Page 8 - The Behrend College Beacon - Thursday, April 15, 1999
Is professional
By Deanna Symoski
staff writer
You're going along, minding your
own business when suddenly a group
of militant cult members kidnap you
and throw you in the trunk of a ear.
Pretty upsetting, but not half as bad
as realizing that this same shady group
had kidnapped your sister and has
proceeded to string her up in a
sacrificial offering.
Or maybe this buff chick that
you’ve sort of had a thing for one day
decides to punch you in the crotch and
hook up with your arch nemesis. You
can’t believe she would stab you in
the back like that, so you talk a little
trash. But, wait! The evil new guy
inadvertently shoots your girl in the
face with a fire ball and she returns to
your loving
ike the plots to this
Sound 1
iggest blockbusters? No.
it's just professional wrestling at its
absolute best.
summer’s hi
In the past month or so, pro
wrestling has been just about
everywhere. The hype for
Wrestle Mania XV (The World
Wrestling Federation’s grandest
event) spilled over into mainstream
media this year, exposing the pseudo
sport to everyone from housewives to
the eorporate elite. Thanks to (our
commemorative covers by TV Guide
recently. Wrestle Mania and pro
ACROSS
1 _ Kong
5 Take five
9 More than
enough
14 Depravity
15 Machu Picchu
resident
16 Played again
17 Musical Horne
18 Open some
19 Harold of “Safety
Last"
20 Victimizers
22 List-ending abbr.
23 Sturdy cart
24 Beginnings
27 _ Park, CO
30 Nutmeg spice
32 Gullible person
33 Arkin or King
34 Ryan and Worth
36 Take to court
37 Styling products
38 Greek letter
39 Tender spot
40 Luau garland
41 Connected
42 Caked deposit
43 Vaudeville’s
Tanguay
44 Oriental fryers
45 Impudent
46 Tyrant
48 Fiery gem
50 Stetson or
fedora
51 Preceded in time
56 Fictional
detective Vance
58 Jolly laugh
59 Expose
60 Home-run king
61 Level
62 Capital of Peru
63 “We hold _
truths to be..
64 Roman god of
war
65 Dash
DOWN
1 Lend a hand
2 Above
3 September’s
number
4 Makes joyful
wrestling as a whole hud the
opportunity to reach an audience of
35 million viewers. As a result, the
WWF's largest pay-per-view event
never counted numbers nearly as
high. So it seems ignoring pop
culture’s newest (or oldest)
phenomenon is like overlooking the
rattlesnake bite on your leg - you just
can’t do it.
But what exactly is the w onder that
is professional wrestling? Surely, it’s
more than intricate plot lines, half
naked women and guys built like
super heroes. Well, not that’s pretty
much it, except that it’s all showcased
in weekly episodes that really could
rival this summer’s film releases.
With extravagant pyrotechnic
backdrops and riot-inciting entrance
themes, pro wrestling has managed
to incorporate the extreme of
everything executives will allow on
television. "The WWF is a soap, it s
an action adventure, it's a live action
cartoon, and it’s part talk show,"
WWF owner Vince McMahon
recently told Entertainment Weekly.
“A hybrid of everything successful on
TV, all rolled into one."
And it's fake! 1 know that for a
few of you die-hard believers out
there this is like hearing that there is
no Santa Claus, but surprisingly , most
of you already know this and you still
don’t care. So what's the appeal'.’
"Pro wrestling is year round and you
1999 Tribune Media Services, Inc
All rights reserved.
5 Rodeo rope
6 Relish
7 Cicatrix
8 Old sailors
9 Dahl and Francis
10 Thaws
11 Computers
12 Spread over a
surface
13 Call off
21 gratia artis
24 Marine expanse
25 Zodiac sign
26 Rapid
27 Scored two
under par
28 Record holder
29 "Rocky” co-star
30 Card-game
displays
31 Against: pref. 48
34 Simpleton
35 Stink
39 Climbable
41 Car color combo 51
45 Depressed 52
47 _ Hills, IL
wrestling getting a Raw deal?
don’t see athletes going on strike,”
writes Jim Varsallone of The Miami
Herald. "Wrestlers are good to fans,
posing for pictures and signing
autographs."
Kristen Baldwin and Mike Flaherty,
writers for Entertainment Weekly
agree: "For sports fans alienated by
the humongous egos (and salaries) of
pro athletes ... wrestling’s let-us
entertain-you commitment is
refreshing. For viewers, it flies in the
face of network's repeat-ridden,
copv cat-strewn landscape.” No reruns
here! Every week WWF’s Raw and
WCW's (World Championship
Wrestling) Monday Nitro and
Thursday Night Thunder are new,
exciting and aiming to please.
