Charly Eaton
Sally Cloninger
RC1
May 9, 2011
Reagan and Wrestling: Reflections of Politics in Popular Culture
In 1979 the presidential election was one that would determine the course of American supremacy in the world. President Jimmy Carter was defending the title against the California governor Ronald Reagan who had been brought up through the ranks of Hollywood before entering politics. During this time the American hostage crisis in Iran occurred in which the American embassy had been seized by Islamic students and militants in support of the Iranian Revolution. What would later become a fourteen month captivity of the hostages became a defining issue for the two candidates. Proclaiming that “The U.S. will not be pushed around”, Reagan campaigns on a more aggressive foreign policy than his diplomatic opponent. With the election results showing a landslide victory for Reagan, the prevailing attitude among Americans was clear. They would certainly not have their primacy challenged by another nation. Despite this, the threat of foreign enemies was an everyday reality for millions of Americans and it was the television set, the portal to the outer world, that streamed these perilous images into their homes. With the U.S. and U.S.S.R engaged in an arms race of astronomical proportions, and revolution in Iran generating anti American fervor in the Middle East, the ideal of the American way of life was up against the ropes. Week after week, thousands of Americans would lay witness to foreign thugs waving the enemy flag as they celebrated over another fallen American. Until finally, like a godsend, the American people were delivered a hero, and in 1983 at the Madison Square Garden The Incredible Hulk Hogan defeated The Iron Sheik from Iran for the championship title of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), restoring the United States to the number one spot in the world……in professional wrestling.
The history of televised professional wrestling is a peculiar one. It was the convergence of technological innovations in television, and the cultural climate created by Reagan in the 80’s that provided a fertile setting from which professional wrestling would be birthed. While pro wrestling had been an attraction since the turn of the century, it wasn’t until 1979 that it had started to become a palpable force in the shaping of American culture. Up until this time pro wrestling had been a largely fragmented industry comprised of small regional leagues. Matches were aired on local stations if they were even aired at all. It was around the late 70’s/early 80’s that three innovations in television emerged that would bring pro wrestling to audiences across America: cable channels; VHS tapes; and pay-per-view. Vince Mcmahon, the owner of the World Wrestling Federation, would effectively exploit these developments in order to build his eventual domination of the industry. Struggling against the TV network’s unenthused views towards wrestling as a television spectacle, Vince Mcmahon took advantage of the cable boom and begun syndicating his WWF to cable stations around the country. Having established a video distribution company Coliseum Video during the boom in VHS technology, he was able to sell recordings of the events to fans and stations. Despite having cable and VHS to promote the show, WWF was still receiving mediocre ratings until later in 1985, Vince Mcmahon would create the WWF flagship event Wrestlemania which viewers could only see on pay-per-view, a new viewing option that allowed content distributors to charge extra for periodic “special events” thus adding a sense of prestige and exclusivity to the show. Wrestlemania yielded such high ratings that for the first time in pro wrestling history a major network (NBC) took pro wrestling into their weekly programming. By strategically exploiting these innovative means of distribution, Mcmahon had successfully broken from the regional confines that had historically characterized pro wrestling. While local wrestling leagues were furious to see the WWF grow beyond its North East territory, no other wrestling league could compete with the televised WWF. It wasn’t until the late 80’s when media mogul Ted Turner, following the newfound success of the WWF, created World Championship Wrestling (WCW) which would develop into the first and only rival of the WWF superpower.
As these technological innovations were facilitating the rise of pro wrestling on television, it was the political climate of Reagan that provided the surrounding context in which wrestling could thrive. The Iranian Hostage Crisis, followed by the downing of Korean flight 007 by a Russian missile in 1983, and the Libya bombing of 1986, were among the events of the 80’s that Reagan would cite as evidence of an increased aggression against America. In his “Evil Empire” speech in March of 1983, Reagan warned against the threat of communist saying, “Let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare it’s omnipotence over individual man, and predict its domination over all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world” (Reagan, Ronald). By fear mongering and neglecting to address the complexity of issues pertaining to US foreign relations, along with the complicity of network television to not report on such complexities, Reagan had successfully cultivated a hyper patriotic vehemence among Americans by reducing international relations to a simple good vs. evil scenario.
