Article: Carnival Entertainment

An original article by David G. Schwartz

Carnival Entertainment
The Carnival Origins of Professional Wrestling and Casino Gambling, or “Sports Entertainment” and “Casino Entertainment”

First published in Popular Culture Review. V 14, n2. Summer 2003. 5-14.

This was first developed as the keynote address for the 2003 Far West Popular Culture Association Conference. I later edited it for the Popular Culture Review. Because I’ve gotten quite a few requests for this, I’m putting it online.

I’d like to thank Felicia Campbell for encouraging me to give the talk at the FWPCA conference and to submit it for publication. I strongly recommend the FWPCA conference as a place to take new ideas out for a test drive. I got some great feedback there.

Essentially, this article explores some of the links between casino gaming and professional wrestling, which I think are really quite closely linked. Read on to learn why.

Nothing seems so far removed from the embellished elegance of a modern casino resort as the sweat-soaked spectacle of a professional wrestling show. In fact, they are not so dissimilar-they share common roots in the American carnival tradition. Both evolved from cruder carnival forms and maintain identifiable carry-overs. Each mingles entertainment with emotion. Most significantly, both forms, while ostensibly competitions of athletic prowess or luck, are actually heavily scripted. One wagers at a casino knowing that the odds are already set in the house’s favor just as wrestling fans know that the outcome of the match has been predetermined, but still cheer or boo the action. Still, because of the enduring lure of these erstwhile carnival attractions, both professional wrestling and casino gambling remain thriving industries and entertaining diversions for many.

Professional wrestling: a carnival of power and spectacle

Though the sport of grappling itself is ancient, professional wrestling emerged as a spectator “sport” in the carnivals and fairgrounds of America in the early 20th century. Originally, one of the many attractions of the carnival was a strongman who offered to wrestle all comers. These early wrestlers were known as “hookers” and “shooters” for their abilities to apply painful submissions (”hooks”) and “shoot fight,” or legitimately defeat opponents. Eventually, promoters began organizing programs, or cards, featuring several matches between professionals, and professional wrestling as a “sport” was born. Invariably, these contests were staged, with a promoter scripting the matches to maximize the box office draw. Still, professional wrestling thrived. In the 1950s, it was a major presence in early television, and by the 1970s regional promotions presented wrestling cards in most parts of the country.

In the early 1980s, wrestling became a more national phenomenon. Vince McMahon, Jr’s World Wrestling Federation (WWF), with popular, marketable champion Hulk Hogan, secured a measure of mainstream popularity and, more importantly, national television exposure. The National Wrestling Association (NWA), of which the WWF was no longer a member, also promoted itself as a national promotion, although it was actually a consortium of several promotions. In 1990, Ted Turner bought World Championship Wrestling (WCW), one of the NWA’s constituent members, and pumped a good deal of his personal fortune into it, hoping to displace McMahon’s WWF as the nation’s top promotion.

After a heated decade-long inter-promotional rivalry that featured talent raids and salary wars, Turner’s WCW, having been acquired by AOL as part of its merger with Time Warner, was bought by the WWF in early 2001. After a brief “Invasion” storyline, WCW was officially put to rest, its titles merged with the WWF’s own and its remaining wrestlers absorbed into the WWF. On the heels of this victory, however, the World Wrestling Federation was forced to change its name because of a trademark lawsuit brought by the World Wildlife Foundation. The world being only big enough for one WWF, the World Wrestling Federation changed its official name to World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE.

World Wrestling Entertainment, the only remaining “big league” for professional wrestling in North America, currently televises two weekly national television programs, Raw (Monday nights, TNN) and Smackdown (Thursday nights, UPN). Five other shows, some with original in-ring action and others that merely recap the flagship shows, fill out the balance of WWE programming. MTV also airs Tough Enough, a reality-style program that chronicles the training of would-be prospects-the winners of each season get developmental contracts with the WWE. In addition, WWE produces a pay-per-view roughly every month, and merchandises a range of disposables, from t-shirts featuring popular stars and their catchphrases to a replica Rey Mysterio, Jr. luchadore mask. The WWE is big money: in 2002, an off year, the company reported revenues of over $425 million. The source of this money shows the WWE’s reach: live events, television advertising, pay-per-views, merchandising, and a Times Square restaurant, the World (WWE Annual Report).