But for some critics of this sports
entertainment (the ones who don’t
know their roles), potshots at this
phenomenon are a dime a dozen.
Recently, on ABC’s news magazine
20/20, professional wrestling was held
responsible for the dangerous (and
may I say incredibly stupid) attempts
by kids to replicate the moves they see
on TV. Teenage boys were staging
actual matches in their backyards in
rings they made themselves and
videotaping themselves bludgeoning,
cutting and diving off of roofs on top
of each other. Some went so far as to
use barb wire to initiate bleeding.
Monday Night Raw now comes with
a disclaimer in the beginning, much
One not
mentioned
Unskilled
laborers
Hey!
Celestial
explosion
Features
53 Follow
54 Columnist
Bombeck
55 College bigwig
56 Light touch
57 Doubter’s
exclamation
like The Jerry Springer Show and
totes with it a rating of TV-14, L, V.
In another expose by ESPN
(ABC’s sister station since both are
owned by Disney), the “sport” is once
again under Fire for alleged use of
steroids and explicit material.
Though Vince McMahon was
interviewed in the report, the WWF
website maintains that much of the
interview ended up “on the cutting
room floor.”
So what’s with the witch hunt?
Remember something called Monday
Night Football? No? Well, neither
does anyone else. But it seems that
in the days before Raw and Nitro
dominated Monday nights, there was
a different type of sport controlling
the competition. This one, too,
featured mammoth men and flagrant
brutality, but it was an accepted part
of American tradition. Thanks to the
combined appeal of the alternative,
however, the previous champ of
Monday nights is losing viewers fast.
According to the WWF’s color
commentator, Jerry “The King”
Lawler, Monday Night Football saw
its worst season last year, while Raw
saw its best. Though such an
accusation is only hearsay, it is clear
that ABC is not happy about its new
competition. Jay Andronaco,
Manager of Marketing and
Communications for the Federation,
boasts that Monday night’s Raw is the
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number one show among males 14-
35. A more unbiased take admits that
WCW and WWF share the highest
ratings on cable TV.
Varsallone, the Miami Herald
writer, interprets Disney’s campaign
as an obvious play for football
ratings, citing the ESPN expose as a
desperate attempt to bash wrestling
and save Monday nights for ABC.
He paraphrased the report by saying
the theme was basically this: “Stop
watching wrestling and turn on
football.”
And it certainly doesn’t help that
even football players are getting into
the act. Lawrence Taylor (LT) was
himself a wrestler in Wrestle Mania
Xl’s Main Event, where he wrestled
Bam Bam Bigelow. Two of
wrestling’s biggest names were once
themselves actual football players:
Dwayne Johnson, better known as
“The Rock,” was defensive lineman
for a Canadian football league and
Bill Goldberg played nose tackle for
Atlanta Falcons. Football players are
also attending live shows, but who
can blame them? Professional
wrestling’s no-holds-barred publicity
campaigns are enough to suck
anybody into the ring.
No longer the taboo it once was,
pro wrestling is wrangling up some
pretty sophisticated viewers and
numbers. According to EW, the USA
Network reported “a 156 percent
Offer expires May 7,1999 K-Mart Plaza
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increase in ratings among viewers
with four or more years of college,
while ratings among households with
incomes of $50,000 or more are up
111 percent.” To watch wrestling?
Apparently it has to do with the
target demographic. “They’ve aimed
it at an older crowd,” MIT
Comparative Media Studies professor
Henry Jenkins told EW. "They’ve
created a morally ambiguous
universe, with antiheroes and
sympathetic villains. It’s appealing
to a Pulp Fiction crowd.”
It’s also appealing to females. It
used to be that this rough and tumble
play was a guy thing, but the number
of female viewers has also grown
considerably. I know girls who
actually get together on their own to
watch a good Monday night brawl...
and they’re not watching football,
either.
Despite controversy, professional
wrestling continues to be a force to
be reckoned with. And it only keeps
expanding. Restaurants, casinos and
record labels are being launched as
we speak. This is not to mention the
magazine covers, guest appearances
and product endorsements wrestlers
are signing on for. Like boy bands
and Cindy Crawford, this, too, is an
icon of pop culture with its own ups
and downs, but after decades of
resilience, professional wrestling has
proven that it can’t be counted out.
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any other offer, ■