Microtheme 2: Critique

513 Words3 Pages
Microtheme 2: Critique In Henry Jenkins’ essay “’Never Trust a Snake’: WWF Wrestling as Masculine Melodrama” Jenkins’ states how, in wrestling, the working class can overcome and defeat the upper class through their physical prowess, in order to show how wrestling appeals more to the working class as opposed to the upper class. He also goes on to claim how wrestling is a “curious hybrid of sport and theatre”; he then uses binary ops to compare the masculinity of sports with the femininity of melodramas and theatre. (Jenkins, 293) In order to show how wrestling appeals more to the middle class, Jenkins’ uses a quote from a fellow author by the name of Roland Barthes who saw wrestling as a “morality play”, or a plot of good vs. evil. Jenkins’ states how the wrestling audience wants someone that they can root for and look up to, much like a hero figure (293). He notes how more people in the middle class can relate to wrestling because of how the stronger, physical beings, can overcome the forces of evil, with just their brute strength and how they typically are forced to complete more physical labor in their everyday lives as compared to the upper class society. (294) Jenkins’ goes on to state how in wrestling, physical strength can be used as a tool for personal “empowerment”, to “strike back” or overcome the odds and defeat the moral injustices of higher society. Wrestling displays sort of a working class “fantasy”, as Jenkins’ puts it, because in the real world it is the upper class that oppresses the middle class, but wrestling can give its audience an escape from reality and is seen by many viewers as a “utopia” for how the world should really be. (298) According to Jenkins’, men can use wrestling, and sports in general, as a space for “emotional release”, where they can just be themselves and not have to worry about society judging them. (296) Jenkins’

More about Microtheme 2: Critique

Open Document