Abstract
In his article "Wrestling and Popular Culture" Dalbir S. Sehmby investigates a phenomenon of television culture. Wrestling has been for a long time now a main feature of television with a sizable audience. However, scholars in popular culture, audience studies, or television studies have paid little attention to this phenomenon and Dalbir argues that the study of wrestling in popular culture ought to be of interest to scholars of culture. In his discussion, Dalbir addresses notions of high art versus low art along with notions of high television versus low television. He continues with a discussion of the recent history of professional wrestling in order to illustrate how wrestling developed a fraudulent reputation. In Dalbir's view, television wrestling is considered an uncomfortable activity, a performance, and a television feature located between sport and drama, between masculine narrative form and feminine narrative form, between a sexual and non-sexual display of the human body, and between documentary reality and creative fiction. In his study, Dalbir also explores aspects of the spectacular excesses of wrestling along with its media-hybrid form.
Recommended Citation
Sehmby, Dalbir S.
"Wrestling and Popular Culture."
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
4.1
(2002):
<https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1144>
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