How the Storytelling Medium of Professional Wrestling Broke Down

At its best, professional wrestling is a storytelling medium — albeit one that’s mostly built on guys in tiny pants beating each other into submission two or three times a week — but over the past year, World Wrestling Entertainment’s mechanism of good guys, bad guys, plot twists and the strange logic that leads every single conflict to be settled in the ring has become increasingly broken. There’s a disconnect between what they’re telling us and what’s actually happening in their stories, and there’s no character that embodies that problem more than John Cena.

Even if you don’t watch pro wrestling, you’ve probably seen John Cena at least a few times. He’s the big square guy in jorts, dog tags and a crew cut who’s responsible for selling an entire rainbow of t-shirts advising young wrestling fans to live by the nebulous tenets of “Hustle, Loyalty and Respect.” As a character, he’s spent the last ten years evolving from a wannabe gangsta to the top good guy in wrestling, a stand-up hero who fights for what’s right no matter what it might cost him.

The thing is, he’s not. He’s more like the snobs who tried to get Delta House guys in Animal House kicked out of college.

For better or worse, Cena’s the face of World Wrestling Entertainment. He’s the one on the programs and the collector cups, he’s at the top of the card in every event that he’s at, he’s even the one playing the role of conductor in that new video where the roster sings Jingle Bells. The trick is that at this point, his character almost has to work in a very specific way. He’s the king, and because of that, he really only works as a hero when he’s fighting against something from outside his kingdom.

That’s what his feuds through 2011 were all about: using his status as the top dog to build conflicts that had actual weight, rather than just having him win because he wins. Admittedly, there was also this weird month-long diversion that was structured like a horror movie about Kane throwing Cena’s inept-but-likable pal off a loading dock, and that ended with the kind of slut-shaming and misogyny that even pro wrestling should’ve moved past by now, but overall, he came out of it okay. He had defeats and triumphs, and more importantly, he had motivation that was both clear and heroic.

Unfortunately, 2012 rolled around and the storytelling mechanism of the WWE promptly shot itself in the foot at every single opportunity...More?

source: wired.com