This prosperity rests firmly on tricks culled from decades of carnivals. The “insider” parlance of professional wrestling is littered with carnie survivals. Fans, particularly those who “believe” the storylines, are “marks.” Wrestlers booked as fan favorites are “faces” (derived from “baby face”), while antagonists are “heels.” By pairing faces and heels, promoters hope to create compelling storylines that will “put asses in the seats,” i.e., increase attendance at live shows, ratings on free TV shows, and buyrates for pay-per-views. Wrestlers are showcased as anatomical specimens and acclaimed for their strength, muscular development, agility, or physical courage (or, as is often remarked, “testicular fortitude”). In addition, the beauty and physical charms of female wrestlers are used to attract wrestling’s base of young, male viewers. In this sense, professional wrestling is like a traveling, televised carnival sideshow, which brings an assortment of oddities and exceptional human beings (such as the strong man) to town.

Wrestling also retains a similarity to carnivals in its presentation. Nothing is ever presented at face value. Elaborate out-of-ring storylines set up to justify the in-ring matches sometimes eclipse the actual wrestling. Bait-and-switch tactics are common, such as when a promised showdown between two wrestlers on free TV is postponed (conveniently until the next PPV) after an out-of-the-ring beatdown. The hype, in short, consistently exceeds the actual show.

Until the late 1990s, wrestling promoters vigilantly protected “kayfabe,” which can best be described as a dogged maintenance of the truth as booked by the promoter. Under the rules of kayfabe, for example, faces and heels could not be seen fraternizing in public, and all wrestlers remained “in character” inside the ring and out. Some survivals remain today; when popular wrestler Duane “The Rock” Johnson needed time off from his WWE schedule to shoot The Mummy Returns, then-onscreen boss Vince McMahon declared The Rock “suspended indefinitely” for a minor infraction of the rules, thus establishing for the mark audience why a popular superstar was no longer appearing. Many fans knew that The Rock was in fact in Hollywood (a fact that the WWE, in one of its many instances of doublespeak, paradoxically publicized). Still, within the storyline, announcers maintained the artistic fiction that a power-hungry McMahon had suspended The Rock. This was kayfabe at its most bold and elementary.

Kayfabe was one of the most easily identifiable carnival survivals, and it was only brought down by the profusion of wrestling Internet sites that follow both in-ring storylines and locker room politics with an almost religious devotion. Kayfabe helped to preserve the illusion that professional wrestling was, in fact, an athletic competition in which the participants legitimately fought to emerge victorious. Mark fans showed a ready belief in kayfabe, sending get-well letters to popular faces rehabilitating worked injuries (in actuality, often enjoying a vacation) and reviling cowardly heels with visceral hatred. Classic heels skilled in drawing heat from audiences, like Jerry “The King” Lawler, whipped otherwise rational adults into a blind frenzy, sometimes literally inciting riots. This kind of audience manipulation was, often, the very essence of carnival shows: get the marks in the seats, and make them eager to come back for more.

On the surface, kayfabe was the cornerstone of professional wrestling. If a fan doubted that the faces and heels were really locked in a continuing struggle, promoters believed he would stop watching. But professional wrestling has only become more popular and more accessible to mainstream popular culture since the death of kayfabe. That is because promoters, following Vince McMahon’s ingenious device, now assert that professional wrestling is not sports but sports entertainment-an exhibition staged for the audience’s enjoyment rather than a competition to determine the superior athlete. Stripped of the make-believe cover of kayfabe, professional wrestling thus stood exposed to the world as little more than a carnival sideshow, in which strongmen and acrobats postured and flopped around the ring.

