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FYI From RIP: Rebellion

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“DIE ROCKY DIE!”, “AUSTIN! AUSTIN! AUSTIN!”, “F*CK YOU CENA!”

Do the above quotes sound familiar to you? If you were watching World Wrestling Entertainment during the late nineties, you probably found it common place to hear such rebellious chants. These chants were rebellious because at least at some point during their existence, they were chanted as a negative response to what the WWE was putting before them in terms of wrestling characters. But things didn’t used to be this way at all. Back in the eighties, Vince McMahon nearly held the crowd in the palm of his hand. He could make them boo any wrestler he wanted, and make them cheer any wrestler he damned well pleased.

But in the late nineties, that all changed. People began to boo certain baby faces, and started to cheer certain heels at their own choosing. What is the reason that drove the fans to chant “DIE ROCKY DIE!” and “ROCKY SUCKS!” in response to the baby face Rocky Maivia, who was only playing your classic good guy that the WWE had been portraying for years? What is it that caused the crowd to cheer for a foul mouthed, finger gesturing S.O.B. like Stone Cold Steve Austin when he in fact had character traits that were synonymous with heels for years? Why is it a classic face like Bret “Hitman” Hart can get cheered for over a decade, but at Wrestlemania 13 the WWE fans pretty much told the WWE to turn him heel?

Perhaps the most obvious explanation could be the right one. Perhaps the reason that the crowd turned on the WWE’s traditional way of booking characters was because they became jaded with the same old way things were constantly being run. Maybe fans just got bored with the same old thing over and over again and wanted to rebel. Now, this might be belaboring the obvious, but just think about it for a moment. If you went to a restaurant and ordered your favorite meal every time you went there, chances are you probably would became bored with it, and try to order something new, something different. But chance are that this theory is clear and understandable to everyone, so I won’t spend a lot of time talking about it.

But maybe the reason that the WWE fans became so rebellious was because of a completely different reason. Maybe it was due to something else all together. Perhaps the fans were tired of being robots who were forced to cheer and boo on command the wrestlers that the WWE wanted them to. Is it possible that the fans were tired of being “programmed” to think and act in the manner that World Wrestling Entertainment wanted them to? Think about it.

Deep down inside, all of us have our own free will. We have the freedom to do and say whatever we want to. Being free to make these decisions is inherent in us. It is a part of a person that can never be separated from them. From the moment we get up in the morning, we make decision after decision throughout our daily lives. When someone tries to take away that freedom, it is as if we become something less than human, seeing as free will is a part of our own human nature. No one likes being a slave. Slaves do not have the ability to make their own decisions. Slaves do not have the ability to decide what they will eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner, and certainly would not have the option to openly like or dislike whoever they choose.

Or another possible way of looking at it is to see things from the perspective of a robot. Robots have absolutely no free will. They have been programmed by another person to do and accomplish whatever it is the programmer wants them to do. As said before, free will is part of our own human nature. We want to be free to make our own decisions, and there are no ifs, ands, our buts about it. When our liberty gets taken away, we become like robots who are programmed to think and do things in whatever ways the programmers please.

If this occurs to a person, our natural instinct is to rebel against whatever is taking away our freedom. Sure, if we are a slave and we are being told to do something that we like to do, then at first there is no anger. But in the long run, deep down the person will want to make the decisions for themselves, and not be controlled by someone else. It’s as if someone tells you to eat ice cream after dinner. Chances are you like to eat ice cream, but you don’t like to be told what to do, regardless of what you’re being told. You may accept it, because you like the action, but chances are you will grow to resent the fact that you’re being told to do it.

This is pretty much the same situation the WWE fans were in for years. Vince McMahon had no way of actually taking away the fans freedom, but for some reason was controlling them to boo or cheer in whatever way he wanted them to. To paraphrase Bret Hart, the WWE was responsible in the past for working the crowd. They had nearly complete control over when the crowd would cheer, when they would boo, almost to the point of how loud the cheers and jeers were going to be.

The WWE fans were fine with this at first, because quite frankly they actually liked cheering for guys like Hulk Hogan, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, and The Ultimate Warrior. They actually wanted to boo guys like “The Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase, “The Model” Rick Martel, and “Macho Man’ Randy Savage. But as stated before, even if you like the action you are being told to enjoy, you will eventually resent the fact that you’re being told to do it. The fans did what the WWE told them to do for a very long time, but in the late nineties they finally became tired of it.

