12 From Smart Fan to Backyard Wrestler: Performance, Context, and Aesthetic Violence

Kayfabe, Smartdom and Marking Out: Can Pro-Wrestling Help Us Understand Donald Trump?

“…Thus, to retain its ‘dramatic appeal’ pro-wrestling requires smarts to perform as marks when attending events (Ford, 2019), just as a successful rally requires that its attendees cheer and chant, performing their role as supporters-who-believe. In their own exposition on smart fandom McBride and Bird (2007: 166) refer to this as ‘the spectators’ performance of credulity’. Returning to the Žižekian formulation, smarts ‘know very well what they are doing, but still they are doing it’ (Žižek, 2008: 33) – and it is the ‘cynical distance’ (Žižek, 2008) underpinning this epistemology of ‘smartdom’ (whether pro-wrestling or political), which in turn works to smooth the consumption of underpinning ideological messages.…”