A cultural observation

I start with a confession; at times in my life I have watched quite a bit of
professional wrestling. I suppose we all have our "guilty pleasures" -- there
was something about the athleticism (fake though most of it may be) and
morality plays that appealed to me. I have watched less in recent years, perhaps
maturity on my part and perhaps reaction to its sinking to lower levels of
crudeness.

Anyway, there is a long history of villians being cast to reflect the current
targets of ill will for the U.S. public. During the Cold War, there were
Russian villians. Around the time of the OPEC oil embargo, one started to see
Arab caricatures (the Iron Sheikh, a Sultan or two). When apartheid was in the
news in the 80s, a prominent villian was "Colonel deBeers, the mercenary from
South Africa" who portrayed not-quite-concealed racism. Another villian was
called "IRS" (apologies to non-US readers who may not get that reference). I
think you get the idea; they pick identities that will get visceral negative
reactions from their target audience.

While flipping through channels the other day, I noticed that the current
prominent confederation of wrestling villians is going by the name "Evolution".
Make of that what you will.

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Dr. Allan H. Harvey, Boulder, Colorado | SteamDoc@aol.com
"Any opinions expressed here are mine, and should not be
 attributed to my employer, my wife, or my cats"
Received on Wed Jul 21 00:02:19 2004