Professional Wrestling - the Theatre of the Absurd

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 206 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (175 download)

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Book Synopsis Professional Wrestling - the Theatre of the Absurd by : Steve Hall

Download or read book Professional Wrestling - the Theatre of the Absurd written by Steve Hall and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you a fan of old school professional wrestling? Want to know more life in the territories? Then this is the perfect book for you! Professional Wrestling - The Theatre of the Absurd is a superb collection of stories showing a glimpse into the AWA, WWF, Mid-South and Central States Wrestling, If you want to know what it was really like to be a wrestler. Tom "Rocky" Stone, aka Steve Hall has been a member of the wrestling world for decades. He will show you how he began his professional wrestling journey, his career, and his memories from driving the highways of America and so much more... From different wrestlers he's faced to incredible personal anecdotes, this book will give you the ultimate insight into Stone's life and the lives around him. With this book, he hopes to share his experiences inside and outside of the squared circle in what was a circus atmosphere during the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 135113437X
Total Pages : 170 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (511 download)

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Book Synopsis Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage by : Eero Laine

Download or read book Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage written by Eero Laine and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage examines professional wrestling as a century-old, theatrical form that spans from its local places of performance to circulate as a popular, global product. Professional wrestling has all the trappings of sport, but is, at its core, a theatrical event. This book acknowledges that professional wrestling shares many theatrical elements such as plot, character, scenic design, props, and spectacle. By assessing professional wrestling as a neglected but prototypical case study in the global business of theatre, Laine argues that it is an exemplary form of globalizing, commercial theatre. He asks what theatre scholars might learn from pro wrestling and how pro wrestling might contribute to conversations beyond the ring, by considering the laboring bodies of the wrestlers, and analyzing wrestling’s form and content. Of interest to scholars and students of theatre and performance, cultural studies, and sports studies, Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage delimits the edges of wrestling’s theatrical frame, critiques established understandings of corporate theatre, and offers key wrestling concepts as models for future study in other fields.

Performance and Professional Wrestling

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Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1317385071
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (173 download)

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Book Synopsis Performance and Professional Wrestling by : Broderick Chow

Download or read book Performance and Professional Wrestling written by Broderick Chow and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-08-12 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Performance and Professional Wrestling is the first edited volume to consider professional wrestling explicitly from the vantage point of theatre and performance studies. Moving beyond simply noting its performative qualities or reading it via other performance genres, this collection of essays offers a complete critical reassessment of the popular sport. Topics such as the suspension of disbelief, simulation, silence and speech, physical culture, and the performance of pain within the squared circle are explored in relation to professional wrestling, with work by both scholars and practitioners grouped into seven short sections: Audience Circulation Lucha Gender Queerness Bodies Race A significant re-reading of wrestling as a performing art, Performance and Professional Wrestling makes essential reading for scholars and students intrigued by this uniquely theatrical sport.

The Squared Circle

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1592408818
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (924 download)

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Book Synopsis The Squared Circle by : David Shoemaker

Download or read book The Squared Circle written by David Shoemaker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A breakthrough examination of the professional wrestling, its history, its fans, and its wider cultural impact The Squared Circle grows out of David Shoemaker’s writing for Deadspin, where he started the column “Dead Wrestler of the Week” (which boasts more than 1 million page views)—a feature on the many wrestling superstars who died too young because of the abuse they subject their bodies to—and his writing for Grantland, where he covers the pro wrestling world, and its place in the pop culture mainstream. Shoemaker’s sportswriting has since struck a nerve with generations of wrestling fans who—like him—grew up worshipping a sport often derided as “fake” in the wider culture. To them, these professional wrestling superstars are not just heroes but an emotional outlet and the lens through which they learned to see the world. Starting in the early 1900s and exploring the path of pro wrestling in America through the present day, The Squared Circle is the first book to acknowledge both the sport’s broader significance and wrestling fans’ keen intellect and sense of irony. Divided into eras, each section offers a snapshot of the wrestling world, profiles some of the period’s preeminent wrestlers, and the sport’s influence on our broader culture. Through the brawling, bombast, and bloodletting, Shoemaker argues that pro wrestling can teach us about the nature of performance, audience, and, yes, art. Full of unknown history, humor, and self-deprecating reminiscence—but also offering a compelling look at the sport’s rightful place in pop culture—The Squared Circle is the book that legions of wrestling fans have been waiting for. In it, Shoemaker teaches us to look past the spandex and body slams to see an art form that can explain the world.

