Tuesday 17 March 2015

Wrestling Isn't Wrestling



Spent a bit of time lately browsing through the original programming section of the WWE Network. I don't have the patience to delve into any specific eras, so the hyperbolic overviews the company specialises in are right up my street. Aside from the Rivalries series, the best so far has been The Monday Night War: WWE vs WCW, a multi-part show in which the head-to-head scheduling between the two companies is exhaustively examined.

As Wrestling Isn't Wrestling details, Triple H went over during the Attitude Era, a sweaty, masochistic blip laser targeted at porn consuming, black t-shirt wearing teenagers. Since I was exactly that age at exactly that time, I got fairly into the WWF.

My favs were Stone Cold Steve Austin and Mankind, two dinged up wild cards. One was a mouthy redneck who hated everyone, the other a Texas Chain Saw reject. I never warmed to Triple H though. You could feel the push. The company wanted you to like him. He had the arrogance, but it was charmless, conceited and, above all, humourless. In that sense, Max Landis' decision to frame The Game as a weasely little grasper is actually kind of perfect.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love how at 22:03, during the exploration of fiction as proxy for life, there's a close-up of Frazer Irving's art from Grant Morrison's Annihilator...

Chris Ready said...

Oh yeah! Good spot.