And the public loved it-professional wrestling soared to heights previously unimagined. Though only a small percentage of fans actually “believe” the kayfabe storylines that announcers still push perfunctorily, wrestling is popular because, being worked, it can consistently deliver entertainment in a way that professional team or individual sports cannot. In fact, one of the early selling points of WWF pay-per-views was that they were a guaranteed three hours of action, whereas a heavyweight boxing match might last less than a round-fans were assured of quantity and quality for their PPV buy. As it is staged today, professional wrestling can deliver a highlight reel’s worth of action every night. One goes to a baseball game with little more than the hope that a bases-loaded, bottom-of-the-ninth grand slam will win it for the home team, but one watches a wrestling event with a fair degree of certainty that the face, even if he doesn’t “go over” (win) in the main event, will at least hit all of his signature spots.

“Sports entertainment,” then, is decidedly more spectacle than competition. While part of that spectacle is, as other commentators have pointed out, the physical confrontation that goes on in the ring, the larger part of the spectacle is the storyline that propels the wrestlers into the ring anyway and the storytelling that takes place in the ring. Without this story, in the words of former WWF champion Mick Foley (AKA Mankind, Cactus Jack, and Dude Love), the in-ring spectacle is reduced to “fat guys in their underwear, pretending to fight (Foley, 428). These storylines range from the believable to the unimaginably stupid, but they serve, at least in the mind of the promoter, the function of getting marks to buy into a feud. Were the promoter to simply push two men into the ring and bid them to pretend to fight each other, fans might not buy in.

This is much like the carnival, where, in reality, there is not much to see outside of the hype. The magic act may use tricks that can be bought in any second-rate store, but if the barker promotes the magician as one of the wonders of the magical world, marks may plunk down the admission and sit through a show, believing that they are seeing something truly exceptional.

Professional wrestling also has a great deal in common with the ideological underpinnings of the American carnival tradition, which according to Phillip McGowan “placed the subversive on display” and allowed Americans to define what was normal and what was “Other” (McGowan, 2). Sometimes, this is easy to see. One of the most enduring heel characters in professional wrestling has been the anti-American “foreigner, usually tied to on-going geopolitical crises. In an early-1980s contest pitting the Iron Sheik against uberpatriot Sergeant Slaughter, what is “Other” and what is “normal” is quite obvious. But the “Other” represented in the ring is more than geographical. Non-white, non-Anglo wrestlers often find their identities reconstructed as gimmicks: Ron Simmons, WCW’s first black world champion, later competed in the WWF as Farooq, the leader of a militant black faction called the “Nation of Domination.” Similarly, those who just “don’t fit in” also make easy “Others.” Scott Levy, after an initial WWF run as spoiled rich boy “Johnny Polo,” transformed himself into Raven, a nihilistic, apathetic product of early 1990s grunge-his finisher, the “Evenflow DDT,” recalled an early Pearl Jam song. Mick Foley, in his first WWF incarnation, portrayed Mankind, a leather-masked freak that had been confined to a basement since childhood and who reputedly enjoyed pain. Although the heel “Other” may occasionally, win, in the long run he is usually beaten by the face, who represents the “normal” side of American life. Wrestling fans, like carnival goers, could therefore encounter a menacing “Other” that was contained and ultimately defeated.

While the most common formula for wrestling before the “Attitude Era” was for the virtuous face to use his brute force and skill to overcome the trickery of the “Other” heel, in recent years “Others” have been pushed as faces. In an obvious, but ephemeral, example, the Oddities, promoted as a group of sideshow freaks, enjoyed a brief WWF run as fan-favorites. As American society has become more inclusive, wrestling has adapted. Today, the “Other” is just as likely to be the face as the heel, and a character like the clean-cut real-life Olympic gold medallist Kurt Angle is entrenched as a heel, while the painted, wig-wearing, sexually ambiguous Goldust is a beloved face-something that would have been unthinkable ten years ago.

In addition, the line between face and heel has been virtually erased. Just as, in George Orwell’s 1984, “duckspeak” was considered a complement when directed towards supporting Ingsoc and an insult to those who attacked it, traditional heel tactics-bragging, cheating, and even brutalizing women-are cheered when performed by faces. In today’s America, according to professional wrestling, even the good guys recognize the need to “Cheat 2 Win” (the phrase on a t-shirt worn by popular face Eddy Guererro).

