WWE Raw

[sono]

I feel I must express my disgust at the constantly featured "WWE Raw" rubbish that seems to have infected most TV stations; I actually feel ill if I happen to walk past a TV broadcasting it. What really outrages me is that so many kids watch it - there is something seriously wrong with us as a race that we should find it entertaining to watch a bunch of over-muscled cave men/women pretending to fight. Or have I gone overboard here? Does anyone else find it offensive?

[Sinera]

In the nineties, at my university time, I used to watch Wrestling together with friends in my student's shared flat. I found it was actually FUNNY.

Why should we bother about guys putting on a show PRETENDING to fight, instead of what we should really bother about: all the fights that really take place.

For example, I find Boxing much more disgusting since there really are two men (or women!) fighting each other and punching each others faces bloody. The main goal for many of these people is even to make the opponent go "k.o.", at least it is deemed heroic and the audience cheeres when it happens (to the right person, of course). And then watch those many over-styled VIPs and celebs in the first rows or in their VIP-areas and cheer to this while sipping at their wine glasses and toasting at each other.

Old Rome gladiator fights re-loaded. - Now, that is the real PERVERSION for me.

Wrestlers just put on a show, yes it is a display of violence, but hey, turn on any TV channel in the afternoon and you get much more of it in different clothes. In a way, I even regard Wrestling as a kind of satire of the whole violence-tainment biz. Just my 2 cents.

[CFTraveler]

I have tried to avoid it all my life, and was especially outraged that they started showing it in the SciFi channel. (Yes, I'm aware they changed the spelling, showing they're tailoring their IQ as low as possible, to suit the dwindling intelligence of their target audience). Then I realized that wrestling has the same elements as some comic books- the overmuscled superhero that wears ridiculous costumes and wins fake fights. So I suppose that it serves some adolescent purpose of identifying with some sort of androgynous yet overmuscled being. Since they have no superpowers, then the fighting has to be unrealistically overdramatized.

However, Dr. Phil characterized it better: "Grown men dancing." 'Cause that's what it is. Grown men, dressed in costumes, performing a choreographed dance.

[Palehorse Redivivus]

I used to watch wrestling; oddly enough I think I get more out of it now in hindsight than I did then.

What they're doing is a lot of animalistic-meets-archetypal, thereby venting a whole lot for the astral and the unconscious. Odd combination of base and transpersonal chakras, that one.

Interesting to me that in the 80s, wrestling was less animalistic and more unambiguous, good vs. evil. At the same time there was some pretty dark stuff going on in the physical, along with the ambiguity of the cold war.

Then in the mid-late 90s till now, the physical got a lot less ambiguous and more polarized, and wrestling storylines and personas simultaneously got more ambiguous, complicated and extreme on the sex 'n violence spectrum. They also got, IMO, more synchronistically and archetypally significant.

I would place it as a maturation of the Roman gladiatorial theme. These guys pride themselves on not injuring each other, and the average fan wouldn't wish that on their least favorite wrestler. As far as being considered "low brow," I would consider this to be an extension of the theme by which the lower chakras and their functions have been considered low brow and unspiritual by a vocal contingent for most of our history.

Beyond that -- humans are sexual and violent with a high capacity to be productively animalistic, and this is not incompatible with a healthy spirituality. Those things need somewhere to express or at least vent themselves -- for those who mustn't them, I challenge you to try and imagine a realistic and desirable world where they were done away with entirely, and see where that would take us. If you can't do that, then no mustn'ting the lower chakra centered folks for being themselves.

[RyanParis]

WWE and WCW used to be great. You'd have the best people... NWO, Hogan, Sting, Luger, Trish Stratus, Rock, Steve Austin, Lita, etc.

Now they've all left, and the WWE is very boring and lame now. It has a PG rating too now.

[darron]

I love fighting for sport, mma or boxing, it is as primal as it gets, and builds the bonds between two people.