by Jeb Tennyson Lund
CitizenScholar.net/OnlineOnslaught.com 

Perhaps the finest illustration of the fact that America leads the world in producing obese citizens could be seen at a tractor pull or flea market. But, in a pinch, a WWE show will do. As much as we like to badmouth the birth of hands and corpse violation in WWE programming, perhaps it is the quality of WWE fans and fandom — not the quality of the WWE product — that alienates the average non-fan. Maybe the non-fan is afraid of appearing to be a part of it all.

O, Merciful God — The Sights, The Smells!
I come not to mock those afflicted with glandular disorders, but rather those afflicted with chronic apathy, poor diet — and that righteous over-inflation of a sense of their own attractivess that always seems to directly correspond with over-inflation of their waistbands. Many in the audience around me, at the December 17 Smackdown! taping, did not seem to be drowning in their own fat: indeed, they seemed to be revelling in it.

The woman sitting next to my fiancée, Elaine, looked like the genetic by-product of a pairing of Charles Durning and Gargamel. The giant black mole near her nose — from which sprouted the almost clichéd two hairs growing in opposite directions — momentarily drew my attention away from her girth. It didn't fool Elaine, though: every time Elaine scooted the slightest bit toward me, the woman would exhale loudly, and more of her abundant folds would ooze over the chair-arm into Elaine's seat... like pudding sliding off a plate, onto a table. The woman's great lolloping breasts spread wide and shapelessly across her chest, fully supported by her belly and folded arms. If the arena had been cold, she could have slipped her hands into her giant belly-breast "warmer pouch" — like Bret Favre does at winter games at Lambeau... except without the breasts.

The boy in front of me was worse off by far. The poor child was barely twelve years old, barely five feet tall, and yet he easily weighed 200 pounds. I have always been very self-conscious about being tall and thin; and that awareness of having an uncommon weight made me pity and worry for him so much that I occasionally found myself ignoring the in-ring action. Good God, I thought, how could any mother allow this to happen to her child? Clearly, his parents must have awarded even his enfeebled toddlerish attempts to walk with whole roasted chickens. Worse, the poor kid had dandruff, and any vigorous clapping that he attempted produced a little boy-blizzard of flakes, fluttering from his bowl-cut, onto my loafers. I shook them off, doing a miniature and seated version of Riverdance. What were these people doing to their child?

The final insult — against his parents, certainly not him — came when he turned around to cheer, for Angle, against some booing guys behind me. His chest was larger than the chest of the first girl who ever allowed me to feel her up. (My mind flashed back to awkward Angela B., and her apparent fear that someone toying with her nipple released fatal toxins into her bloodstream.)

The crowning ignominy of my Smackdown! taping experience was the smell. The entire section I was in smelled like feet. Not a normal "feet" smell. I mean the "I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more — while wearing cheap leather deck shoes and wool socks. In fact, I just did that. Then I took the shoes off" type of feet smell.

I've been to basketball, hockey, baseball, minor-league baseball and football games; I've been to Cirque D'Expensive, Ringling Brothers's Circus and Ice-Capades exhibitions. I've showed up around Vomiting Time at promotional beer-tasting festivals. Never, before, had I experienced such a potent and limitless awful smell. And keep in mind that I went to a hippie, liberal-arts college that only gave students pass/fail evaluations. Some students, so far as I can tell, actually majored in filth.

Smell-O-Nomics
Having seen Survivor Series 2000 in person (in the same arena), I did not expect the undulating sea of bloat and miasma that greeted me at the Smackdown! taping. Maybe the pay-per-view was so captivating for me that I didn't notice the sloth and odiferousness of everyone around me. Maybe most of the fans showered for the "big do." Or maybe the higher pay-per-view prices drew a different crowd.

It was this last possible line of thinking that alerted me to some interesting economic and public-relations issues.
 
• First, I was sitting in a section where each ticket cost $45. Most of the people sitting in this section were with large groups of friends or family, wearing moth-eaten or messy t-shirts, and almost all of their faces were covered with a thin layer of grease. Why, I wondered, would these people spend upward of $250 to take five members of their "kin" to a TV taping when none of them would spend five minutes under hot water?
• Second, most of the people who fit the low-income, low-hygeine, high-fat profile were wearing one (sometimes two or three) WWE t-shirts. In additon to spending a good chunk of their monthly wages to attend the show, they were also willing to fork over $25 per shirt afterward.
• Third, those who generally gave off a middle- to upper-middle-class air were wearing nice clothes without any outward affiliation, except maybe Polo. If one didn't know that there was a wrestling show going on in front of those ticket-holders, one would have been hard pressed to guess what they were watching.

The question to which this all led me was this: does the essential quality of the WWE programming alienate the mainstream middle-class American, or is it the outward "quality" of WWE fans and wrestling fandom?

An Endless (Non-)Defense of A Favorite
By rights, I should never have become a fan of wrestling. I was introduced to it at the age of 22. I started liking it when I was already used to saying "pulchritudinous" when I meant "pretty." I wore loafers all the time and looked like Ichabod Crane in a tweed jacket. In hot weather, I looked like Ichabod Crane vacationing in Key West. I still do. Everything about me fairly screamed (and screams): "wrestling-mocking intellectual snob who has arthritis." Which, of course, I do.

In the next few years, however, my appearance proved to be an indispensable ally in intellectual warfare about the value of wrestling. Not betraying any immediate affiliation with WWF/WCW fandom allowed me to sneakily argue the worth of wrestling as a phenomenon. I could even bust out Baudrillard's comment that it was the only remaining real form of entertainment. Trust me: saying "Baudrillard said so" to a postmodernist jargon-spewer in a black shirt and hemp pants is like saying "Stone Cold said so" to someone in a "What?" shirt.