Though the ideologies have obviously changed, and the presentation is far more sophisticated, it is obvious that professional wrestling still shares a great deal with the carnival. Promoters consciously speak in the language of the carnival-Vince McMahon has likened WWE broadcasts to a three-ring circus featuring something for everyone: athletic spectacle, scantily clad women, comedy, and drama. If watching Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle wrestle a sixty-minute ironman match doesn’t do anything for you, the thinking goes, you’ll stick around for the bra-and-panties match or the backstage skits. So everyone goes home a winner-though no real competition has taken place.

Casino gambling: Carnival of hope and extravagance

So it seems fairly undeniable that professional wrestling is the descendent of the American carnival. The line connecting casino gambling to the carnival is less obvious. Casino gambling is a recreational form of gambling that has reached its fullest elaboration in the casino resorts of the Las Vegas Strip. A combination of European casinos catering to the elite, American frontier gambling halls, and clandestine urban gambling operations, casino gambling embraces everything from baccarat to nickel slot machines.

In addition, casinos have inherited much from carnivals. Many of the major players in the history of American casinos had backgrounds in carnivals and bingo, which was itself a carnival outgrowth. Sam Boyd, founder of Boyd Gaming, a company that operates casinos in six states, including the famed Stardust on the Las Vegas Strip, got his start as a pitchman for Long Beach, CA carnival games (Sheehan, 105). He used many tricks of the carnival trade to manage and build successful and popular casinos. Bill Harrah, the founder of Harrah’s Entertainment, got his start running a carnival-like bingo game on a Venice, CA pier; though he built a major casino empire, he and his top advisors never completely left the bingo hall behind. Sometimes, the proximity of casinos to carnivals is painfully obvious, as in Circus Circus, a garish, low-budget Strip casino and theme park. Other times, it is less obvious, but it remains important.

In the modern American casino, a player can choose from a variety of games, but each has two things in common: it is a complete of chance, and the odds, without adjustment by cheating, are in the casino’s favor. The only exceptions to this rule are poker, which is played against other players and not the house, and blackjack, a card game that, unlike other games, has a “memory;” once played, cards are taken from the deck, and their absence shifts the odds of winning. A skilled player deep into a multi-deck shoe, keeping track of high and low cards, can generate quite favorable odds of winning. Casinos use a variety of means, some of dubious ethics but all legal, to deter skill play. Since poker players only rent a seat at their table by paying a cut of each pot to the dealer (a reliable, but miniscule, source of revenue), casinos feature poker only as a supplementary attraction, if at all. And skill play in blackjack is both officially and unofficially discouraged. So it is safe to say that, within the casino, skill play is present only marginally, if at all.

Casinos, then, generate most of their revenue from game of chance in which the player is at a decided disadvantage. The casino’s profit, and continuing operation, rests squarely on its hold percentage-its profit on each game. On the Las Vegas Strip in 2001, the hold percentage (or player’s disadvantage) for slot machines ranged from less than 4% to over 11%, depending on the denomination machine. For table games, there was a wider variance, though all games still had sizeable house advantages. Blackjack, with its elements of skill play, had a hold percentage of less than 12%, while the Wheel of Fortune retained an astounding 46.3% of players’ wagers. Most other table games held between 12 and 30 percent of their total wager (Nevada Gaming Almanac, 9) While the player has a chance to win, it is statistically more probable that she will lose. Casino patrons, in essence, are playing at rigged games.

But the outstanding fact of casino gambling is that the players know the odds are stacked against them, but play nevertheless. This is, to an impartial observer, incredible. One can imagine the soul-searching needed to risk one’s hard-earned money on an even-odds wager, or an educated investment. How, then, is it possible that millions of rational Americans trek to their local casino to gamble at games that they know to be unfavorable?

The answer is deceptively simple. According to the conventional wisdom, players no longer gamble at casinos for the chance to legitimately make money, but because the gambling experience itself is entertainment. The casino is no longer a poor man’s stock exchange. It is, instead, the place where anyone can engage in a mix of role-playing and dramatic social interaction. The point is not to win big, but to play big-deep play, rather than solid earnings, is what players are supposed to take away. Players are forthrightly discouraged from seriously believing that they can win. In its mission statement, Harrah’s Entertainment, one of the world’s largest and most respected casino companies, stated “if a customer plays at a Harrah’s casino for any reason other than the fun of it, that customer is playing for the wrong reason” (Harrah’s Entertainment, 4). In other words, players should not expect to win.

