brendan halpin

I’ve seen a bunch of think pieces lately about pro wrestling, and how Trump was briefly involved with WWE, and how pro wrestling involves pretending that unreal things are real, and that explains Trump, or something. Sprinkle in a little condescension for wrestling and its fans, and you’re done!

The idea here I guess is that there’s something unique about pro wrestling having a public facade that is different from the private reality. But really the only thing that’s unique is that pro wrestling has a name for the facade: kayfabe.

But it’s not like pro wrestling invented this or can be blamed for the fact that we live in a society awash in bullshit.

Allow me to introduce you to William Byrd, who, along with some other guys, went on an expedition to define the border between Virginia and North Carolina in 1729. He wrote a book about it! I had to read it in college! It’s called The History of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina. BUT—he also wrote a private journal of the trip, later published as the Secret History of the Dividing Line, which includes all the intraparty sqabbling, the fact that they had sex with indigenous women, you know, stuff like that. In short, the original work was the kayfabe history, and the secret history was the real history. 1729, people. According to Wikipedia, pro wrestling with kayfabe developed in the US nearly 200 years later.

And, if anything, pro wrestling probably cribbed the concept of kayfabe from American politics. Where FDR’s use of a wheelchair was hidden from the public. Where Jackie Kennedy, after Jack’s death, created the kayfabe “Camelot” myth to paper over the reality of her cold-hearted, philandering, probably-a-rapist husband. Everyone in Washington knew the truth, but they didn’t break kayfabe because they wanted to give the marks a good show. Hell, Reagan’s second term was an entirely kayfabe presidency, in which everyone pretended a man whose dementia rendered him unfit for office was actually doing the work of the President of the United States. (Who was really running the country? We still don’t know! Fun!)

One of these pieces I read recently talked about layers of kayfabe, how you peel back the facade, purporting to show something real, but that’s kayfabe too. This, of course, is also a perfect description of cable news coverage of politics. They host these panel shows that have this very insider-y pretense, where party operatives talk about how they think the latest scandal is going to play with the public, and viewers get the sense they’re watching real insider talk, when of course it’s more kayfabe—the cable news “insiders” are just additional performers selling the “work” of political theater to the rubes. It’s probably more effective this way, because they’re flattering the rubes into thinking they’re getting better information than regular rubes. Weird how I don’t see a lot of condescending think pieces about people who watch this stuff. At least wrestling fans are sophisticated enough to understand the difference between kayfabe and reality. Are cable news fans?

I was recently in Cincinnati, where the previous week some Black people had beaten the shit out of a couple of white people who were spouting racial slurs while everyone was drunk at 3 in the morning. Obviously not a big deal, and, frankly, if you’re drunk and white and yelling that word to Black people in the street, it’s a fuck around find out situation. But eveyone on the news was tut-tutting, and the politicans were tut-tutting and condeming violence, and the whole thing was obviously kayfabe. Why are people even talking about a 3 AM drunken street brawl on the news? Shout out to Cincinnati City Councilor Victoria Parks, who broke kayfabe by posting “they begged for that beatdown” and now has US Senators in full kayfabe mode howling for her resignation.

And then, of course, there’s office work, which is the ultimate kayfabe experience. (Probably not a coincidence that a wrestling match whose outcome is predetermined is called a “worked” match). You go into work, and you go to a meeting, and the boss says, “We’re moving all our customer data from Tonkl to Squiddlr,” and you all nod your heads like this is a real thing that matters. Some particularly zealous performers will even raise their hands and praise the boldness of the bosses brave enough to make a move to Squiddlr. And God help you if you break kayfabe. Because that’s how you get fired. It’s essential to the enterprise that everyone pretends important things are happening, especially when they’re not.

And you want to blame the bullshit of the Trump era on wrestling?

Most professional wrestling is based firmly in the ethos of giving fans a good show. It’s not trying to deceive anybody (everybody knows! Everybody has always known! We knew in the 80’s!). It’s just trying to give people the best entertainment value for their money. That’s what kayfabe is about.

Politics was selling bullshit long before wrestling, and has done so with far more dangerous consequences. Several of the Black folks involved in the Cincinnati fight have gotten real arrested as a result of fake outrage. Remember Colin Powell’s kayfabe WMD performance at the UN? Half a million people died as a result. No wrestling promo has ever had such deadly consequences.

Talk about layers of kayfabe—these “think pieces” are kayfabe too—someone noticed a similarity and thought they could gin up a piece they could pitch to the Atlantic or something, but there’s no deep or original insights in these pieces—there’s only the appearance of insight. Once you start looking for kayfabe, it’s everywhere, and, ironically, pro wrestling is about the only place where it isn’t sinister.