Nowhere was the world vision of Reagan more outrageously extolled than in professional wrestling. In his essay, Faking It author Michael Sorkin deconstructs professional wrestling as a tool for Reaganesque propaganda:
“Wrestling binarizes the world’s horizons into the weighable distinctions which can ethically frame the outcome of the match. Black/White, Russian/American, Moslem/Christian, Good body/Bad body, Gay/Straight, Hairy/Smooth, Urban/Rural: these are the topical centers for the construction of value, weighted with the cartoonish hyperbole that characterizes wrestling generally, yielding a gross and phobic Reagan/ Rambo politics of homely hatred and affable intolerance” (164)
As the 320 lbs Hulk Hogan enters the ring the American flag is proudly hoisted up in his powerful arm. His muscular body always has a golden tan, signifying his Californian heritage, the same state from which Reagan hails. The sold out stadium is a sea of American flags and hysteric fans. While most other wrestlers like Macho Man Randy Savage, and King Kong Bundy based their gimmick off of some zany personality type or abnormal physical appearance, the gimmick of Hulk Hogan was a sentiment, an xenophobic-jingoism masquerading as a patriotic duty to restore justice to the world. To exacerbate the disdain for America’s political enemies, “The Iron Sheik” was casted as a hot head, constantly loosing his cool in interviews as he would rant about Iran shutting off America’s supply to oil. In matches he would frequently use the Iranian flag as a weapon to gain the upper hand, therefore equating the symbol of his nation with malice and disregard for law. Nikolai Volkoff, Russia’s ambassador to the WWF, was infamous for forcing the crowd to sit through his version of the Russian national anthem before every match. During the song, which could hardly be heard above the booing crowd, was an opportunity for cutaway shots of enraged fans, shoving their “USA is #1” signs in front of the camera. Nikolai Volkoff was a beast of a man, at 300 lbs he would lumber into the ring wearing a red “Russian Power” shirt. His massive presence in the ring was suggestive of the looming threat of Communism taking over the world by force. The two were also tag team partners, a convenient grouping of America’s enemies into a supposedly homogenous “evil empire” as labeled by Reagan.
As wrestling was a reflection of the nationalistic themes of the Reagan presidency it was also the product of what Erik Barnouw in his book Tube of Plenty refers to as “trash TV,” the time in television history beginning in the eighties in which programs such as The Phil Donahue Show and Geraldo emphasized confrontation and sensationalism while having little to no intellectual/artistic merit. Beginning in the eighties, Barnouw discusses the permeation of trash TV into all facets of broadcast television:
“The same trend took over the world of advertising, which during the 1980’s became addicted to so called “negative advertising.” Damaging insinuations about rival products mentioned by name became prevalent in television commercials. The same was true of political campaigns which had virtually become a domain of the advertising industry” (522).
Professional wrestling emerged with a childlike alacrity to be the quintessence of the new “Trash TV” ethos. While Phil Donahue would antagonize his guests in the hopes of an ensuing fight, wrestling was a program whose sole function was to provoke hatred from the thousands of fans by pitting one dimensional villains against the American dream personified in such wrestlers as Hogan and Bob Backlund. Just as other expressions of trash TV seldom allowed for a variety of interpretations of complex characters and story lines, so to did wrestling reduce the viewing experience to a passive participation in irrational emotional indulgences.
During the 80’s film and television also saw a resurgence in the glorification of violence that was once made popular by gangster shows in the 60’s. Stories such as Rambo, The A-Team, and Hawaii 5-0 held common themes of vigilantism in which clandestine American heroes often in defiance of orders from their inept and/or corrupt government, single handedly defend the weak while bringing enemies to justice. Just as Reagan was engaging in covert and unilateral military advances in places like Nicaragua and Iran, so to was television culture endorsing Reagan’s pugnacious declaration that the U.S. “would not be pushed around.”
The hyper-patriotic political culture of Reagan, trend of trash TV, and resurgence of television violence, were three factors that converged in the eighties to create what was arguably the most significant reason for wrestling’s success: a growing movement of anti-intellectualism in the United States. The election victory of Reagan was followed by events in both politics and television that would stifle critical thinking, investigative journalism, and self examination while at the same time promote dominant cultural assumptions and values. Under the Reagan administration, left-leaning documentaries that were critical of government policies were either denied certification from the United States Information Agency, or were required to be labeled as “propaganda” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Barnouw explains in further detail:
“Beginning in 1981 a succession of documentaries were denied certification for apparently ideological reasons. They included In Our Own Backyards, documenting the hazards of uranium mining, The Killing Ground, a survey of the problems of toxic wastes, and Soldier Girls, on U.S. army training of recruits.” (518).
As Reagan was engaging in overt political censorship of dissenting viewpoints on television, he was also strangling the funding for the organizations that were producing many of these documentaries like The National Endowments for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting while appointing people to head these organizations who as Barnouw puts it, “seemed to take a dim view on documentaries.” (517).
While Reagan’s executive decisions were a direct cause for the rise of anti intellectualism in American culture, the networks were also complacent by their willingness to set a broadcast agenda that favored fluffy and sensationalized programming over genuine investigative reporting. Programs which assumed the investigative structure such as Twenty/Twenty and Sixty Minutes tended to cover topics of a more trivial nature such as celebrity scandals.
