All caught up in the kayfabe : understanding and appreciating pro-wrestling
Abstract
Professional wrestling is a popular, global, performance phenomenon that is in many respects sport-like, but tends to be shunned by serious sports fans for its alleged ‘fakeness’. Yet its own fans often behave exactly like regular sports fans: getting caught up in the action, responding emotionally to the performances, and engaging in critical analysis of the competitive strategies and the turns of events. How does this alleged ‘fake sport’ engender such complex and deeply emotional appreciation? Here I provide an analysis of pro-wrestling that explains and emphasises its narrative, dramatic and fictional aspects, showing it to be a complex representational work that can be appreciated aesthetically and emotionally on a number of levels.
Citation
Jones , L 2019 , ' All caught up in the kayfabe : understanding and appreciating pro-wrestling ' , Journal of the Philosophy of Sport , vol. 46 , no. 2 , pp. 276-291 . https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2019.1613410
Publication
Journal of the Philosophy of Sport
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1543-2939Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2019 IAPS. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created accepted version manuscript following peer review and as such may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2019.1613410
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