Back in grade school, I would often find myself rolling in the football field like a wild pig in heat; this was in the evening (and not in the act of copulating), hours after dismissal time. Instead of agonizingly waiting for my ride home and making small-insect talk with the cockroaches on duty, I would set my books, balls and bag aside, take off my school uniform and don an invisible wrestling attire. It just had to be invisible: poor security guard shouldn’t be subjected to a mixed-media fabric sculpture with a blaring palette of gold, magenta and aqua, plus the obligatory silver lining.
To read between the lines of an awkward teenager’s inner monologue is like witnessing an Ennis del Mar vs. Jack Twist wrestling bout. Just how does one deconstruct and psychoanalayze grunts and purrs, especially of the hay variety? This would be extremely trying even for both Derrida and Lacan, that is if they were still alive and wrestling.
Still garbed once a year in my spandex sumo attire, I wait for the bell to ring, after which I would walk towards the steel cage and start grappling with my demons.
A day after the declaration of 1017, my nephew Rovi, Roland Barthes and I sat in the front row of the Araneta Coliseum for another kind of death match. No creaking tanks, weeping rosaries and attention-seeking politicians; just pure, unadulterated fun and philosophical insight.
Rovi was my secret WWE agent and Roland played the ever-reliable-back-from-the-dead literary critic. I sat between them, and studied the players’ gorgeous threads and cheesy antics. On my left, Rovi escorts me through the roster of colorful "macho" characters: Val Venis, Mick Foley, Ric Flair, Big Show, the Game, Triple H, Rob Van Dam, Shelton Benjamin, Chris Masters, John Cena, and two of my current favorites, Viscera and Carlito. Viscera looks really scary – he reminds me of Jaws in
Moonraker, if he were the offspring of Ike Lozada and Oprah Winfrey. Carlito’s Mexican accent and bad boy demeanor, meanwhile, is so fake it’s almost endearing.
My favorite Carlito line: "I hate your country. The beaches are horrible. The food is awful. Long pause. But the women, long pause again, are beautiful!" His funny twang confuses "beautiful" with "beatify." Bless his
buko tree hair and coconut.
Speaking of beautiful women, I remember female wrestler-birthday celebrant Maria from some reality TV show like
Joe Millionaire or
Average Joe, proving yet again that truth TV is not far off from the scripted theatrics of "professional" wrestling.
Not to be outdone by a sophomore Interdisciplinary Studies student, Barthes starts a long and exhilarating diatribe on the mythological aspects of wrestling:
There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque. Of course, there exists a false wrestling, in which the participants unnecessarily go to great lengths to make a show of a fair fight; this is of no interest. True wrestling, wrongly called amateur wrestling, is performed in second-rate halls, where the public spontaneously attunes itself to the spectacular nature of the contest, like the audience at a suburban cinema. Then these same people wax indignant because wrestling is a stage-managed sport (which ought, by the way, to mitigate its ignominy). The public is completely uninterested in knowing whether the contest is rigged or not, and rightly so; it abandons itself to the primary virtue of the spectacle, which is to abolish all motives and all consequences: what matters is not what it thinks but what it sees.
Such visual spectacle and role play in wrestling was humorously explored by Mexican artist Carlos Amorales in his thrilling performance
Amorales v Amorales at the Tate Modern in London. Working with professional Mexican wrestlers, and utilizing masks and costumes designed by the artist himself, Amorales obviously displayed his fascination with fantasy play, ritualized violence and identity swap through masquerade and performance. But no ritual was more mesmerizing for me that night than the audience’s. The usually cool-and-calm Brits were actually jumping, whistling and cheering; I mean this is a citizenry known for being more adept in booing and cursing really, so for someone so accustomed to quasi-folk wrestling like "Dumog" and "Sapakan sa Likod ng Gym," the greater spectacle was the unexpected audience participation and not so much the performance art inside the museum. Those wrestling novices obviously haven’t been to Tondo or The Fort. Or the London Forum, where my friend Mark and I went to see "backyard wrestling" via Cameron Jamie’s video and live soundtrack from the legendary conceptual rock band The Melvins. In his piece
BB(1998-2000), Jamie documents suburban LA teens creating their own backyard wrestling events. Kids jump, fly, slam and hit each other with chairs and ladders. I don’t care much whether they were playing for fun or doing it for real (as long as it wasn’t for the camera), it’s that in-betweenness I find enigmatic and yet it seems to manifest clearly what the artist refers to as "a purgatory state of being."
(Could
BB stand for backyard bareback or barenaked brokeback ?)
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Infernal possession of the body has its rewards when faced with ruthless people. F*** purgatory. Bloody Inferno is necessary in unfair situations. Just study John Cena, Mick Foley and Eugene (the one with the teddy bear): these big guys-with-soft hearts eventually defeat their on-stage oppressors after a barrage of operatic ordeals. So despite its over-the-top performance and canny staging, wrestling actually provides us with real, moral beauty: justice. For a wrestling fan like myself, and to thousands of others who feel they have been wronged by the assholes of society, nothing is better than the furious revenge of a betrayed fighter who passionately throws himself not at a triumphant enemy but at that painful concept called "foul play," relentlessly smashing through the barriers of injustice, hoping that even for a few seconds – by way of a three-count pinfall on
your competitor – the wrestler in you can come out on top, and life may possibly be a reversal of misfortune.
WAKE-UP CALL: Please come to a summer bbq and garage sale that I am organizing on April 1, Saturday from 4 to 8 p.m. @ Future Prospects, Cubao Shoe Expo. Sellers include Vogue bag lady Bea Valdes, Club Dredd manager Patrick Reidenbach, fashion designer Kate Torralba, painter Louie Cordero, columnist Erwin Romulo, filmmaker Khavn de la Cruz, and a host of other creative types. Browse through some very unique items, purchase bargains, or simply sit down, read a book and enjoy your ice candy!
