Wrestling Noir 01.01.06: Staying in Character

Posted by Asteroid Boy on 01.01.2006

What would you risk?

I don't blame them. I would do it too.

I don't blame Ric Flair for spending all his money. I don't blame him for likely flying in rented jets and riding in rented limousines and buying Rolexes with money that he doesn't have. Because being the Nature Boy means you don't have to worry about paying electric bills or sending kids off to school or folding towels while watching the evening news.

I don't blame Shawn Michaels for being a brat, for getting away with murder and for breaking every rule that was put in front of him. Wouldn't you? If you had the chance, why not?

I won't blame Scott Hall when he rattles off an NWO catchprase to a yawning cocktail waitress tonight. Life is more fun with catchphrases. Hell, life is more fun when you're acting like a 13-year-old.

I don't blame Steve Austin for probably thinking still that he's the toughest son of a bitch in wrestling, even as he's a hair away from a wheelchair.

I don't blame Bret Hart for being mad about losing a fake championship. I don't blame him for taking years to get over getting screwed out of a fake title in a fake sport that exists in a fake universe. I'd be mad, too. Because it's not entirely fake, being a fake champion. It means that you're the best in a fake sport that elicits real emotion and real investment

I don't blame any of them. When you tell everyone else that it's real for long enough, you start to believe it too. And hype is fun.

It's more fun than real life. It's more vivid, more visceral, more emotional. Colors are brighter, cheers are louder. Hell, most people never get applause in their lives. We don't get cheered for showing up to our jobs.

They live in a world of Crayola, of hard edges and vivid colors and rarely any shades of gray. It's comical confrontations and violence is always the dispute resolution. It's what our id would do, unconstrained by the customs of society. It's for us to live vicariously though. And for them, too.

When we're young we believe in other worlds - worlds that have warriors battling monsters. These worlds are realized though our entertainment: movies, tv, theater and the modern-day plebeian theater that is wrestling. But wrestling is the only entertainment that insists that it's real. It's not a show, it's not a make-believe world. It's a world of Ultimate Warriors and once a Freebird, always a Freebird.

And who's to blame the actors for staying in character?

At some point, though, most of us grow up, even most wrestlers. We get regular jobs, we pay bills, we sand off the edges of our childhood and the magic fades. We stop living in the cartoon world and settle in the grayness that is real life. It's the responsible thing to do, but it also hurts and we die a little inside.

I don't blame them, because some people never grow up, they never get out of that stage of their life. Their real lives fall apart because they've sacrificed them to keep living in the dream. And when that ends, they become another wrestling story.

And we read about it, shake our heads and go back to our jobs and our laundry and our electric bills.

But a part of me understands. I can't go down the same road, not totally. I can live in that world for a few hours on Monday and then come back to reality.

I don't blame them for wanting to stay in character. A part of me will always envy them for risking it all to hold on.