Because the WWE is a simulated sport all competitors who face each other in the ring for a promotion are actually close collaborators who must form a closed system sealed against outsiders. True competition, true sport, is defined by the genuine risk of failure from one of the participants, somebody has got to go down. Matches in real wrestling have a high risk of injury, and most importantly are without grand spectacle and excruciatingly boring to spectators who are not experts or competitors themselves. This apparent paradox highlights the close relationship between the two risks which define the category of activity which wrestling shares with other human spheres. So in WWE there is spectacular “competition” within an orthodoxy, previously agreed upon boundaries and limits, but all parties prosper because as agreed there is no real risk. Without a connection to reality, eventually the layered storylines and falsehoods become so complex and absurd that the unthinkable final form of the WWE is achieved when it at last shifts the responsibility for deception from the performers into the willing minds of the audience. Politics is professional wrestling. We want to be fooled.
The industry term for the rules of a production is “Kayfabe” and there is a point when even genuine peril, or acts of individual idealism can be folded back into the performance, as Søren suggests:
“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”
Soren Kierkegaard
You know who broke Kayfabe? Sinead O’Connor.
In 1992 the talented and then 26 year old Sinéad O’Connor was performing at Madison Square Garden. She was invited by Kris Kristofferson and the crowd, who had come to see him, was raucously booing her because the previous week she had torn up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in protest of the child abuse cover up. She was right. It was true. It ruined her career. in the recording you can hear Kristofferson saying to her “Don’t let the bastards get you down” and in 2009 he would pay tribute to her again by singing the lyrics “Some candles flicker, and some candles fade, and some burn as true as my sister Sinéad.”
Matthew Cameron 
Because the WWE is a simulated sport all competitors who face each other in the ring for a promotion are actually close collaborators who must form a closed system sealed against outsiders. True competition, true sport, is defined by the genuine risk of failure from one of the participants, somebody has got to go down. Matches in real wrestling have a high risk of injury, and most importantly are without grand spectacle and excruciatingly boring to spectators who are not experts or competitors themselves. This apparent paradox highlights the close relationship between the two risks which define the category of activity which wrestling shares with other human spheres. So in WWE there is spectacular “competition” within an orthodoxy, previously agreed upon boundaries and limits, but all parties prosper because as agreed there is no real risk. Without a connection to reality, eventually the layered storylines and falsehoods become so complex and absurd that the unthinkable final form of the WWE is achieved when it at last shifts the responsibility for deception from the performers into the willing minds of the audience. Politics is professional wrestling. We want to be fooled.
The industry term for the rules of a production is “Kayfabe” and there is a point when even genuine peril, or acts of individual idealism can be folded back into the performance, as Søren suggests:
“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”
You know who broke Kayfabe? Sinead O’Connor.
In 1992 the talented and then 26 year old Sinéad O’Connor was performing at Madison Square Garden. She was invited by Kris Kristofferson and the crowd, who had come to see him, was raucously booing her because the previous week she had torn up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in protest of the child abuse cover up. She was right. It was true. It ruined her career. in the recording you can hear Kristofferson saying to her “Don’t let the bastards get you down” and in 2009 he would pay tribute to her again by singing the lyrics “Some candles flicker, and some candles fade, and some burn as true as my sister Sinéad.”
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