How is this related to carnival games, where a large part of the excitement is the pretense that “everyone wins a prize?” Part of the allure of casino gambling is the intangible, non-gaming elements-the Parisian ambience at Paris, the erupting volcano in front of Mirage, and the faux Old West style that seems to be the default for smaller, non-Strip casinos, at least in the American West. It is no accident that Steve Wynn described the Las Vegas Strip as the “world’s biggest carnival pitch.” There is little to distinguish the games at Mandalay Bay from those at Lady Luck. So casino operators use a hook to get patrons inside. For some casinos, the hook is a 99-cent shrimp cocktail; for others, it is a white tiger habitat. Whatever the hook, it always serves a single unswervable purpose-to pull in marks.

In a sense, themed casinos recall one variant of the American carnival-world’s fairs, which made representations of other cultures accessible to Americans. Themed casinos permit patrons to “visit” an exotic locale in a relatively safe manner, as did world’s fairs like the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Of course, the casino mark will not literally believe she is in Venice or New York City and not a casino; she will, however, willingly suspend her disbelief and allow the casino to do its best to convey the essence of Venice or New York. The themed casino resorts of the Strip allow visitors to negotiate a potentially menacing “Other” that are simultaneously safe and exciting.

Yet even casinos that don’t dress themselves up as Hollywood versions of exotic lands position themselves as larger than life. This is because casinos are, like carnivals, places where the everyday is inverted. In order to distract the “marks” from the very serious business at hand-namely separating “marks” from their dollars, casino operators promote their facilities as carefree and freewheeling. Everything is possible, and nothing is beyond the reach of hope. If there is not equality of opportunity, nor equality of circumstance, there is at least within the walls of a casino equality of aspiration: everyone’s dreams of what they will do with the big jackpot just beyond reach are equally valid.

Gambling, in its most elementary form, lets the player balance risk with potential reward. Historically, most forms of gambling have been very straightforward. Racetracks, for example, are usually unadorned, and are quite frankly geared towards the business of racing-and wagering on-horses. Horseplayers put a great deal of time into studying past performance, track conditions, and other variables, and they ask for nothing more than the chance to win. But casino patrons, playing at games of pure chance with the odds already set against them, are usually resigned to losing before they begin playing. It makes sense, then, for casino gambling to take place in an extravagant carnival.

Similarities and differences: Casinos and Wrestling

Casinos and professional wrestling, them have similar roots, and they also have telling similarities. Both appeal to a range of “fans.” Both have become incredibly popular after revealing their secrets, as it were. Both play on the emotions of their marks, drawing them in with the phantom possibility of a big win (vicarious or personal) that somehow remains just out of reach. The arrogant heel will finally receive his comeuppance, at the next PPV-buy it or miss out. The next spin of the electronic slot reels will bring the progressive jackpot-you’d better bet max coins. The fact that the promised never materializes only strengthens the mark’s belief that winning is just around the corner.

Indeed, several major wrestling events have been held at casinos- several Wrestlemanias (the largest annual WWE pay-per-view) have taken place in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. The October 17, 2002 WWE RAW broadcast from Las Vegas’s Thomas and Mack Center (home of the UNLV Rebels) made the connections between wrestling and gambling starkly visible, as the show was transformed into “Raw Roulette.” On this special evening, wrestlers faced each other in a series of specialty, or gimmick, matches, the particular match chosen by a turn of the “Raw Roulette” wheel (actually a gimmicked Big 6 wheel). Matches selected included a steel cage match, “Las Vegas Showgirl match” (each wrestler must dress like a showgirl), “Paddle on a Pole”/”Bra and Panties” match (this hybrid, between two female wrestlers, was the apparent crowd favorite), and a Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match, an athletic exhibition in which participants used the aforementioned furniture as launching pads and weapons.

