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Okay, so as promised, I also watched the Firefly Funhouse match, and I might have even *more* thoughts about this one. https://twitter.com/JodiMcA/status/1248464822615724034">https://twitter.com/JodiMcA/s...
My first thought was that oh wow, I don& #39;t understand any of this wrestling history they& #39;re walking through, but my goodness John Cena seems to have had some embarrassing career stages (the one where he raps? that gave me eye-twitching-level secondhand embarrassment)
My second thoughts, though, are extremely nerdy - and there has to be some similar kind of nerd to me quietly working away behind the scenes at WWE, because the levels of allusion in this - especially to classical narrative - are out of control.
This was both a kind of montage-form of aristeia (a scene, usually in epic poetry, in which the hero achieves his finest moments) and katabasis (a hero& #39;s descent, often to the underworld).
As well as - well, really alongside - these, it& #39;s clearly influenced by Dante (which is itself an example of katabasis), which is evident immediately: the misquote of "abandon hope all ye who enter here" made that clear.
My comedy icon demon beltface operates as a Virgil to Cena& #39;s Dante, guiding him through his (and wrestling& #39;s? my grasp on the context is weak) finest moments - the aristeia - but it& #39;s simultaneously leading him through circles of hell, down into the underworld.
One question I& #39;ve been puzzled by for ages is the literality of hell in wrestling (is it a metaphor? is it a literal space?), but this match posited a clear answer: *wrestling itself* is hell.
I am going to be thinking about this *forever*.
(also, the fact that the two matches people told me to watch were both extremely high-concept made me think a) that you get me, but also b) about the relative diegetic/extra-diegetic position of the crowd, but I won& #39;t burden you with those extreme nerd thoughts)
