Empire Of Illusion: The End Of Literacy And The Triumph Of Spectacle

A man named John Bradshaw Layfield stands at the center of a wrestling ring at a World Wrestling Entertainment event. Tonight, Layfield plays the role of a successful CEO who capitalized on the 2009 recession while others lost their savings. He announces to the excited crowd that another wrestler named Shawn Michaels has accepted his challenge to fight. When Michaels comes out to the ring, Layfield taunts Michaels about losing money in the 2008 recession and then offers him a job. The crowd encourages Michaels to fight Layfield, but Michaels chooses to leave the ring, having accepted Layfield’s offer of a job.

From 1950 through 1980, professional wrestling personas like Layfield’s CEO role depended on different kinds of narratives, all of which were intended to give viewers an opportunity to experience emotional and psychological drama. Wrestlers such as “The Russian Bear” stoked fears of communism, while “The Iron Sheik” fanned tensions during the Iranian hostage crisis (6). In 1985, a former prison guard named Ray Traylor played a wrestler named Big Boss Man who is most famous for taunting the wrestler Big Show when Big Show’s father was said to have cancer. To inspire the