One would not be hard pressed to consider pro wrestling as the epitome of Reagan’s culture of anti-intellectualism as it represents a complete retreat from intellectual engagement in favor of excessive brutality and melodrama. The reduction of foreign relations to a handful of caricatures with limited emotional range was therefore symptomatic of a society in which those who possessed the power to influence culture sought to do so by limiting the scope of discussion about U.S. supremacy in simple terms of good versus evil. The matches between Hulk Hogan and Nikolai Volkoff in which good and evil were defined by nationality were therefore pop culture manifestations of Ronald Reagan’s equally oversimplified rhetoric.
If networks weren’t changing their programs to curtail intellectual growth, they were changing their corporate structures. The eighties was a significant time in television history as it marked a series of massive mergers and buy-outs that would have dramatic effects on television content. Most notably the General Electric take over of NBC resulted essentially in the corruption of the NBC news department. GE, a massive war profiteer, welcomed it’s new staff by pressuring them to donate to GE’s PAC. Barnouw describes the climate of corporate controlled journalism, “Many journalists believed that self restraint- prudence- not rocking the boat- pragmatism- self censorship, were far more pervasive media problems than overt censorship” (511). It was through Reagan’s deregulation of media ownership laws that such consolidation of media and consequent decline in diversity of viewpoints in the news was able to happen. Wrestling was therefore couched in a historical period of television in which content distributors were making it increasingly easier for shows such as the WWF to enthusiastically proclaim the values of U.S. supremacy in the form of Hulk Hogan drop kicking Nikolai Volkoff to the cheers of ecstatic fans.
Reagan and wrestling were connected in a symbiotic relationship. Reagan helped to create the conditions under which wrestling could come into fruition, and wrestling in turn amplified those very notions espoused by Reagan of U.S. hegemony and vilification of foreign countries. The two were also related by the fact that they were both carefully managed illusions of reality. As Hollywood and TV networks were turning out heroes in the form of Rambo (1982), (1985), (1988), Rocky (1979), (1982), (1985), (1990), and Hulk Hogan (1979-), the White House had invented a character to mitigate the many conflicts and scandals threatening the image of the U.S. Coming from a career in acting, Ronald Reagan was depicted as being a “hands on” president who was very involved in the decision making process of his administration, however, as some scholars have argued, his presidency was more of a stage performance, than a genuine career in politics. Expounding on his thespian approach to politics, Barnouw says, “As candidate and office holder he relied on speech writers, public relations specialist, photographers, political mentors, make up artists and all their heterogeneous assistants to know and do their jobs” (526). Dubbed “the electronic president”, Reagan had been the most successful president to use the media to control perception of himself and his policies. Many of his public appearances were largely media spectacles serving the symbolic purpose of asserting his image as an American leader and professing supposed American values (“Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”)
In the WWF as thousands of Americans booed The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff for spewing their scripted anti-American sentiment, millions of Americans, perhaps during the same time slot, were being informed by Reagan about political happenings around the world which, in a large sense, also were not real. As history would later show, his claims about such event as the Iran Contra Affair were outright lies. Commenting on Reagan’s manipulation of the television coverage, Barnouw says, “What the public saw was an ample succession of controlled events: clips of speeches before friendly audiences, a parade of foreign dignitaries in rose garden photography, and appearances rich in symbolism…”(527). Pro wrestling presented fictional narratives that served the purpose of assigning the viewer’s allegiance to one wrestler over the other. Similarly, the carefully managed media coverage of Ronald Reagan aimed to mold public perception in a way that advanced Reagan’s agenda while blocking any meaningful discussion of others.
The popularity and acceptance of both Reagan and wrestling suggested the supersession of the real by the simulated. To use the famous term of Jean Baudrillard, Reagan and wrestling had become simulacrums, simulations that come to be considered more real than the things they are referencing. In his book Simulations and Simulacrum, Baudrillard elaborates on the phenomena by which a simulation comes to replace that which it simulates, “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real” (2). Pro wrestling assumes the structure of other sports shows by the way it drew on the conventions of sports coverage: ring side commentary, interviews, freeze frames, slow motion replays, etc. Wrestling therefore mimics its original source, the “real” sport. As wrestling situates itself among those shows it imitates, it obscures the original intentions of such televisual conventions. Discussing wrestling’s imitation of reality, Sorkin says:
“The effect of placing this mode of comprehending at the service of the faintly ridiculous is not, however, to dissipate the validity of it’s structure, but to affirm it. Wrestling’s relation to sports, like Saturday Night Live’s relation to the news, suggests not the limits but the expansiveness of the mediating mode… It tightens the link between the representation of reality and the comparable validity of it’s infinite distortion” (165).
