(originally published March 14th, 2005)<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a big fan of professional wrestling. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been watching it since I was 10 years old, the year my dad went to Vietnam. I appreciate the talent and strength of these big men, who can do some amazing things with their bodies. As much as people think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fake, just let one of them get into the ring with a professional wrestler and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll learn immediately that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not fake. Fake isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the same as scripted; but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another story for another time.<\/p>\n
I bring up wrestling because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s popular. One reason why wrestling is popular is the one thing I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like about wrestling. That is, it caters greatly to stereotypes. I remember back in the day when the top Native American wrestler had to be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chief Jay Strongbow\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. The top black wrestler had to have the name \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bobo Brazil\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. The Russian was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nikolai Volkov\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; the backwoods wrestler was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hillbilly Jim\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; the Iranian was the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iron Shiek\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n
In today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrestling, those stereotypes have become a bit more subtle and altered, but they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still there. We have Muhammad Hassan, supposedly Iraqi who does nothing but rant against American imperialism (by the way, turns out he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not even Muslim, and is from Syracuse, of all places). We have Rene DuPree, who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supposed to be French and does this dandy little dance that is the epitome of what most Americans think of the French. Every Japanese wrestler has to be a karate expert; every Mexican wrestler has to be a high flyer (that means they jump off the top rope all the time). Every Samoan (is there another sport where Samoans are prominent in America?) has to wrestle in barefeet.<\/p>\n
I love wrestling for the trash talking; I love wrestling for the athleticism I see. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like how it perpetuates stereotypes, but the fact is that the rest of America does, even if they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know it. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still a very long way to go in this country.
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(originally published March 14th, 2005) I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a big fan of professional wrestling. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been watching it since I was 10 years old, the year my dad went to Vietnam. I appreciate the talent and strength of these big men, who can do some amazing things with their bodies. As much as people think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fake, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1075,1074],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diversity","tag-professional-wrestling","tag-stereotypes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}