Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: A Brief and Unnecessary Defense of Professional Wrestling / Nicholas Sammond 1
The World of Wrestling / Roland Barthes 23
"Never Trust a Snake": WWF Wrestling as Masculine Melodrama / Henry Jenkins III 33
"Real Wrestling"/ "Real" Life / Sharon Mazer 67
The Hour of the Mask as Protagonist: El Santo versus the Skeptics on the Subject of Myth / Carlos Monsivais 88
The Mask of the Luchador: Wrestling, Politics, and Identity in Mexico / Heather Levi 96
Squaring the Family Circle: WWF Smackdown Assaults the Social Body / Nicholas Sammond 132
"Ladies Love Wrestling, Too": Female Wrestling Fans Online / Catherine Salmon and Susan Clerc 167
The "Logic" of Professional Wrestling / Laurence De Garis 192
Is RAW War? Professional Wrestling as Popular S/M Narrative / Lucia Rahilly 213
Not Quite Heroes: Race, Masculinity, and Latino Professional Wrestlers / Phillip Serrato 232
Trading in Masculinity: Muscles, Money and Market Discourse in the WWF / Douglas Battema and Philip Sewell 260
Afterword, Part II: Growing up and Growing More Risqué / Henry Jenkins IV 317
Glossary 343
Contributors 345
Index 347

Promotional Information

The People's collection of cultural studies essays on wrestling.

About the Author

Nicholas Sammond is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Babes in Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Making of the American Child, 1930–1960, also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

"Steel Chair To the Head is a truly fascinating look at the sport we love from a couple of steps back..." Slam! Sports "The mat is the place where sport and entertainment smack down. This excellent collection of greatest hits and latest memories of wresting teases out the contradictions of this infinitely frustrating, excessive spectacle of domination and parody." Toby Miller, author of Sportsex "Steel Chair to the Head is an exceptionally smart and well-crafted collection that will be a valuable resource for popular culture scholars of all stripes. From start to finish, there's not a weak essay in the book. One of the bet anthologies - on popular culture or anything else - that I've read in a long time." Gilbert B. Rodman, author of Elvis after Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend "Why do millions of pro wrestling fans spend their Saturday nights watching well-oiled, muscled and costumed men performing in a well-rehearsed stage play in which the winner is decided days earlier? What attracts devotees to this sport? Editor Sammond and a host of academics answer these and many other questions, explaining what they think really goes on inside and outside that ring..."--Publishers Weekly "Steel Chair's contributors perform a good-faith service in rescuing this unfairly, if understandably, maligned 'sports-entertainment' from the 'garbage' realm of 'pornography propaganda'..."--Andrew Hultkrans, Bookforum "Steel Chair To the Head is a truly fascinating look at the sport we love from a couple of steps back... There's no book out there quite as a broad-ranging as Steel Chair To the Head."--Greg Oliver, Slam! Sports "In the end, Steel Chair to the Head succeeds in showing that pro wrestling is one of the more brutally honest cultural mirrors in our midst, a relationship more akin to symbiosis than parasitism: a form of entertainment finally explored."--Thomas Wheatley, Flagpole (review also ran in Independent Weekly) "Unparalelled... Steel Chair to the Head is a wrestling fan's best friend, and the anti-fan's worst enemy... Steel Chair to the Head gives a sort of stigmatic closure to pro wrestling by elevating its criticism and delivery to an intelligent sensitivity... This fact-heavy anthology shows the brain behind the phenomenon that has disrupted our ever unbalanced culture. A definite too for a fan of media, wrestling fan or not."--Nathaniel G. Moore, bookslut.com "Provides readers with a deeper understanding of professional wrestling than heretofore available in the academic literature... Insightful... Excellent... Highly recommended."--D.M. Furst, CHOICE "Steel Chair to the Head ... serves 14 arguments that swell over the simple fluff and shallow violence and pry deeper into the wet, sticky blood of the antagonists, the heart of the industry narrative, and its continuous thud and ritualistic timing for wrestling's own cultural reflection... An unparalleled look at the cultural interaction wrestling has with history and the world... A wrestling fan's best friend..."--Nathaniel G. Moore, Verbicide