The Flying V: Whispers As Loud As Shouts by fenixx (originally posted October 10th, 2012)
I remember watching CM Punk turn heel in 2009. It’s strange saying that because there wasn’t really one moment that really made his turn obvious. Some will go back to the episode of Smackdown! where he blasted Jeff Hardy for his questionable life decisions (arguably one of the first ever ‘pipe bombs’). Others will go further back to the point where he feined an eye-injury to deliver a ‘blinded’ roundhouse kick to the referee. The beauty of this heel turn was that there was no one moment where Punk changed from being a complete face to being a complete heel. The subtlety of this turn was what made the Blue Brand such a refreshing change to the WWE landscape as it was in direct comparison to the in-your-face style of a RAW dominated by John Cena and Randy Orton.
The ‘will he, won’t he?’ aspect of this brilliant turn was what made this change of character so remarkable. The little things were altered in CM Punk’s character during this transition phase. He would jump onto the middle turnbuckle, remove his top before just staring at the screaming fans. Punk would consider their outstretched hands before simply dropping his top to the arena floor and turning his back on them. The equanimity of this act gave it a cold edge to make you believe that CM Punk was not following a script. The subtleties brought his character to life to make you think that Punk had a conscience. There was no two-dimensional morality to be seen as we had a face who was capable or misdeeds. Or maybe he was a heel capable of charitable acts.
I tend to think of these aspects of wrestling in terms of real life. After all, wrestling personalities seem to be marketed in a manner where they are real to us, excluding the obvious exceptions like The Undertaker. If I had a good friend of mine suddenly become a dick, it would be incredibly difficult to forget the good guy he was the day before. It would be even harder to visualise the reverse of this situation as we tend to be more cautious of the people who we knew for certain to be ‘bad’. The switches in personality that accompanies these changes makes this change in alignment appear to be fake or not wholehearted.
Take for instance the stark differences in personality that Big Show portrays as he switches back and forth. He goes from displaying a jovial and almost careless attitude as a face to combining equanimity with explosive force when he turns heel. Yet because there are no subtle changes that he makes as he switches between these incredibly different personas, it’s difficult to take him seriously as either character. It’s not to say that he isn’t a good actor when he is playing either role, it is more because of the contrasting roles as well as the rate at which he changes which makes us doubt his conviction. We doubt his both roles equally, which affects how much we become invested in his character.
The Creative Team is usually where the blame is focused for these issues. Normally I would make an argument to back-up what this team has done. I am a valiant supporter of all things WWE, but this is one of few aspects of the WWE which I do not like. The lack of subtlety or reliance on shock-based actions in the WWE is not only lazy booking, but it is detrimental to the development of characters and feuds in the WWE. There is an emphasis on creating ‘OMG’ moments rather than ‘OMG’ characters. This is reflected in the deliberate stress placed on achieving trending topics rather than observing gradually increasing ratings or merchandise movement. A reliance on repetitively being talked about has made the WWE into a social media whore that as a company will do anything to receive positive attention.
The WWE does not surreptitiously try to conceal any evidence of this. It is blatantly obvious that when you watch any product that the WWE produces, their ‘in the moment’ booking is designed to grab your attention in order to suspend you in the moment. To me, this harms the product as there is so much emphasis placed on the present that the future must then be booked on the fly. There are countless examples of this as recent as the Summer of Punk going lukewarm, the flop of the Nexus and even going as far back as the WCW/ECW invasion angle going pear-shaped. While this has created moments that are etched in our memory, there are not many periods of WWE booking, especially in the last few years, that have been must-see television.
If poor shows are blamed on the Creative Team, poor trends in wrestling are most often blamed on the precedents set during the Attitude Era. I am not going to pretend like I am an expert on the topic, but the heavy emphasis on grabbing the attention of fans in one swift movement seemed to be the trend during that period. The shocking moments upon moments resulted in the WWE playing a game of one-upmanship once WCW faded from its radar and the game has gone on far too long. Don’t get me wrong, there have been stretches where this has faded, but the moment that ratings begin to dip, this in-your-face booking begins again. Who can forget the McMahon Million Dollar Mania? Or the Special Guest Hosts we had to sit through each week as they plugged their latest C-grade venture? This constant need for short term results has not led to long-term results despite having the talent to pull off long-term growth and prosperity.
These ventures or, to put it bluntly, distractions from the overall product that the WWE is trying to market has stalled the progress of the product as a whole. Over the past five years, the WWE has failed to create a Superstar who is at the same level as their top dog, John Cena. The only two wrestlers who can be mentioned in the same breath as Cena either have behavioural and drug issues or have issues with acting in a manner befitting of a champion. After the recent assault of a fan at a WWE event, I have my doubts if Punk will even remain champion for much longer. While Randy Orton was groomed for success alongside Cena and Batista, Punk broke out on his own, somewhat accidentally. Sure, there was some method to his madness, but no one really predicted the rate at which is stock would rise within the WWE.
