Bored

Macho Man Randy Savage, R.I.P.

Macho Man Randy Savage, 15/11/52 – 20/05/11.

I was at work when one of my fellow wage slaves informed me of Macho Man Randy Savage’s death. He broke the news rather off-handedly; a younger child-man than myself, it’s likely that he has only a vague recollection of Macho Man’s reign in professional wrestling. Growing up, my older cousins gave me access to a gold mine of early Wrestlemanias on VHS. Randy Savage was one of those figures from my childhood who undoubtedly had an effect on the construction of my psyche, along with a plethora of other campy, brightly costumed, muscle bound characters. His passing made me consider this formative influence, and wonder whether wrestling stars are good role models; does this arena of violence and hyper-masculinity, watched by a live audience of jeering hillbillies, really make good children’s television? I was lucky, in that I had other, much more wholesome cultural sustenance to counteract the fast food of WWF; videogames, for example, and Star Wars.  But what about other, less fortunate children, with less scrupulous and culturally sophisticated parents than my own?

I’ve come to the controversial conclusion that wrestling was indeed a good influence. Apart from the empirical evidence at hand (i.e. I turned out to be an extremely successful, well adjusted and modest young man), it has always been clear to me that wrestling’s muscular, hyper masculine, orange tanned übermensch are not meant to be taken seriously; in fact, their antics are so over the top that a person of at least average intelligence will see them as positive figures of self expression, rather than a corrosive symbol of male patriarchy. I remember watching wrestling once at a friend’s house; he was lucky enough to have Sky television. His father came and asked us what we were doing. When we said “Watching wrestling”, his reaction was essentially “Isn’t it a bit strange to be watching sweaty men in small pants, grappling?” If this rich man, a representative of “straight” (I mean that primarily in the sixties counter-culture sense) society, feels the need to point out the homo-erotic subtext in wrestling to his eight year old son and his friends, then surely wrestling is positive, if perhaps subversive, viewing? It says “It’s O.K. to dress up in funny costumes. It’s O.K. to wrestle other men while wearing very little clothes. You should be excited and amused by the muscles and exaggerated bravado of Hulk Hogan or Macho Man.” For a young boy growing up in emotionally repressive Scotland, this amounted to an affirmation of your right to a different sexuality if you happened to be gay, and if you were straight, you could be comfortable with your sexuality and still show off your leopard skin pants collection. Unlike the fascistic antics of superheroes like Batman or Superman, these wrestlers were just happy to be themselves, and weren’t trying to reign down their own form of justice on society. In losing Macho Man, the world has not just lost a great wrestler and part time rapper, but a true exponent of freedom of expression.