Wrestling in Britain
Sporting Entertainments, Celebrity and Audiences
- 184 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
At the intersection of sport, entertainment and performance, wrestling occupies a unique position in British popular culture. This is the first book to offer a detailed historical and cultural analysis of British professional wrestling, exploring the shifting popularity of the sport as well as its wider social significance.
Arguing that the history of professional wrestling can help us understand key themes in sport, culture and performance that span the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it addresses topics such as: attitudes towards violence, representations of masculinity, the media and celebrity culture, consumerism and globalisation. By drawing on a variety of intellectual traditions and disciplines, the book explores the role of power in the development of popular cultural forms, the ways in which history structures the present, and the manner in which audiences construct identity and meaning through sport.
Wrestling in Britain: Sporting Entertainments, Celebrity and Audiences is fascinating reading for all students and researchers with an interest in media and cultural studies, histories and sociologies of sport, or performance studies.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: âWe donât look on wrestling as a sportâ: introducing sporting entertainment
- 1. The field vs the stage
- 2. âAre the bouts rigged?â: The enduring possibility of sporting entertainment
- 3. âEqually vociferous both for and againstâ: Compromise, conflict and pleasure
- 4. Villains, blue-eyes and the melodrama of celebrity
- 5. âEverything is eventually going to find its way on the goggle-boxâ: Television and spectacle
- Epilogue
- Index