Team C reading questions. Responses of 250-300 words are due by 9PM on Wednesday 12/3 as an original post. Don’t forget a creative title for your post.
1. Imagine the habitus of a fan of World Wrestling Entertainment. What about the WWE suggests such a habitus? What is the WWE’s cultural capital in your opinion and experience? P. S. If you can’t remember what habitus is, look it up in Carl Wilson’s book.
2. Barthes’ essay on wrestling states that “The public is completely uninterested in knowing whether the contest is rigged or not, and rightly so; it abandons itself to the primary virtue of the spectacle, which is to abolish all motives and all consequences: what matters is not what it thinks but what it sees” (15). Put this analysis into your own words. Then, compare it to the story Shoemaker tells in the introduction about the journalist and the cancelled wrestling match. Are Shoemaker and Barthes on the same page about the appeal of wrestling?
3. Compare the Junkyard Dog with Cassandro. How did each negotiate his position within the world of wrestling? Do they inhabit similarly stereotyped roles, or do they exceed these stereotypes?