Pro wrestling is a distinctive cultural form that combines storytelling with athleticism, featuring good guys, bad guys, and archetypal scenarios like underdogs and confrontations. Although the outcomes of matches are choreographed and fictional, the physicality remains real, with wrestlers enduring genuine impacts. This form of entertainment encapsulates an extraordinary blend of American culture and historical theatrical traditions, such as carnival and burlesque. The appeal of pro wrestling lies in its dramatic narratives and the emotional investment it elicits from audiences, challenging perceptions of it being merely 'fake' or superficial.
Pro wrestling is storytelling. It has good guys (babyfaces) and bad guys (heels) and in-between guys (most wrestlers). It has archetypally compelling scenarios: little man fights big man; battered underdog finds wild reserve of pugnacity; old-timer staggers out for one last contest; preening overlord humiliates all, et cetera.
It's also an extraordinary, and extraordinarily vital, cultural form: essentially American in its clanking, fantastical performance of Self, but also pre-American, reaching back into carnival, burlesque, masks, magic, the dark roots of theater itself.
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