The middle-class spectator also derives enhancement from the wrestling
match. Whereas the more sophisticated viewer may disavow belief in the
"realness" of the action, he may still vicariously join in the pleasures ob-
tained from the spectacle. Thus the expression, "Look at what they're
doing!" Glee, at the very least, is contained in this utterance by the
slightly detached, deeply amused, and entertained "elite viewer." This
"social distance"-through giving tacit recognition to professional
wrestling in much the fashion as I describe about my own interest in the
sport--is part of the oppressiveness of the middle class. To be sure, many
middle--class persons refuse to watch, to give "life" and license to the
sport. But isn't this too a role in the structural arrangement? I am here re-
minded of a favorite comeback of KKK apologists when facing off with
so-called white liberals: "You're just like me, you're racist too; you let me
do the dirty work, say what we really feel." Perhaps this gaze from afar--
in the privacy of our television rooms--is the most subtle and deadly op-
pressiveness of professional wrestling. What precisely do we mean when
we say "look at them"? Are we not fusing both wrestler and audience,
constructing them as an "other" without subjectivity.? Are they truly mere
"Peasants," "mindless automatons," willing to believe anything, watch
anything, do anything? And if they are, what does that say about us, for
doesn't the lower working class exist, in part, because of those of us who
consider ourselves middle class? And aren't their frustrations and their
drugs also partly constructions of those of us who gaze upon them?

And what of our children's vulnerability to professional wrestling.? Has
not our quest for and formulation of civility created this vulnerability?
For professional wrestling partially thrives because it serves as a correc-
tive to the "denial of play" where play is read as an unprescribed, indeter-
minate possibility, an explosion of energy. The rise of civility is an assault
on play; this assault, moreover, is signaled in genteel situations--when
two youngsters lock in combat--with the exhortation "Stop it!" The ex-
hortation to "Stop it!" is, after all, inspired by a need for order, stability,
containment. These are precisely the threatened objects of professional
wrestling as unharnessed energy. To be sure, wrestling does entail disci-
pline, order, and application of will and body to a set task and timeline.
But the spectacle itself, beyond the control of the professional, invites
chaos.

Professional wrestling allows one segment of American society, notably
the lower-class white ethnic, to derive primary entertainment and en-

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