• @yemmly
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    33 months ago

    In old-school professional wrestling, the heel personas were often exploiting xenophobic prejudices that are largely absent from the contemporary shows. Today there is more ambiguity regarding who is the face and who is the heel and it’s up to the subjective preferences of the audience.

    I offer this video (I could only find the version with French commentary) as an example.

    I just see a lot of commonality between Trump’s shtick and these old-school wrasslin’ narratives.

    • Ben Hur Horse Race
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      33 months ago

      yeah I get all that. I don’t think you’re wrong- trump is a WWE candidate… I grew up with Iron Sheik and Nikoli Volkoff … back then, though, Ted Debiasi (the million dollar man) was a rich guy archetype and was cast as a heel haha

      My little soap box about in-group out-group was only that specifically in psychology, in-group and out-group isn’t good guy/bad guy, its just whether the viewer feels they identify someone else as being familiar or foreign

    • @bitchkat
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      13 months ago

      So you’re saying that Sheik Abdul Mohammed in the early 80’s was pretending?