Why Professional Wrestling is the Modern Pantomime
When is a pantomime not a pantomime? And other daft ideas.
Having read the excellent biography of Joseph Grimaldi by Andrew McConnell Stott, I got to wondering about how pantomimes evolved from what they were in the 1700s to what they’re like now. Modern pantomimes feature characters that are nothing more than archetypes. These characters are involved in simplistic stories. But there seemed to my mind a disconnect between what was and what is today, as if there had been an evolutionary branching at some point. In doing this, I got to thinking about what the modern equivalent of those older pantomimes actually are. That’s right. I’m about to try and convince you that pantomimes are still like pantomimes, but not really, and certainly not as much as professional wrestling, which is the actual modern-day pantomime.
Much of the information I garnered for this is from the aforementioned book The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi, a book I can’t recommend enough, especially if you’re interested in the evolution of storytelling and specifically the myth of comedians as depressives, as well as an insight into how the cult of celebrity perhaps has always been around.
First a brief history. Pantomimes (shows performed for live audiences) go back as far as the Ancient Greeks, with a Roman renaissance. However, pantomimes have evolved and changed into an altogether different beast and Roman pantomimes were influenced more by Greek tragedies as opposed to the more modern slapstick and silliness. They would also feature a single dancer who played every role. Wearing various masks, this one actor would use over-expressive movement to bring across emotion and story. A link could possibly be drawn from this over-expressiveness to the acting in pantomimes today, though this link could also be drawn to professional wrestling.
The sorts of pantomimes I’m thinking about were famous in the 17–1800s and played their part alongside more serious pieces of melodrama. Indeed, sometimes pantomime was used to close out a show. They’d give the audience a final scene of hilarity after several hours of more serious matters. These shows might feature strongmen, acrobatics, characters in need of saving as well as the ever-present forms of good and evil. Which brings me to professional wrestling.
When people think of professional wrestling, they probably think of grown men in tights pretending to fight each other, with a pre-determined outcome playing out in front of a crowd baying for blood. However, professional wrestling shows feature music (entrance music is ubiquitous, but some characters even have their entire persona revolve around music or singing), whilst some wrestlers have the charisma and talent to perform scripted (or even ad-libbed) scenes in front of the live crowd. In this way, it is not dissimilar to pantomimes of old. In fact, some view wrestlers as ‘the best’ if they are able to not just perform stunts and throw themselves around the ring (a ramshackle stage if there ever was one), but also if they have the ability to build up the drama using nothing more than a microphone. In similar ways to pantomimes of old, the best performers, the stars with staying power, are often the ones who are multi-talented (‘I’m a triple threat. I can sing, I can act and I can throw people through a wooden table.’)
Some are so good that they have a place not just in wrestling but in popular culture. People know them not from their wrestling shows, but just because ‘hey, it’s that person!’ The easiest example to throw out is The Rock. Dwayne Johnson was able to bring across his character’s motivations clearly for an audience, in a way that was entertaining, and was physically capable to put on a show when it came to the actual wrestling, as well as being comedically gifted. He became so popular he even had a biography at number one as a New York Times bestseller. While he played various different versions of The Rock throughout his wrestling career, the one he’s known for is the no-nonsense, ass-kicking, authority-hating People’s Champion.
Compare this to Joseph Grimaldi, who was famous in his time on stage in London. Like Dwayne Johnson, his father was a performer in the same business. Various biographies were written about him (notably Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi, an autobiography Grimaldi completed and which was later revised by none other than Charles Dickens). On stage, he sang songs and played tricks, including acrobatic stunts, and was beloved by audiences. He played various comedic roles, but was best-known for playing his version of the character Clown.
Moving on from performers to performances, the manner in which these were carried out are also similar. Apart from the previously mentioned way each have shows involving acts of physical prowess, dramatic and comedic acting and routines that’re almost vaudevillian, wrestlers spend large portions of their life travelling from place to place putting on shows for large portions of the year. This is despite the ease at which television can beam every single show to people all over the world. They visit different towns and cities where they are popular, putting on shows that continue ever-changing stories across a number of weeks or even months. In this way, professional wrestling could be viewed as a cross between pantomime and soap opera. Travelling to popular markets in a similar way, forains in the 1700s would spend several weeks putting on spectacles (not putting on glasses — would edit this but made me giggle). These acts would involve tight-rope walking, music and more comedic shows with broad humour. While professional wrestling’s attempts at comedy might not hit the mark as often as forains would’ve done, it’s clear that the humour is often just as broad, with both frequently featuring bodily functions as the punch line.
