LogFAQs > #950517059

Zeus posted...

His complaints are based on credibility and realism.

Yes, I know. But we're also talking about the person who booked Ninja Turtles to wrestle, so it's not like he's got a spotless track record in that area either.

The problem is, suspension of disbelief doesn't mean "everything needs to look realistic", which is the tact Cornette often takes. To co-opt the TV/movie analogy, I can watch a show like Game of Thrones and not throw my TV remote in disgust because there's no such thing as dragons or magic in the real world, and thus, my immersion is completely ruined. If anything, the problem with GoT is shit writing - which is the same problem that is killing WWE these days.

Cornette mostly complains because most wrestlers today all look smaller and weaker, wrestle a more athletic style, and then go play video games after work and don't get drunk and fuck groupies. And also Twitter. But again, I don't throw tantrums because Nikolaj Coster-Waldau isn't going around stabbing people in real life, Kit Harington looks too pretty to be an actual warrior fighting on The Wall, or because Maisie Williams doesn't Tweet in-character 24-7 as Arya.

I can accept the premise that wrestlers are actors, that wrestlers can do things in combat that defy the laws of physics (in the same way Bruce Willis would have died about a dozen times over in Die Hard if it was the real world), and that they then go home and are different people than their characters. Cornette has trouble with that idea when it comes to wrestling, because he's so used to the idea of kayfabe meaning you can never drop character (which is part of his own problem).

I understand WHY he thinks that way. I'd argue it isn't necessarily always correct.

If you tell a logical - and above all, consistent - story, with characters the audience actually likes or relates to, the more superficial aspects of things can be justified. Realism doesn't mean slavish devotion to reality, it means presenting a product that feels real according to its own rules.

Wrestling doesn't need to be entirely made up of guys who look like they could kick your ass and who spend most of their time hanging out in truck stops and dive bars to appeal. It mostly just needs better booking. THAT'S where the modern product tends to fall down (both in WWE and AEW). Even most modern wrestling fans will admit that. Cornette mostly just misses the forest for the trees.



Zeus posted...

As for demographics changing, they sure have -- the audience has shrunk to almost nothing and become absurdly fringe.

Yes, I'm fully aware of all of the arguments Cornette uses when he bashes the current product (and I don't even necessarily disagree with most of them - like I said, I like Cornette).

The problem is, the ability to see the symptoms doesn't mean you're drawing the right conclusions about the cause, and I think he's so mired in his own perception of what wrestling is and should be (and his own incredibly stubborn personality) that he can't really be objective about things and see the bigger picture. Which leads him to draw the wrong conclusions.

The death of kayfabe probably did do more to hurt the industry than anything else. But that's not really a genie you can put back in the bottle, and even if Vince is 100% to blame (by pushing a more cartoonish product as early as the 80s, by dropping kayfabe almost entirely after Montreal, or by sanitizing the WWE into a PG product), it likely would have happened even without him (culture in general has grown MUCH more cynical over the last few decades, and constant media presence and omnipresent Internet and cel phone use makes it hard to keep almost anything secret for long). Kayfabe was going to die no matter what, and its death was going to negatively impact wrestling no matter who was running shows, or how.

But once kayfabe is dead, you can't really magically wish it back to life and suddenly convince everyone that, sure, wrestling is fake and always has been, but YOUR company is the real deal. Which is the root of what Cornette essentially wants (and will never have).

A significant part of the audience who wanted legit bloodsports just shifted their fandom to MMA/UFC (which itself has adopted more wrestling-style promotion tactics since Dana White took over). Those people are never coming back. Culture in general has shifted since the 80s - what used to sell wouldn't necessarily sell today (consider the dwindling popularity of circuses as people have gone from loving the spectacle to being bummed out by animal cruelty and terrified of clowns). The idea of two people getting together and beating the shit out of each other for real horrifies a lot of people (there's more criticism of boxing than ever), and a lot of those people are going to cringe even when the violence is simulated. We're sort of in a weird place, where "realism" might actually hurt wrestling more than help, because people who want realism just go and watch the real thing.

Like it or not, the death of kayfabe (and other factors) has changed the landscape so severely, that just going back to do things the way they used to be done wouldn't necessarily lead to a new renaissance where all the old fandom suddenly comes back and wrestling is dominant again. It might just kill it faster. Wrestling needs to evolve (the same way it did when it became carny in the first place - there's a reason why people like the Gold Dust Trio are so important to the history of the industry). But what it becomes may be nothing like what it was - and unless it goes back to old-school territory-era southern wrasslin, Cornette will hate it.

And that's without even getting into the argument that the media landscape as a whole is RADICALLY different today than it was decades ago, and that almost no product or content or industry is as successful as it used to be. Too many options competing for the same-ish number of ideas spreads the audience thinner, and channels, networks, and services. Even if wrestling shows were putting out a product better than ever before in the history of the industry, they still might not be able to top Attitude Era ratings. Because there are always other things to watch, see, or do.

The territory system mostly worked the way it did because most people would never see content or shows from outside their local home region. Today, I can watch shows from the opposite side of the world the same second they're happening. That alone is a huge shift in how people view the product, even aside from the question of whether or not the wrestlers are burly thugs or video-game playing nerds.
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