Fifty Million Viewers Can’t Be Wrong: Professional Wrestling, Sports-Entertainment, and Mimesis

摘要: While largely discounted as a genuine sport by most, professional wrestling has evolved from minor source of “entertainment” to culturally powerful multi-media complex. Attracting audiences in abundance fifty million viewers on weekly basis, become the number one rated “sports-entertainment” program television. In doing so, broadcasts challenge long-standing cultural constructions North America, while hyperbolising and unapologetically exploiting that which is highly entertaining about sports contests. Specifically, wrestling's mandate excite via contrived hyper-violent athletic competition. Drawing Elias' (1978, 1983, 1994, 1996) other process-sociologists' (Dunning, 1999; Maguire, Sheard, 1999) understanding mimesis, it argued here derives bulk its appeal ways staged violence presented both “sporting” “exciting” audiences.