Play, Performance and Professional Wrestling

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 460 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (412 download)

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Book Synopsis Play, Performance and Professional Wrestling by : Terry McNeill Saunders

Download or read book Play, Performance and Professional Wrestling written by Terry McNeill Saunders and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Legends of Pro Wrestling

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1613218753
Total Pages : 568 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (132 download)

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Book Synopsis Legends of Pro Wrestling by : Tim Hornbaker

Download or read book Legends of Pro Wrestling written by Tim Hornbaker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legends of Pro Wrestling offers the first comprehensive look at the entire world of wrestling. With detailed biographies and never-before-seen statistics of some of the greatest athletes in the sport, you will be able to read about hundreds of wrestlers, dating back to the mid-1800s. As the first of its kind, this centralized reference book offers wrestling enthusiasts a range of information at their fingertips and stands alone as the ultimate wrestling resource. This book offers readers a link between what happened a century ago to what is currently happening today. An older fan of Bruno Sammartino or “The Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers can enjoy this book as much as someone who follows John Cena or The Undertaker today. This collection is a never-ending source of facts, figures, and other entertaining data. Professional wrestling is a world of accomplishment, legacy, and, most importantly, fate. Through injuries, sickness, and family tribulations, many wrestlers have given everything they have to give in the ring, and true fans of the sport love every single second of it. No matter your age, if you’re a fan of professional wrestling, Legends of Pro Wrestling is the book for you to own and cherish. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. In addition to books on popular team sports, we also publish books for a wide variety of athletes and sports enthusiasts, including books on running, cycling, horseback riding, swimming, tennis, martial arts, golf, camping, hiking, aviation, boating, and so much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Professional Wrestling

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Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496826604
Total Pages : 187 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Professional Wrestling by : Sharon Mazer

Download or read book Professional Wrestling written by Sharon Mazer and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2020-01-27 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professional wrestling is one of the most popular performance practices in the United States and around the world, drawing millions of spectators to live events and televised broadcasts. The displays of violence, simulated and actual, may be the obvious appeal, but that is just the beginning. Fans debate performance choices with as much energy as they argue about their favorite wrestlers. The ongoing scenarios and presentations of manly and not-so-manly characters—from the flamboyantly feminine to the hypermasculine—simultaneously celebrate and critique, parody and affirm the American dream and the masculine ideal. Sharon Mazer looks at the world of professional wrestling from a fan’s-eye-view high in the stands and from ringside in the wrestlers’ gym. She investigates how performances are constructed and sold to spectators, both on a local level and in the “big leagues” of the WWF/E. She shares a close-up view of a group of wrestlers as they work out, get their faces pushed to the mat as part of their initiation into the fraternity of the ring, and dream of stardom. In later chapters, Mazer explores professional wrestling’s carnivalesque presentation of masculinities ranging from the cute to the brute, as well as the way in which the performances of women wrestlers often enter into the realm of pornographic. Finally, she explores the question of the “real” and the “fake” as the fans themselves confront it. First published in 1998, this new edition of Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle both preserves the original’s snapshot of the wrestling scene of the 1980s and 1990s and features an up-to-date perspective on the current state of play.

Theater in a Squared Circle

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 470 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Theater in a Squared Circle by : Jeff Archer

Download or read book Theater in a Squared Circle written by Jeff Archer and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tries to explain the attraction of professional wrestling, offers profiles of notable wrestlers, and describes modern wrestling fans.

The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame

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Publisher : ECW Press
ISBN 13 : 177305421X
Total Pages : 406 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame by : Greg Oliver

Download or read book The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame written by Greg Oliver and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legendary storytellers worthy of a spot in the pro wrestling hall of fame You can’t escape pro wrestling today, even if you want to. Its stars are ubiquitous in movies, TV shows, product endorsements, swag, and social media to the point that they are as much celebrities as they are athletes. Pro wrestling has morphed from the fringes of acceptability to a global $1 billion industry that plays an everyday role in 21st-century pop culture. In this latest addition to the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame series, Greg Oliver and Steven Johnson explain how the sport’s unique take on storytelling has fueled its remarkable expansion. Hundreds of interviews and original accounts inform this exploration of the imaginative ways in which wrestlers and promoters have used everything from monkeys to murderers to put butts in seats and eyes on screens. From the New York City Bowery in the 1890s to a North Carolina backyard in 2017, readers will encounter all manner of scoundrels, do-gooders, scribes, and alligators in this highly readable, heavily researched book that inspires a new appreciation for the fine (and sometimes not-so-fine) art of storytelling.