This could very well be the explanation as to why the WWE fans wanted to boo classic faces like Bret Hart and Rocky Maivia, and cheer someone like Stone Cold Steve Austin. It was not because the fans particularly liked or disliked the wrestlers, but because they just wanted to rebel against the WWE for trying to program them to do what they wanted them to do for so many years. John Cena’s character eventually lost some edge, and just came across as a cookie cutter top baby face who could never lose cleanly (for a period of time). A good percentage of fans let WWE know how much they hated this by booing him at shows. They were tired of the WWE acting as if its fans did not have any free will to boo and cheer as they wanted to.

Or perhaps the reason that wrestling fans became rebellious is because of something entirely different. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the fans were simply caught up with the rebellious spirit of the late nineties. Is it possible that the fans all hopped on board the rebellion band wagon (for a lack of a better term) and that is the reason that they chose to rebel against the WWE’s wrestling characters and how the WWE wanted them to react to them.

In the nineties, the entertainment industry changed entirely. In the eighties, there were shows like Growing Pains, Full House, Just The Ten Of Us, Mr. Belvedere, and countless other family oriented televisions programs. Popular music was, for the most part, clean, in that songs like “Little Saint Nick”, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” and “Take On Me” dominated the record charts. There were some songs like “Talk Dirty To Me” and “Girls, Girls, Girls” that were not entirely clean, but relatively, many more aspects of the entertainment industry were ok to be seen by younger children.

It is possible that the WWE took notice to this, and wanted to make their product a clean, family oriented show that people of all ages could watch back in the eighties. Characters like The Big Boss Man and The Mountie were perfectly clean characters that little children could watch. The fans were perfectly fine with this at the time, and did not want or need a change in the product.

But as the entertainment industry changed, so did the fans. After a certain period of time, the days of “Full House” and the Beach Boys were long gone. In its place were shows like “Friends” and “Seinfeld”, shows that were more oriented towards adults. The people of this generation started to want more of this type of entertainment, and the fans of the WWE were no different. They wanted something entirely different from what they were getting in the WWE product. Instead of Miss Elizabeth, they wanted slutty divas like Sable, Sunny, and Marlena. Instead of “I will train, say my prayers and take my vitamins” they wanted “Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass!”. Instead of having toned down physicality, the WWE fans wanted to see Mankind get busted open from vicious chair shots.

Basically, because pop culture had changed, the wrestling fans want World Wrestling Entertainment to change as well. It got to a point where the crowd was tired of the whole clean act that the WWE was portraying where the typical heroes always win in the end. In its place, they wanted to see something entirely different. (Which the WWE eventually listened to, and thus was born the “Attitude Era”). This may possibly be the reason that the WWE fans chose to rebel against the WWE product by cheering certain heels and booing certain faces.

As a result of this, the crowd now works the wrestlers. Instead of the WWE writers telling the crowd what to like and dislike, the crowd tells the writers what they like and dislike. When they wanted Bret Hart to turn heel, they listened. When they wanted Steve Austin to turn face, they listened. John Cena is some what of an exception, as WWE management kept him a face in spite of when he was being booed heavily. He still had many young fans in the Chain Gang who bought merchandise, so for business reasons, he was excluded from this.

The WWE fans have certainly changed over the past few decades. Back in the eighties, the fans were almost controlled entirely by the WWE writers. If they wanted them to boo a certain heel or cheer a certain face, they did so without hesitance. But after a while, the WWE fans rebelled against the product and decided that they did not have to listen to what the WWE was telling them to do. They realized they didn’t have to cheer and boo on command like robots. This may be due to the obvious answer, which is that the WWE fans were jaded with the regular product, and wanted something different. Or it’s possible that it may have been because the WWE fans have free wills to do whatever they want to, and eventually became tired of the WWE telling them how to think. Or maybe it was because pop culture and the entertainment industry had changed, and the wrestling fans wanted the WWE to change as well. Whatever the case may be, there is no denying that this has lead to a rebellion the likes the wrestling industry had never seen before.

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Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed that.

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Source: lordsofpain.net