The important thing I did, though, was go through arguments about wrestling without divulging how much I liked it. If questioned, I would dodge the issue or jumble my answer with unnecessary meaningless qualifications. The funny result of all this was that most people would eventually lean toward me and whisper conspiratorially that they actually kind of liked wrestling. They'd qualify their like for it with all manner of intellectual claptrap, but they would still betray the fact that they were curious.

Eventually, many would agree to come by and watch Smackdown! with me. During my last semester of living in a dorm room, I could count on about four former snobs — or a few genuinely cool open-minded people — coming by to drink some beer and scream at Stephanie McMahon. They loved it, and many of them started using their dorm-room T-3 connections to read CRZ's recaps of Raw — a show we couldn't see, as the dorms could not be wired for cable.

Observation Without Participation
Living in the Sarasota, St. Petersburg and Tampa area offered many opportunities to see WWF house and TV shows. Getting any of my "converts" to go see them with me, however, was impossible. Like the problem with Christianity and hardcore Christians, all of the new converts liked the basic essence of wrestling: they just couldn't stand the fans.

Therein lies the rub. If you ask the average middle-class non-fan if he would feel more at ease standing next to Jeb Lund (remember: tweed, Ichabod Crane) or next to a pipe-fitter wearing an "Austin 3:16" shirt, invariably the answer will be, "Jeb." This is no comment on the quality of me as a person or the "3:16" shirt as a garment; it's simply a comment on most people's comfort within a crowd. Nicely dressed people are less likely to hit strangers or spill beer on them.

The people I "converted" to liking wrestling had no essential problem with sitting on a couch with me and like-hygienic people and watching a free show. There, they were just watching at a distance, somewhat anonymously, in a very small microcosm. Paying $20-$50 to see a show in person, however, would have given those people an implied association with others in the arena. Instead of observing, they would be participating. An informal bond would be created. They would become one of the many... one of the others.

Most middle-class Americans, unfortunately, are snobs, and are far more class-conscious than they assume Britons to be. Unable to be wealthy, they mimic the trappings of wealth by having exclusive tastes and by adopting exclusionary behavior. Rich people don't have to do this, because they are automatically in an exclusive club of their own: only the middle class bend and scrape to be Rotarians or Kiwanis members. In short, a well-off person wouldn't give two shits about sitting next to drunk maniacs screaming at Angle, "You suck!... You Suck!... You Suck!... You Suck!" whereas the charming members of the bourgeoisie would sit, paralyzed with the fear that a neighbor might walk down the aisle and see them.

(In their paranoid minds, of course, the neighbor would not have paid to enter the arena and watch the show. Rather, he would have been let in, by security, to find his problem-child and bring him home to read Paul's Epistle to Philemon and get spanked with rolled-up copies of The Saturday Evening Post. Or maybe suffer "time out.")

The average American does not want to participate in wrestling fandom, because as yet no one has told him that it is okay. (This is the other problem with the average American: disposable income, little self-confidence.) It is still far easier to get a laugh than a look of interest by mentioning pro wrestling. No one wants to be laughed at. Finally, many wrestling fans, by being honestly, grubbily and unapologetically themselves, scare off potential new members. Nicely dressed outsiders have a creeping irrational fear that watching wrestling will result in them forever having vacation-stubble and an urge to wear shirts from Kip's Truck and Tow.

Thus, the "half-fan" is born — living in some quasi-shame, sheepishly laughing at jokes that say all wrestling is fake.

Other Forms of Non-Participation
Any good company markets its products toward its fan-base. The WWE designs its products accordingly. Unfortunately, purchasing a WWE product is another act of participation, as wearing the garment or displaying the poster immediately declares that you are a fan.

If I had hung a Stone Cold poster in my dorm room, it would have clashed violently with the whole tweedy, Ichabod-Crane look that I can't seem to avoid. The contrast would have led to a lot of mockery and unnecessary use of big words. Acknowledging that I was a wrestling fan would have made my life needlessly more difficult. This condition would have been brutally demonstrated had I worn a "You Bring the Ass, We Bring the Whuppin' " shirt to any bar. Being rail-thin and wearing loafers with it would probably have resulted in my ass getting whupped north from Sarasota to Manatee, Pinellas and then Hillsborough counties. In short, it is best for me to not advertise my love of WWE programming.

Similar worries greet the average American half-fan drawn to WWE programming. What will the neighbors think of a t-shirt with a 150-pt. white-on-black printing of the word "ass"? Can a WWE shirt be worn in any place other than the backyard? If I bump into Phil from marketing, while wearing my "Bye Bye Jackass" shirt, will he slip that line in at the next meeting? If I wear my "What?" shirt to the mexican restaurant, will the waiter approach me and say

Would you like something to start?... A snack?... A bite?... Some tapas?... A nibble? I said, 'A nibble'?... A pequeño taste-o?... Maybe an appetizer?... A first course?... Maybe some nachos?... A quesadilla?... A south-west eggroll?... A jalapeño popper?... A fire-bite?... How 'bout some beer? Then another beer? Then some more beer?... Then a margarita? Then another?... Then more beer?... Then a bite?... What?... My name is Ted.... I'm your server. I said, 'Your server'... I'm a waiter.... I get your food.... I bring it to you.... You eat it.... What'll ya eat?... What?

E-MAIL JEB LUND
BROWSE JEB'S ARCHIVE

Jeb Tennyson Lund is a regular columnist for Citizen Scholar, an online
journal. If you want to read his sadly less wrestling-oriented columns, go
to www.citizenscholar.net.

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