Professional Wrestling And/as Theatre

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (961 download)

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Book Synopsis Professional Wrestling And/as Theatre by : Eero Laine

Download or read book Professional Wrestling And/as Theatre written by Eero Laine and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling

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Publisher : Ten Speed Graphic
ISBN 13 : 0399580492
Total Pages : 185 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis The Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling by : Aubrey Sitterson

Download or read book The Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling written by Aubrey Sitterson and published by Ten Speed Graphic. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the host of the critically acclaimed pro wrestling podcast Straight Shoot, this graphic novel history of wrestling features the key grapplers, matches, and promotions that shaped this beloved sport and form of entertainment. As a pop culture phenomenon, professional wrestling--with its heroic babyfaces and villainous heels performing suplexes and powerbombs in pursuit of championship gold--has conquered audiences in the United States and around the world. Now, writer/podcaster Aubrey Sitterson and illustrator Chris Moreno form a graphic novel tag team to present wrestling's complete illustrated history. Featuring legendary wrestlers like Bruno Sammartino, Hulk Hogan, and The Rock, and modern-day favorites like John Cena, Kenny Omega, and Sasha Banks, the book covers wrestling's progress from the carnival days of the Gold Dust Trio to the dominance of the WWF/WWE to today's diverse independent wrestling scene, and it spotlights wrestling's reach into Mexico/Puerto Rico (lucha libre), the U.K. (all-in), and Japan (puroresu).

Ringside

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313026785
Total Pages : 219 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Ringside by : Scott Beekman

Download or read book Ringside written by Scott Beekman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-06-30 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its status as one of the oldest and most enduringly popular sports in history, wrestling has been pushed to the background of the current American sports scene. Most people today would have a hard time even considering wrestling (with some of its modern theatrics) in the same terms as track and field or boxing. But until the 1920s, wrestling stood as a legitimate professional sport in this country, and a widely practiced amateur one as well. Its past respectability may not have endured, but the advent of cable television in the 1980s offered the sport a renewed opportunity to play a determining role in American popular culture. This opportunity was not wasted, and wrestlers now assume places in politics and film at the highest levels. Ringside, the first work to fully examine the history of professional wrestling in this country, provides an illuminating and colorful account of all of the various athletes, entertainers, businessmen, and national outlooks that have determined wrestling's erratic route through American history. This chronological work begins with a brief account of wrestling's global history, and then proceeds to investigate the sport's growth as a specifically American institution. Wrestling has continued to survive in the face of technological developments, scandals, public ridicule, and a lack of centralized control, and today this supremely adaptable entertainment form represents, in sum, an international industry capable of attracting enormous television and pay-per-view audiences, along with massive amounts of advertising and merchandizing revenue. Ringside focuses on the business of wrestling as well as on the performers and their in-ring antics, and offers readers a fully nuanced examination of the development of professional wrestling in America.

Slaphappy

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Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062029029
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Slaphappy by : Thomas Hackett

Download or read book Slaphappy written by Thomas Hackett and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-11-30 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slaphappy is reporter Thomas Hackett's penetrating look at the world of professional wrestling, for those who love the spectacle and for the sport's skeptics and the uninitiated. Through interviews with wrestlers, promoters, and fans, Hackett explores the full range of issues that swirl around wrestling culture -- fame, masculinity, violence, aggression, performance, and play. Among the lessons of professional wrestling is that deceit is a fundamental fact of American life. And yet, paradoxically, the one thing wrestling isn't is dishonest. Although wrestlers play pretend, wrestling itself doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is -- fantastically absurd, a very American kind of madness. Celebrity-obsessed, pathologically narcissistic, murderously competitive, it both epitomizes and parodies the delusional egoism at the heart of the culture. More than that, wrestling provides its fans and performers a medium for thinking about "getting over" in America today. This spectacle of excess may be the apotheosis of American imbecility, but it is also defiant, hopeful, liberating, and unifying -- a throwback to the raucous pleasures of early theater. Fans aren't detached connoisseurs, looking satirically down on life, concealing their anxieties in the cold comforts of irony. They are total participants in a carnival of their own making, shouting epithets, throwing chairs, expatiating their worries in a crowd's triumphant foolishness. It is, Slaphappy concludes, all the stuff of human culture. Where does fantasy end and reality begin? Where does the performance stop and life take over? Writing with affection and discernment, Hackett gets deep into the culture, discovering that the make-believe competition of wrestling is indeed "real" for millions of young men -- real in the sense that something real and important is at stake: their worth as men.

