Carnival Entertainment
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in-ring matches sometimes eclipse the actual wrestling. Bait-and-switch tactics
are common, such as when a promised showdown between two wrestlers on free
TV is postponed (conveniently until the next PPV) after an out-of-the-ring beatdown.
The hype, in short, consistently exceeds the actual show.
Until the late 1990s, wrestling promoters vigilantly protected “kayfabe,” which
can best be described as a dogged maintenance of the truth as booked by the pro
moter. Under the rules of kayfabe, for example, faces and heels could not be seen
fraternizing in public, and all wrestlers remained “in character” inside the ring and
out. Some survivals remain today; when popular wrestler Duane “The Rock”
Johnson needed time off from his WWE schedule to shoot The Mummy Returns,
then-onscreen boss Vince McMahon declared The Rock “suspended indefinitely”
for a minor infraction of the rules, thus establishing for the mark audience why a
popular superstar was no longer appearing. Many fans knew that The Rock was in
fact in Hollywood (a fact that the WWE, in one of its many instances of doublespeak,
paradoxically publicized). Still, within the storyline, announcers maintained the
artistic fiction that The Rock had been suspended by a power-hungry McMahon.
This was kayfabe at its most bold and elementary.
Kayfabe was one of the most easily identifiable carnival survivals, and it was
only brought down by the profusion of wrestling internet sites that follow both in
ring storylines and locker room politics with an almost religious devotion. Kayfabe
helped to preserve the illusion that professional wrestling was, in fact, an athletic
competition in which the participants legitimately fought to emerge victorious.
Mark fans showed a ready belief in kayfabe, sending get well letters to popular
faces rehabilitating worked injuries (in actuality, often enjoying a vacation) and
reviling cowardly heels with visceral hatred. Classic heels skilled in drawing heat
from audiences, like Jerry “The King” Lawler, whipped otherwise rational adults
into a blind frenzy, sometimes literally inciting a riot. This kind of audience ma
nipulation was, often, the very essence of carnival shows: get the marks in the
seats, and make them eager to come back for more.
On the surface, kayfabe was the cornerstone of professional wrestling. If a fan
doubted that the faces and heels were really locked in a continuing struggle, pro
moters believed he would stop watching. But professional wrestling has only be
come more popular and more accessible to mainstream popular culture since the
death of kayfabe. That is because promoters, following Vince McMahon’s inge
nious device, now assert that professional wrestling is not sports but sports enter
tainment—an exhibition staged for the audience’s enjoyment rather than a compe
tition to determine the superior athlete. Stripped of the make-believe cover of
kayfabe , professional wrestling thus stood exposed to the world as little more than
a carnival sideshow, in which strongmen and acrobats postured and flopped around
the ring.