Simply put, professional wrestling exemplifies everything that is or can be called American. People say "the soul of America is this" or "America is that"...
nah dude, America is professional wrestling.
How, pray tell, you ask?
Well, it's the ultimate intellectual buy in...or the total conscious decision to vacate your mental/critical abilities even if it's only for the hours you are in the arena or in front of the tv. You buy tickets to a show that claims to be real and winks at you saying "this is all staged, but we need you to ACT as if it is real" and the people who buy the tickets KNOW everything is staged and fraudulent, but they buy into it anyways for the time that they are there. They vuglarly yell at the performers knowing that everything they do is irrelevant since it's all staged to begin with. It's everyone winking and nudging each other saying "we know it's all theater, but it's fun to play pretend and buy into it so other people can see how much fun you are having". Think of professional wrestling as Halloween but in a big building and not on any one holiday. It's vaguely homoerotic but screams it's heterosexuality from the roof tops because of the tension of the fact that is so homoerotic. It's gimmicks and storylines sell you the notion that the little guy with a lot of hard work and determination can win...but you still never forget that the "guy behind the curtin" (company owners) are ALWAYS pulling the strings to make the "little guy" the champion...king of the world...only because the company owner WANTED it to be so. Professional wrestling "bad guys" who are called "heels" yell at the fans and insult and berate them and the fans eat it up. It's considered an honor to have a wrestler pick on you in the show. He makes a spectacle of you and you love it. People on wrestling forums have real heated discussions about wrestling styles ("japanese royal road is better than American rasslin and Mexican Lucha") or legit beef about the best wrestlers ever as if there was never THESE HUGE POWERFUL OWNERS MAKING ALL OF THE DECISIONS...
Can this all BE MORE AMERICAN? We know it's all vaguely a sham and set up from the beginning, but we buy in at any rate...
To quote Dusty Rhodes...the son of a plumber...digging a ditch trying to be the American Dream... I'm just the son of a trucker, 8 years old, riding shotgun in an 18 wheeler, moving boxes bigger than me to earn my 5 dollars, trying to live the American Dream..."living life on the edge of a lightning bolt"