Inside Out

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780974554501
Total Pages : 391 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (545 download)

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Book Synopsis Inside Out by : Ole Anderson

Download or read book Inside Out written by Ole Anderson and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Wrestlecrap

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Publisher : ECW Press
ISBN 13 : 1554905443
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (549 download)

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Book Synopsis Wrestlecrap by : Randy Baer

Download or read book Wrestlecrap written by Randy Baer and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WrestleCrap: The Very Worst of Professional Wrestling examines some of the ridiculously horrible characters and storylines that pro wrestling promoters have subjected their fans to over the past twenty years. Why would any sane person think that having two grown men fight over a turkey was actually a reasonable idea' Was George Ringo, the Wrestling Beatle, really the best gimmick that a major promotional organization could come up with' And who would charge fans to watch a wrestler named the Gobbeldy Gooker emerge from an egg' In an attempt to answer such questions and figure out just what the promoters were thinking, authors Randy Baer and R.D. Reynolds go beyond what wrestling fans saw on the screen and delve into the mindset of those in the production booth. In some instances, the motivations driving the spectacle prove even more laughable than what was actually seen in the ring. Covering such entertainment catastrophes as an evil one-eyed midget and a wrestler from the mystical land of Oz, not to mention the utterly comprehensible Turkey-on-a-Pole match (a gimmick which AWA fans might recall), WrestleCrap is hysterically merciless in its evaluation of such organizations as the WCW and the WWF. This retrospective look at the wrestling world's misguided attempts to attract viewers will leave wrestling fans and critics alike in stitches.

Howard Barker's Theatre: Wrestling with Catastrophe

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1408184257
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (81 download)

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Book Synopsis Howard Barker's Theatre: Wrestling with Catastrophe by : James Reynolds

Download or read book Howard Barker's Theatre: Wrestling with Catastrophe written by James Reynolds and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Howard Barker and The Wrestling School have been seen as marginal to the major concerns of British theatre, problematic in their staging and challenging in the ideas they explore. Yet Barker's writing career spans six decades, he is the only living writer to have been accorded an entire season with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and The Wrestling School produces theatre of such a striking quality that it earned continuous Arts Council funding for nearly 20 years. Wrestling with Catastrophe challenges existing ways of reading Barker's theatre practice and plays and provides new ways into his work. It brings together conversations with theatre makers from in and outside The Wrestling School, with first-hand accounts of the company's practice, and a selection of critical readings. The book's combining of testimony from key Wrestling School practitioners with alternative practical perspectives, and with analysis by both established and emerging scholars, ensures that a spectrum of understanding emerges that is rich in both breadth and depth. In its consideration of the full range of Barker's aesthetic concerns - including text, direction, design, acting, narrative form, poetry, appropriation, painting, photography, electronic media, technology, puppetry, and theatre space - the volume makes a radical re-evaluation of Barker's theatre possible.

Steel Chair to the Head

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Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780822386827
Total Pages : 379 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (868 download)

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Book Synopsis Steel Chair to the Head by : Nicholas Sammond

Download or read book Steel Chair to the Head written by Nicholas Sammond and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-13 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The antagonists—oiled, shaved, pierced, and tattooed; the glaring lights; the pounding music; the shouting crowd: professional wrestling is at once spectacle, sport, and business. Steel Chair to the Head provides a multifaceted look at the popular phenomenon of pro wrestling. The contributors combine critical rigor with a deep appreciation of wrestling as a unique cultural form, the latest in a long line of popular performance genres. They examine wrestling as it happens in the ring, is experienced in the stands, is portrayed on television, and is discussed in online chat rooms. In the process, they reveal wrestling as an expression of the contradictions and struggles that shape American culture. The essayists include scholars in anthropology, psychology, film studies, communication studies, and sociology, one of whom used to wrestle professionally. Classic studies of wrestling by Roland Barthes, Carlos Monsiváis, Sharon Mazer, and Henry Jenkins appear alongside original essays. Whether exploring how pro wrestling inflects race, masculinity, and ideas of reality and authenticity; how female fans express their enthusiasm for male wrestlers; or how lucha libre provides insights into Mexican social and political life, Steel Chair to the Head gives due respect to pro wrestling by treating it with the same thorough attention usually reserved for more conventional forms of cultural expression. Contributors. Roland Barthes, Douglas L. Battema, Susan Clerc, Laurence de Garis, Henry Jenkins III, Henry Jenkins IV, Heather Levi, Sharon Mazer, Carlos Monsiváis, Lucia Rahilly, Catherine Salmon, Nicholas Sammond, Phillip Serrat, Philip Sewell