Steel Chair to the Head: The Pleasure and Pain of Professional Wrestling

by Nicholas Sammond (Editor)

The antagonists—oiled, shaved, pierced, and tattooed; the glaring lights; the pounding music; the shouting professional wrestling is at once spectacle, sport, and business. Steel Chair to the Head provides a multifaceted look at the popular phenomenon of pro wrestling. The contributors combine critical rigor with a deep appreciation of wrestling as a unique cultural form, the latest in a long line of popular performance genres. They examine wrestling as it happens in the ring, is experienced in the stands, is portrayed on television, and is discussed in online chat rooms. In the process, they reveal wrestling as an expression of the contradictions and struggles that shape American culture. The essayists include scholars in anthropology, psychology, film studies, communication studies, and sociology, one of whom used to wrestle professionally. Classic studies of wrestling by Roland Barthes, Carlos Monsiváis, Sharon Mazer, and Henry Jenkins appear alongside original essays. Whether exploring how pro wrestling inflects race, masculinity, and ideas of reality and authenticity; how female fans express their enthusiasm for male wrestlers; or how lucha libre provides insights into Mexican social and political life, Steel Chair to the Head gives due respect to pro wrestling by treating it with the same thorough attention usually reserved for more conventional forms of cultural expression.

Contributors. Roland Barthes, Douglas L. Battema, Susan Clerc, Laurence de Garis, Henry Jenkins III, Henry Jenkins IV, Heather Levi, Sharon Mazer, Carlos Monsiváis, Lucia Rahilly, Catherine Salmon, Nicholas Sammond, Phillip Serrat, Philip Sewell

Genres: Nonfiction, Sports, Essays

384 pages, Paperback

First published December 23, 2004

About the author

Nicholas Sammond is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto and author of Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation.

Reviews

[Grump · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man this one took me a while to finish reading, man. It's a buncha highfalutin academic essays about wrasslin and if you've had a few wine coolers before reading, it'll make your coconut hurt. That said, it was super interesting.

There's a famous one by Roland Barthes that's about how wrestling tells stories with archetypes and stuff.

Another essay is about the symbolism of the mask in lucha libre. That was cool.

There's some stuff about homosocial relationships and homoeroticness and how it's an acceptable form of S&M for viewers. All very thoughtful.

I liked the one about latino masculinity vs Vince McMahon's big whites.

The one about woman fans of wrestling was boring.

The two closing afterwords were pretty good. Written by a father and son duo. One was about people getting upset about wrestling being bad for people to see and how we need to think about both sides of the argument. And the second one which I super related to was about how wrestling sort of grew up with the author from being on Saturday mornings as a kid to showing tits when he was in college.

I'll admit I'm prolly not smart enough to get everything laid out here but I enjoyed trying.

Oh and I forgot, the “Logic of Wrestling” one was awesome. Was about how good matches need to make sense. Fuckin loved it.

HABDAZ!

[Cecilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of studies on the storytelling and cultural impact of professional wrestling, with topics ranging from the unique interactions of female wrestling fans online, to the stock market viability of the WWF in the early 2000s. I would be very interested in an updated collection of essays, as these don't extend beyond the Attitude era, and the landscape of wrestling has changed dramatically.

[Eddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of essays. The only real quibble I have is that it's a lot of reprinted essays, so while it's nice to see the connection of thought from older essays to newer, each essay was intended to be read in isolation, so many cover the same ground several times. Still, well worth reading for those interested in the social impact of wrestling.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

a lot of interesting essays in here… clearly i need to be watching more lucha libre! i would love a post-attitude era update on this volume (some examinations of japan’s promos would also rule). i just know henry jenkins IV has some takes on AEW and i want to hear them

[Steven Logan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had a lot of interesting and thoughtful information.

[Bookworm Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Goodnight HULKAMANIACS and jabronie marks without a life that don’t know it a work when you work a work and work yourself into a shoot,marks”

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bypass the first couple of chapters. After that there is a great background history of the development of wrestling instead of philosophy and opinions.

[Michael Palkowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best book currently available looking at an academic reading of professional wrestling because it anthologizes in one volume the best exploratory analysis available, mainly deconstructive pieces and theoretical allusions to theater. It therefore is vital for conducting any serious literature review of the subject.

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The ur-text of professional wrestling scholarship. Are there enough papers to support a second edition?