In the most fundamental sense, casinos and wrestling go together because they both mix the fake with the real. Sure, wrestling is “fake,” but competitors like Mick Foley live each day with very real pain from injuries accumulated during their careers. Casino gambling is fake, or fixed, to the extent that the odds are unfair, but people gamble away very real money there. “Fans” of both devote a great deal of time and emotion to something that they know is a paradoxical fiction. If a favored wrestler gets a big push and title run, it is only because the bookers have found it expedient to give it to him; if a gambler hits a big jackpot, it is only a statistical fluke and not because of any inherent skill on her part. Perhaps the knowledge that it is all really “fake” makes losing, either vicariously or personally, all the more acceptable.

This is not to say that casino gambling and professional wrestling are cut entirely from the same cloth. There are telling differences between the two. Casinos, as a rule, have less control over their presentation than wrestling promoters. Most casinos have several thousand employees and are open twenty-four hours a day. Thousands of patrons each day claim a piece of the casino’s cultural space. Even the most obdurate façade would show cracks under such pressure, and the casino is not exception. Rude or insensitive employees, commiseration with fellow players, and a sudden attack of regret can make the player instantly aware of the carnival illusion of casino gambling.

Professional wrestling, by contrast, has a far more controlled presentation. There are perhaps fifty “sports entertainers” fortunate and skilled enough to have a spot on the WWE wrestling, and each is responsible for anywhere from three to thirty minutes of television time in any given week. The wrestling hierarchy is divided between “jobbers” (wrestlers who consistently “do the job,” i.e., lose to established stars), mid-carders (who win fairly often and get a good deal of television time), and main eventers (who headline television events and get the lion’s share of television time). Each wrestler knows that, should he decide to “shoot” or in any way break the credibility of the worked storyline and in-ring action, there are wrestlers below him who would not hesitate to take his “spot,” and hundreds of minor-league wrestlers who would gladly take his place with the promotion. So marks can be reasonably sure that, if it appears on television, it is a work, and part of the promoter’s presentation. Whereas casinos must constantly work to maintain their illusions, for a wrestling promoter the job is much easier.

Professional wrestling is, however, primarily a spectator “sport,” while casino gambling is a participatory form of entertainment. The catharsis of wrestling is vicarious-while fans are invited to live their fantasies through the superstars of wrestling, only a select few are ever able to build the physique-and incredible skill-needed to join the profession. The closest many fans can get to the action is attending events or posting to Internet forums. Gambling, by contrast, is open to virtually anyone-with the current popularity of penny slots, it seems that no fortune is too small for the casino. There may be a world of difference between a penny slot player and a high roller, but in essence they both do the same thing, albeit on a different scale. In this way, casino gambling is far more accessible than professional wrestling

Thus, it isn’t that surprising that professional wrestling and casino gambling are related, if only distantly. Each simultaneously balances the real and the fake, and each teases its audience with a payoff that it usually never delivers. Each also relies on spectacle to pull in marks. While spectacle may be four-star restaurants or a five-star frog splash, it still serves the same purpose-to put “asses in the seats.” It would seem that fans would get tired of “fat men in their underwear” pretending to fight, and tune out professional wrestling. One also might think that casino patrons would begin to realize that the odds against them will never permit them to “quit winners.” But both forms of “entertainment” are enduringly popular, mostly because their formulas were successfully distilled from decades of carnivals.

References
Fiske, John. Understanding Popular Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989.

Harrah’s Entertainment. Profile of the American Gambler, 2002. Las Vegas: Harrah’s Entertainment, 2002. Available online at http://www.harrahs.com/about_us/survey/survey_02.5.pdf

Mankind (Mick Foley). Have a Nice Day! A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks. New York: Harper Collins Books, 1999.

Mazer, Sharon. Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1998.

McGowan, Thomas. American Carnival: Seeing and Reading American Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.

Opton, Michael, ed. Nevada Gaming Almanac 2002. Newton, MA: Casino City Press, 2002.

Sheehan, Jack. “Sam Boyd’s Quiet Legacy.” In Jack Sheehan, ed. Players: The Men Who Made Las Vegas. Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1997.

World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. 2002 Annual Report. Available at http://ir.shareholder.com/wwe/downloads/annual-2002.pdf

David G. Schwartz, August 2004

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