Introduction: Context and Methodology

Abstract

'The spirit of America lives here': US pro-wrestling and the post-9/11 'War on Terror' KEYWORDS professional wrestling performance spectatorship ideology popular entertainment War on Terror ABSTRACT This article argues that the ideological mechanisms and norms used to render the 'War on Terror' both familiar and seemingly inevitable to a wide public have long been present in popular American culture in the form of professional wrestling. The professional wrestling performances of American company WWE attract an enor-mous global audience of committed followers. This article considers pro-wrestling as an example of what Jon McKenzie calls 'a regime of normative force', identifying sim-ilarities in structure, imagery and rhetoric between a range of WWE performances and the US-led War on Terror. The article analyses the familiar codes of pro-wrestling performance in the contexts of propaganda and ideological reaffirmation. The analysis includes the considerations of performer/spectator relationship, the slippage between fiction and reality, the centrality and inevitability of unending combat and the con-struction of foreignness in opposition to a paradigmatic 'America'. Through a range of examples of post-9/11 WWE performances, this article will draw out connections between the ongoing state of combat entertainment and the popular US preparedness for an ongoing state of war.