Kayfabe Talk and Letters From an American
A slightly serious, slightly fun literary analysis
I am a subscriber to many different authors here on Substack. Some of them are fully unknown to all but their families, friends, and a handful of subscribers. Writers like me, in other words. A select few are multiples or exponential levels of fame higher than the rest of us, due to fame from legacy publishing or online work.
Among this latter group is
, the Boston College history professor who with her Letters from an American might be one of the more visible platforms currently on Substack. I believe she, with her historical perspective and knowledge, is one of the more incisive political commentators out there.You will note there is little to no political content here on The Writing Life With Jason Liegois. For my own personal reasons, I avoid discussing politics on this platform. In part, it’s because I consider doing it to be counterproductive to me, and I want to concentrate on my fiction and nonfiction writing here.
However, I was fascinated this Boxing Day 2024 when, in between my intense nearly day-long session of watching English Premier League football, I happened to catch that day’s edition of Letters from an American.
What intrigued me about the article was the idea of using the concept of kayfabe to explain the actions and words of the incoming president. As a lifelong fan of pro wrestling, who has begun work on a fiction series based in this world, it caught my attention. With this in mind, I decided to analyze the article regarding Professor Richardson’s understanding of the term and the culture of puroresu, as the Japanese people call it.
My inital impression was Richardson has a pretty solid understanding of kayfabe, and her definition of it as “the shared agreement among audience and actors that they would pretend the carefully constructed script and act were real” is on point.
She referred to a 26 February 2023 guest opinion piece in the New York Times by journalist Abraham Josephine Riesman, which earlier had connected this idea of the use of kayfabe in the actions of both Trump and the Republican Party in general. In this previous article, Riesman defined how kayfabe was treated in the early years of the art form from the early 20th century to the 1980’s, and how it also mirrored American politics of previous years:
The old-school kayfabe system — an oligarchy controlled by promotion-owners who acted as puppet-masters, giving wrestlers their marching orders about whom they had to pretend to be furious at for the next show — already had aspects that deeply resembled politics. Elected officials, too, pretend to be foes while actually being drinking buddies. Candidates sometimes tell rich backers one thing, and the public another. Election statements often sound ridiculous to those not caught up in the heat of the campaign.
Abraham Josephine Riesman, “The Best Way to Explain the G.O.P. Is Found in the W.W.E.”
Both women (Riesman and Richardson) noted how it was World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon, who has had decades-long personal and professional ties to Trump, who finally revealed the truth about the prearranged nature of professional wrestling and kayfabe to government officials and the courts to (successfully) reclassify wrestling as an entertainment enterprise so as to reduce the company’s overhead costs and regulations.
To regain fan interest in the sport, wrestling promoters and McMahon’s WWE began to mix the made-up wrestling world with the real lives and issues of the performers, a blend of fact and fiction fans eagerly became invested in and tried to decipher. Riesman came up with the term “neokayfabe” to describe this phenomenon, which can be easily seen in the careers of numerous wrestlers of the past 40 years, including (but not exclusively) Randy Savage, Scott Hall, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, CM Punk, Jon Moxley, Eddie Kingston, Charlotte Flair, and Becky Lynch.
Richardson went on to make the connection between Trump’s recent insinuations that the countries of Panama, Canada, and Greenland should come under American control and this concept of neokayfabe, noting the German-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt’s comments that “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”
I think Richardson did an excellent job of contextualizing the use of kayfabe in our current political discourse, and “neokayfabe” might just be my favorite word for this year. However, while she did, at least by implication, start to question how Trump’s neokayfabe statements and actions might disrupt international relations, I was surprised she did not explore such implications even further from a professional wrestling standpoint.
A few things came to mind to me:
If Trump is the neokayfabe booker of the MAGA culture, this would imply the believers in MAGA would be the marks. What starts to happen when these “marks” see contradictions in, say, Trump’s statements regarding reducing immigration and yet approving increasing the H1-B visa system for foreign workers? When do they start working themselves into a shoot? When does Trump start building up go-away heat with his followers1?
What is the proper response of foreign leaders to Trump’s neokayfabe? Do they start to no-sell his promos? Or do they go down the shoot path and respond to his Sports Entertainment philosophy with Antonio Inoki’s strong style? Or do they need the Undertaker and a Wrestler’s Court to settle affairs?
What is next for Trump? He’s obviously the main eventer for the Republican Party, but even his supporters have to see that he’s washed, gassed out for everyone to see. He’s Verne Gagne and Eddie Graham in the 1980’s, a clever practitioner who’s on the way out and into retirement. Who’s going to take his place as the ace on the card? The procession of wannabes who camped out in my state early this year were nowhere close to be like the Von Erich boys taking over for their daddy Fritz Von Erich down in Texas2. They weren’t even like Greg Gagne and Mike Graham, successors with skill but none of the charisma of their fathers. Donald Jr. and Eric wish they could be as big of a draw as Greg Gagne. Is Trump going to end up in a nursing home, overcome with senility, mindlessly bodyslamming fellow residents because he no longer has control over his own mind3?
Only time will tell, I guess.
You’re going to have to look all this up on your own; otherwise we’ll be here all night. Just let me have fun with the words, right?
And they had their own problems.
Tragically, this actually happened to Verne Gagne at the end of his life.
Not being a fan of wrestling and having no idea of what kayfabe is, let alone neokayfabe, I nonetheless got the gist of this. I can see further research is necessary to satisfy my curiosity so thanks for the links! Heading down the rabbit hole as I switch batches of cookies in and out of the oven.