<p>Barbeque Man Unleashed consists of two chapters. Chapter 1 is an original musical score, Barbeque Man Unleashed: The Greatest Professional Wrestling Work Of All Time. Chapter 2 is an article entitled "Prelude To a Fist" concerning the subject of musical depictions of morality in the practice of professional wrestling entrance themes.</p> / Dissertation

This project explores luchador Rey Mysterio’s cultural figure and the way it is formed institutionally via ringside commentary and through the WWE’s approach to its media market; through his dialogue and performance of body; as well as the myriad ways his performance is interpreted by U.S. fans and around the world. Through the content analysis of four primary WWE texts, this thesis works to better understand how tropes of geography, space, and body interact with underlying (and sometimes very overt) themes of race, U.S. racial hierarchy, ethnicity, and nation presented via the spectacular theater of WWE performance. Important over-arching questions that this project strives to explicate upon focus on how embodiment and racial difference are presented in the U.S. historically and how Mexican American diaspora are represented through U.S. professional wrestling. / text

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This thesis explores professional wrestling as a cultural medium, a form of theater/soap opera that provides psychological and sociological releases for its viewing audience. Research methodology includes participant-observation and content analysis. Findings suggest that professional wrestling provides various types of emotional outlets for its viewing audience by allowing the participants to form social groups that include specific cultural elements as well as social support. Gender differences, violence in society, social groups, and crossing racial and income barriers are also examined.

This dissertation project provides a methodological contribution to the field of critical rhetoric by positioning narrative theory as a powerful yet underutilized tool for examining the power dynamic between producer and consumer in a participatory media context. Drawing on theories of author and audience from rhetorical narratology, this study shows how producers of media texts provide rhetorical cues to audiences that allow them to reassert their power in the form of creative authority vis-à-vis consumers. The genre of professional wrestling serves as an ideal text for examining such power dynamics, as WWE has adapted to changing fan participatory behaviors throughout its sixty-year history. Focusing on pivotal moments in which WWE altered its narrative address to its audience in order to reassert its control over the production process, this study demonstrates the utility of narrative theory for understanding how creative authority shows power at work in media texts. Further, this study situates rhetorical narratology in conversation with theories of rhetorical persona, scholarship on subcultures, and the discursive construction of the “people.” In so doing, I show how a nuanced understanding of author and audience augments critical rhetorical scholarship’s focus on power. Finally, by applying narrative theory as a method for both close textual analysis of single texts as well as a tool for piecing together a critical text from narrative fragments, I also address questions of the role of the text in rhetorical criticism and the role of authorship in an era when audiences exert influence on media texts as they are produced.

This analysis of the professional wrestling genre attempts to understand the complex reading practices employed by wrestling’s fan community. I argue that wrestling fans consume these texts in the context of both the official narratives of media producers and the meta-narratives that exist independently of the official texts. In addition, I argue that wrestling fans display characteristics normally reserved for traditional media producers, collaborating with those producers over the direction of the official narratives. This process of collaboration is indicative of the blurring of the boundaries between textual producers and consumers and necessitates a theoretical conception of the audience that accounts for these unique fan practices. I have called this audience conception the productive audience model.

The aim of this thesis is to examine representations of masculinity in the activities of a local professional wrestling promotion. After briefly outlining what professional wrestling is, the study draws on a body on feminist and intersectional theory which critiques the notion of gender as a binary and essential category. The material comprises 10 recorded shows and oth- er material published on Sthlm Wrestling’s website between 2010 and 2013, and is analyzed using a qualitative methodology derived from cultural studies. The thesis argues that there are many different types of masculinities in the narrative, which are constructed in relation to different power hierarchies such as ethnicity, class, sex and sexuality. The few female wrestlers are marginalized, but not sexualized as in the U.S. context. The heels (rule-breakers) are found on the borders of social and cultural categories, and there is an explicit SM-narrative present.

Through a combination of stringent and deceptive corporate control of sources, as well as an academic blind spot on certain low-brow subcultures, there has been a lack of serious study of the various regional professional wrestling traditions that crossed the United States until the end of the 1980s. An in-depth examination of a wide range of books, newsletters, and interviews shows a rich history with a deep economic, social, and creative diversity that has been largely ignored as the industry has moved towards monopolization under Vincent Kennedy McMahon. The various regions are divided into three groups: those that closed on their own, those that fell in competition with McMahon, and those that survived into the era of national corporate pro wrestling. This organization challenges the narrative that regional pro wrestling came to an end solely due to the business power of McMahon. The first group looks at Northern California, Southern California, Georgia, and North Texas. The second group examines the independent wrestling companies Mid-South Wrestling and the American Wrestling Association, and their attempts to compete with McMahon on a national level. The group also explores how the intense local fan bases in Portland and Memphis buoyed the local pro wrestling promotions for a time from outside competition from McMahon. The third group contains Jim Crockett Productions and the World Wide Wrestling Federation. These two organizations eventually became the two major corporate wrestling entities World Championship Wrestling and the World Wrestling Federation, respectively. A glossary of terms is included.

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