Monday Night Raw 11th May 2015: WWE television programming and why it sucks

What I am about to say about WWE television programming has undoubtedly been said many times before, but after watching Monday Night Raw on 11th May 2015 I feel like it needs to be said again, as the message is evidentially not getting through.

On WWE’s two main flagship television shows (Raw and Smackdown) the wrestlers are portrayed not as tough independent fighters, but as employees of the McMahon family. Their role is to entertain, and the winning or losing of their matches is secondary. If they entertain the fans then they are kept on as employees, but if they fail to entertain then they are fired.

The employees

The WWE makes it very clear that their employees/wrestlers are expendable and lucky to have a job. If they fail to entertain the fans they will be fired, and if they fail to do exactly what the McMahon family tells them to do they will also be fired. Here is the message that is constantly reinforced on their television programming:

Our employees/wrestlers are utterly worthless and would be unable to make a living if they were fired from their jobs here at WWE. 

This attitude is very depressing, very insulting and very dehumanising. It makes the wrestlers look like fools. The WWE (McMahon family) sees people as commodities. If you make money for the McMahon family then you are valuable and respected, if you don’t then you are worthless. It’s all about the McMahon family you see, and this message is the one constant of the show.

All of this is played out on weekly television, by a cast of overly muscled young men who were not quite athletic enough to make it in legitimate sports, where the pay, health benefits, holidays and everything else are 100% better than what you get as a WWE ‘superstar.’

Emasculation time

WWE performers have no health benefits, no job security, no holidays, and no pensions. They are not even employees. The WWE uses the Orwellian legalise term, ‘Independent contractors’ in order to really screw them over. This term allows WWE to treat them not as employees (who need insurance and rights, and all of those other pesky things) but as expendable lumps of meat. You work until your body is broken, and if you don’t like the conditions, tough. There’s no unions, no representatives, no way for you to complain, no way for you to improve your working conditions. Oil up, and work, or oil down and get out, that’s the WWE way.

And what about the pretty young females who appear on their television shows? If you are a young bikini model prepared to do everything that you are told to do, then you might be lucky enough to have a short career with the corporation. Your role will be to wiggle your butt and to do some reality television ‘acting.’ No athletic ability will be needed.  As you get into your 30’s though you’ll need to look for another job. You might be one of the lucky few and get to date George Clooney or do some straight to DVD movies, but for the vast majority the long-term prospects are about as bright as the ex male employees of the WWE ‘family.’

I’m talking addiction, unemployment, jail, homelessness and death. I could do an entire article about the people who worked for the WWE and ended up prematurely dead, but we all know about those all too common tales, don’t we?

The Corporate champion

That’s how disgusting the WWE actually is. Nothing is hidden, everything is out there, it’s on display, and yet, who cares? It’s just pro wrestling, right? It doesn’t matter because it’s fake. Okay, so it’s fake, but the people on the show are not fake. They are real human beings that are being horrendously exploited by a corporate vulture, yet nobody cares.

Here is a television show, aimed at children, that is full to the brim with horrifically anti-human corporate poisons, and still nobody cares.

Look at what the show is saying to children. It’s telling them that they have to be shallow, ruthless, manipulative, greedy, selfish, vain and violent to get what they want in life, and that they can get away with this disgusting behaviour just as long as they work within a corporate structure.

The hero of the show is John Cena, a man who epitomises this corporate attitude of selfishness and oozes it from every pore of his cartoonishly bloated body. 'Hustle, loyalty and respect' is his catch phrase, but hustle, loyalty and respect to what?

To the corporation of course, everything is for the corporation. Be loyal to the corporation and you will become a bloated star who gets to salute the troops and send them off to the latest war. Humanity be damned, we have money to make.

The message is clear: Be ruthless, be evil, be greedy, be selfish, be vain, but do it all within the safety of a corporate structure. All is allowable here, just as long as you are loyal to the corporation. Corporations are people, but people without need of a conscience. There is no morality here. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

If you think that I’m being a bit harsh here just watch the first ten minutes of this week’s Monday Night Raw. Watch how McMahon family leader HHH emasculates his employees, referring to himself as the ‘Daddy’ as he disciplines his unruly children. These unruly children are grown men in their thirties and older by the way. Watch how he mocks two wrestlers for being shorter than himself, belittles a seven foot supposed monster, and talks down to the champion of the organisation like he’s a naughty little boy.

This isn’t about wrestling. It’s not even about entertainment. This is about the worshipping of corporate authority, of bowing to the awesome power of the McMahon family. The wrestling isn’t even important anymore, this is nothing more than one giant vanity project, and I don’t know how much longer it can continue if this is all it has to offer.

I used to enjoy pro wrestling, but how can I enjoy the WWE in 2015 when all of the wrestlers are portrayed as sad sack losers who are lucky to have a job?

I used to idolise wrestlers. They used to be real-life superheroes, substitute Gods for our atheist age, but not anymore. Today when I watch WWE television programming all I see is failed athletes who if not for the generosity of the McMahon family would be working at minimum wage neo-liberal McJobs. I look at the wrestlers on my television set and I don’t admire them. I feel sorry for them.

Loyalty, but only to the corporate brand

I don’t want to feel sorry for the wrestlers. I used to like wrestling, and I want to like it again. I don’t want to hear about drug overdoses, heart attacks, suicides and deaths, and I don’t want to see them being emasculated on my television set before their corporate overlords.

I want wrestlers to get unionised, to start standing up for themselves, to demand change in their working environment. They need to be the heroes that they are supposed to be. They need to stand up to the McMahon family. They need to get organised. They need to take a risk, to do something that needs to be done. They need to be strong and brave, not just in body, but in mind and deed as well.

I remember watching wrestling when I was a kid and the wrestlers were heroes, not employees. What kid watching WWE programming today wants to see a show where all of the wrestlers are portrayed as loser employees? It makes no sense to me, and as WWE continue to lose viewers and ratings go down the toilet somebody out there has to point out these flaws to them.

The McMahon family's real life adoration of morality free neo-liberal corporatism is bleeding through to their television programming and what is being produced is a near unwatchable show that is dripping with satanic corporate anti-human ideology.

They need to make the show about the wrestlers competing against each other to see who is the best. They need to start telling us that their wrestlers are the best athletes in the world, and that they can do things that other professional athletes cannot do. They need to make us believe that this is unique competition between the toughest men in the world, because that is what pro-wrestling is supposed to be.

What the WWE is doing at the moment is putting a group of emasculated losers on our television sets, telling us over and over again that they are interchangeable and lucky to have a job. It’s not working, and they need to change things whilst they still have the chance.