If anything, the major difference between professional wrestling and pantomime isn’t the amount of physical exertion. Whilst professional wrestlers often hurt themselves, pantomime performers were also sometimes crippled not due to accidents but due to taking part in so many shows that featured battering, bruising pratfalls. Performers of both regularly hurt themselves for an audience and were sometimes forced to one-up other promotions in order to retain that audience.
The major difference seems to be that, for a period, professional wrestling and professional wrestlers themselves were determined to play the part the entire time, maintaining that everything that happened was real, even if fans knew in their heart of hearts that it wasn’t. Whether this is viewed as true commitment to a role (regardless of actual acting talent, look at how we regard actors like Daniel Day-Lewis) or if this is seen as a step too far is a debate for another time.
Keeping the act going might be difficult depending on what character the wrestler would be playing. Because, just like in a pantomime, professional wrestling also features characters that are perhaps best described as out of this world, bizarre, weird or unconventional. From this list of characters, it would be hard to decide whether they were from modern wrestling shows or pantomimes from the 1800s. A man who has risen from the dead to torment his brother; a creepy character in head-covering make-up who eats earthworms during shows; a witch doctor who can use magic spells on his victims and finally a clown. These are all featured wrestlers from past and present, but could easily be descriptions of characters from Harlequinades or similar.
The comedy of each is usually broad and similarly the characters on show also play to certain straightforward archetypes or stereotypes. While professional wrestling goes further with this, sometimes gleefully stepping into out-and-out jingoism and negative portrayals of certain races, genders or religions, pantomimes included character descriptions as simple and broad as a wrestler hit on the head once too often with a chair. And in relation to this, some characters might fall out of favour due to cultural evolutions or simply because the audience has gotten bored with them.
Some of the stunts in pantomimes, like in wrestling, were death-defying or seen by the audience to be death-defying. For example, a ship was designed and built to float on a tank that was filled with water, in which children were hired to pretend to be drowning sailors. And both wrestling and pantomimes unfortunately featured accidents because, whilst they were performed by professionals, not all the stunts were pulled off perfectly.
The giant boat inside an actual floating water tank inside a theatre is also an example of pantomimes both reaching for an ever-larger spectacle and clinging tightly to whatever is popular at the time. These performances were recreations of famous naval battles from recent record, whilst at the time Lord Nelson was one of the most famous and respected people in England. The theatre that put on these shows, Sadler’s Wells, often put on shows that involved the navy simply because that was what was popular. Professional wrestling is similar in this regard. It often grabs hold of and manipulates current events, folding them into their own shows. This could be something as tense as an episode of professional wrestling being dedicated to dramatic, real life events or something as silly as Robocop turning up to save the day, thus enabling both the wrestling show and the movie to promote each other.
Speaking of helping each other, behaviour of casts could also be seen in similar light. Wrestlers travel and room together, while actors in a pantomime spent untold hours putting together shows and sometimes even helping building the show when it came to the stage or props. Sometimes a wrestler might break character and give a verbal takedown to those who they believe have made their lives difficult, whilst pantomime performers were routinely underpaid and thus chafed against those who ran the famous theatres. Whether this continues in modern pantomimes probably comes down to whether you’re a star, such as Grimaldi was, or a bit-part player. Some things never change.
One final similarity is the way professional wrestling is prone to giving time to certain performers of old. This might come in the form of a grand final performance, a return during old-age or something as simple as being put in a Hall of Fame (capital letters used to denote Importance). However it’s carried out, oftentimes performers are acknowledged for what they’ve done by other members of the cast and the audience alike in what is usually a dramatic, emotional display. The closest I can think of that other media get to this is perhaps an acting performance in a movie where the actor receives various awards nods and acclaim and, while this may be done with the sincerest of intentions, the disconnect between the movie industry and the public sometimes makes this come across as a tad ingenuine.
But pantomimes, even if they didn’t relish saying goodbye to a well-known face, then at least were better suited to the task. Previously mentioned was the well-known Clown Joseph Grimaldi. His final performance hit home his condition as he was too ill to stand up for much of the time he was onstage, but he sang a song before then giving a speech, thanking the audience. He was not the only one to go through this and numerous farewell benefits would play out as a final bow for performers loved by an audience. This scene is replayed routinely in professional wrestling as a goodbye to those who played their role well.
Whilst those who love or appreciate pantomimes of old and professional wrestling wouldn’t, I think, dare to say they are the most highbrow forms of entertainment, the fact they are both live shows enable them to have that connection with an audience that feels like they are emotionally involved, if not actually taking part in the show themselves. This gives them something most forms of media couldn’t ever achieve. After everything, the obvious way the two are similar is that the number one concern of performers always seems to be the audience they are playing for.