The WWE seemingly jumped at an opportunity when they realised the amount of buzz that CM Punk generated on his own. Yet when the WWE tried to capitalise on a product that formed itself, they tripped over their own feet in an attempt to do so. The charisma killer, Kevin Nash, along with his crony Triple H snuffed out the wildfire that seemed set to take the WWE by storm. A few months later, a Zack Ryder despite a heavy cult following suffered the same fate as the WWE tried to take the reins of a fan-base that was not their creation. Although the WWE hasn’t destroyed these two careers, it is clear that both Superstars took a hit when the WWE decided to move on with Zack Ryder as well as not making CM Punk the focus of a show that he was the champion of.
The biggest shame for me out of all of this was how Santino Marella’s heroic efforts in the Elimination Chamber against Daniel Bryan were suddenly swept under the rug. As the third Superstar to have his push quelled in a period of six months, Marella made believers out of all us after eliminating Wade Barrett and Cody Rhodes in quick succession. The buzz around him at the time was incredible. It wasn’t as if we were expecting him to rise to the main event to face Daniel Bryan at the upcoming Wrestlemania, but when you examine how much buzz there was around him at the time compared to how much he has now, it’s feels as if he has fallen off a lot. Relegated to being in a thrown together tag-team for the sake of a tournament seems like a step backwards for the wrestler who made us all suspend our disbelief when he hit the Cobra on Daniel Bryan.
Although I guess it’s the same with many wrestlers these days. Excluding the top stars, it’s hard to spot many stars who have risen while continuing to rise when you examine the WWE’s progress over the past six months. If anything, more Superstars are falling off rather than rising up. While the wrestling as a whole has only gotten better, the status of each wrestler seems to be in limbo. The lack of buzz for any of the mid-card championships has made the wrestlers holding them irrelevant. The addition of an extra hour to RAW as well as the dilution of brands has made each show seem incredibly top heavy, making it a struggle for many Superstars to be noticed. Superstars like Tensai, Brodus Clay and the few tag-teams that exist, obviously excluding Team Hell No, are in the thick of this situation, giving them no way to go but down in the WWE’s pecking order.
A more subtle approach to building up Superstars won’t cure this problem, but subtlety breeds intrigue, both in a character as well as on the show that the character is on. Maybe I’m being idealistic, but subtlety can easily be injected into wrestling with the side serving of entertainment that accompanies. Instead of the stress being on the one-liner, the stress should be placed on the expressions, the body language and the feelings that each character possesses. How can we be shocked if the wrestler isn’t also shocked? How can we be ecstatic if the wrestler isn’t also ecstatic? How can we empathise if the wrestler doesn’t show enough emotion?
I said that it’s something that is easily injected because subtlety can be present with or without a script. Many are quick to say that wrestling was better without scripts altogether do not recognise why not having a script produced such great results. When lines are memorized or rehearsed, there is more thought put into delivering the exact words rather than unconsciously delivering what the character believes at the time. It leads to noticeable slip-ups, monotonous promos making it feel that a script is present. Do we then blame the script-writers or the performers for not playing their roles properly?
A script writer can’t make the wrestler show emotion, that’s up to the wrestler. If The Miz had the best script ever written, he would still make an idiotic expression while delivering it that would nullify the explosiveness of his words. Pure emotion has to come from within the wrestler to provide that subtle edge that propels them from being good to great. So much stress is placed on delivering a picture-perfect suplex or delivering the right words in a line that you don’t see wrestlers get lost in their moment. So much emphasis is placed on perfection or at least delivering a match to please the fans that it just doesn’t seem natural. We know that wrestling is scripted, but that doesn’t mean that we should be reminded of it through the wrestler’s performance throughout the show.
We should see nuances in characters. Facial expressions. Body language. Characters showing character. There have only been a few occasions where I have lost myself in wrestling. In those moments, the subtle touches to the wrestler’s craft had me completely immersed in what I was watching. Those are the moments that we cherish as wrestling fans. It’s not as clear cut as simply believing that what is happening is real, but more like the fact that we’ve invested a portion of ourselves in the wrestler that we want to win and damn it we’d give anything to see them win just for that split second.
It’s the feeling I got when I watched John Morrison try his heart out against Sheamus in the King of the Ring finals. The desperation that Morrison exhibited had the crowd on the edge of their seats. When the disappointment of his loss hit me, it was mixed with surprise at the fact that it felt like I lost in that match too.
It’s the feeling I got when I watched Santino Marella getting up every damn time despite the stiff kicks he was receiving. That look of sheer determination on his face made a believer out of me. When the Cobra struck, I thought that he had somehow become the World Heavyweight Champion. So did an arena full of screaming fans.
It’s the feeling I got when Alberto Del Rio won the Royal Rumble. That look of pure glee on his face was infectious. It was only compounded by the repetitive shrieks of Ricardo Rodriguez. It was his night. He made it. That smile on my face that always gets brought back when I even remember this moment.
It’s these subtleties that turn a mere moment into temporary forever. While the WWE’s style of presentation tries to force us into this moment, the subtleties that the wrestlers perform with lure us into a state where nothing else matters but the match. The WWE needs less flashing lights, less distractions from the characters that are in the ring at that time. The obsequiousness or the apparent fear of these wrestlers of straying slightly from the script is hurting rather than helping. You can’t manufacture a feeling, nor can you attempt to replicate a feeling that sticks with a viewer forever.
So stop trying.