“Sports Entertainment” is a much-maligned term among professional wrestling purist.
Growing up, I never thought much about the significance of the term.
It just seemed like the WWE’s way of distinguishing its brand of professional wrestling from others. I wasn’t aware of any malice behind the phrase or that “Sports Entertainment” presented itself as superior to the territory “wrasslin business” of old. I didn’t know that it was designed as a means of distancing the WWE from negative public perceptions, steroids scandals, and the like.
Read MoreWhile it’s exciting that pro-wrestling fans have made their voices heard with the #GiveDivasAChance movement, since this trend caught on the WWE has done little more than pay lip service to the fact that there’s an obvious problem with the way women are represented in the company. The “WWE Divas” on the main roster still get less than five minutes on a three hour prime-time television show - a television show that, by the company’s own admission, is difficult to program for due to a massive time-slot.
Read MoreI’ve often thought the best compliment I can give a work of art is that it transports me back to a childlike place of magic and wonder.
We strive to achieve that “kid-again” feeling less because we’re terrified of our own mortality and more because we recognize the purity of a child’s experiences. The untainted mind seems to more fully appreciate and experience life. Art (a book, a film, a painting, a song, a wrestling match) that essentially wipes your insignificant, adult preoccupations away and restores you to that nirvana-like place of purity and joy could be considered a public service; that’s how important that cleansing process is to our lives and why we’ve built our culture around pleasant, inspiring, uplifting fictions. We need these brief excursions into a place where magic exists, where all conflicts inevitably resolve themselves, where love conquers all, and where human beings overcome the psychological traumas and the petty jealousies that plague them daily.
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