Barthe stipulates that the appeal in wrestling is based completely in spectacle. Fans do not attend the matches for a realistic performance or demonstration of talent. Exaggeration is the expectation, not competition. If they were to watch a starkly uneven match between two wrestlers of clearly different calibers, they would not be disappointed for lack of contest; they might still be excited, for the appeal of the outmatched challenger is not lost just because he is going to lose. Rather it is because he is being so terribly outmatched that the match is enjoyable. The difference in ability simply allows the other wrestler to impose his dominance in a more heightened manner. In this way, the public is not interested in the results of the competition, but how it is executed. Essentially Barthe identifies that showmanship and ability to create sensation is more important than being true to reality.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Shoemaker shares a similar mentality. He too agrees that being believable is not the essential to wrestling. Shoemaker\u2019s story about the infuriated townsfolk demonstrates that they were fully aware of the nature of what they were watching. However, his philosophy diverges from Barthe\u2019s in that Shoemaker seems to imply that the public places a greater importance on respecting \u201cwhether the contest is rigged or not.\u201d This is shown in the way they were mad at the reporter for circumventing their spectating process. His story illustrates that people are at least semi-interested in pretending the contest is real. Despite their internal knowledge that the contest is rigged, the external appearance of being real (or at least a lack of ignorance of that fact) appears to be a critical part of the appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barthe stipulates that the appeal in wrestling is based completely in spectacle. Fans do not attend the matches for a realistic performance or demonstration of talent. Exaggeration is the expectation, not competition. If they were to watch a starkly uneven match between two wrestlers of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":881,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/881"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":675,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}