remain absurd and the painful remains painful.
Through ethnographic immersion, Smith illustrates the internal contradictions of masculinity that men navigate as they engage in a performance whose hypermasculine aesthetic is only skin deep. We are taken into the training room where wrestlers work to master the art of making moves soft and tender while appearing hard and violent. We are taken into the locker room, as the men perform the backstage acts of painting each other’s faces, sharing oils to make their bodies glisten, and crafting revealing outfits. And, instead of a stoic rejection of emotion, the men engage in complex emotion work to affect the audience. Yet, Smith also finds wrestlers turning to an array of classic tactics to reinforce heteromasculine status, that is, testing each other’s toughness and physicality, sharing crude and often homophobic jokes, and questioning other wrestlers’ sexuality to assert dominance.
These observations may not surprise those familiar with wrestling. However, as Smith’s story unfolds, we begin to see a community emerge that is built on a level of mutual trust increasingly rare among men. These wrestlers, quite literally, place their health and well-being in each other’s hands. Even as the men avoid talk of intimacy, Smith reveals the seemingly absurd lengths that the young heterosexual men go to find meaningful relationships with each other. By the end, it is apparent that the recognition these men fight for is as much from fellow wrestlers as the fans them-selves. As Smith makes clear, the currency generated by flipping gracefully from a ladder to land elbow first on your opponent rarely transfers beyond the subculture.
Fighting for Recognition provides a solid foundation for future research and theorizing—both outward to extend our understandings of masculinity or inward to further engage the rather bizarre qualities of the site. Smith provides compelling examples to demonstrate preexisting understandings of masculinity, saving the more nuanced discussion of masculinity in this particular historical moment for the final chapter, which left me wanting more. Smith demonstrates the value of taking this subculture seriously; for a place where white, working-class men must always battle the fear of being seen as fake or soft offers us a truly powerful starting point for unpacking the tensions and internal contradictions of masculinity.
The book will appeal to academics and nonacademics alike. Fighting for Recognition offers a case study of great depth and intrigue to scholars of masculinity. For scholars of sport, the nonsporting qualities help reveal important questions about spectacle, drama, and the allure of physical practice. Perhaps most impressive, due to the accessible, descriptive writing and abundance of good storytelling, the book will interest fans of professional wrestling who seek further insight into the ground level of the spectacle they love. Given how challenging it can be to bring sociological analysis to a non-scholarly audience, if Smith is able to use his knack for crafting compelling stories to introduce critical discussions of masculinity to fans of the violent theater, that is quite an accomplishment indeed.