By mimicking the comprehensive modes and conventions through which a viewer experiences televised sports, wrestling effectively lends itself credibility by veiling it’s outlandish story lines in a reputable televisual format. It is not so much the aim of wrestling to convince you that it is real, but rather to say, “we speak the same language as football and soap operas, on television there is no hierarchy of realism.”
Just as wrestling was disseminating cultural values through hyperbolic performances, Reagan was an agent through which reality could be constructed rather than reflected. Speaking about Reagan’s advisors and media team, Barnouw says:
“The group of men who years earlier had seen in actor Ronald Reagan attributes of a president and guided him through preparatory years including the California governorship, had found him a dexterous apprentice…At crucial times he could perform in bravura style. It was a straight style, never actorish” (526)
Under the leadership of President Reagan, the 1980’s was the perfect time for professional wrestling to establish itself as a lasting force in American television. The combination of technological innovations and the cultural conditions of anti-intellectualism (hyper patriotism, trash TV, glorified violence, and media consolidation) converged to create the historic setting in which professional wrestling could flourish. The manner by which Ronald Reagan and professional wrestling became reality by simulating it through media is a testament to the nature of postmodern society in which the simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right. In the media saturated society we find ourselves in today it is becoming easier for politicians and celebrities to participate in each others domains. Either directly as with wrestler Jesse “the body” Ventura becoming Governor of Minnesota, or vicariously as with Hulk Hogan serving as the embodiment of Reagan style nationalism. If there’s anything to be learned from the relationship between Reagan and wrestling during the eighties it is that trends in pop culture are not always autonomous movements independent of political influence but rather ideological agendas that have percolated into media. While it may seem a bit reductive and perhaps conspiratorial to claim that shows such as the WWF are mere propaganda devices for the white house, it is worth examining how such shows reinforce the values and ideals of the ideology from which they were conceived. After all, television is the means through which American’s learn about cultural norms and values, and without critical examination of such media messages we are just like the wrestlers in the ring, presenting a fiction as a reality.
Work Cited
Barnouw, Erik. Tube of Plenty. 2nd. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. 493-535.
Print.
Erik Barnouw provides an extensive historical account of television beginning with the advent of wireless transmission up until the late eighties with such programs as The Cosby Show. Of particular relevance to my project was Barnouw’s research pertaining to television culture of the eighties during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan
Press, 1994. 2. Print.
In this book, Baudrillard expounds on postmodern concepts of simulations and simulacrums in which he argues that the simulation has become more real than of which it simulates, In my paper I use his notions of simulacrum to discuss wrestling in a theoretical context relating to how it essentially simulates other television conventions.
Mazer, Sharon. Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle. Mississppi: University
press of Mississippi, 1998. Print.
This book explores wrestling as both a sport and entertainment form as well as wrestling as a media phenomena. For my project I drew on this source for the historical context it provided as well as insight into how professional wrestling has used media to become as popular as it is now.
“Professional Wrestling: An Introduction.” enotes (2011): 1-2. Web. 22 April 2011.
<http://www.enotes.com/professional-wrestling-article//print>
This academic article focuses on the popularity of professional wrestling in American culture. The author gives particular attention to the wave of injuries and crimes that have been allegedly inspired by televised wrestling. The authors discussion about the pervasiveness of wrestling in pop culture was of particular usefulness to my paper.
Sorkin, Michael. “Faking It.” Watching Television. Ed . Todd Gitlin. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1986. Print.
Watching Television is a collection of essays that explore media theory, specifically TV. Of particular interest to my project was an essay entitled “Faking It” in which author Michael Sorkin explains how many programs on television are simulations of reality such as court TV, and professional wrestling.
“1980′s professional wrestling boom.” Wikipedia. Web.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_professional_wrestling_boom>.
This Wikipedia article provides a detailed account of the origins of televised professional wrestling. I used this resource to get a basic outline of the important names and dates that were relevant to my paper.
video sources
The Unreal Story of Professional Wrestling. Dir. Chris Mortensen.” Perf. Hulk Hogan,
The Iron Shiek. A&E Home Video: 1998, Film.
“Evil Empire Speech.” Youtube. Web. 26 April 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do0x-Egc6oA
“Let Us Be Shy No More.” Youtube. web. 26 April.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do0x-Egc6oA
“SNME 10-5-85 Hogan VS Nikolai Vollkof”. Youtube. 26 April.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc7_lbEirnA
“Reagan- Tear Down This Wall.” Youtube. 25 April.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjWDrTXMgF8
“Nikolai Volkov-The Iron Shiek Interview.” Youtube. 25 April.