“Sports Entertainment” is a much-maligned term among professional wrestling purist.
Growing up, I never thought much about the significance of the term.
It just seemed like the WWE’s way of distinguishing its brand of professional wrestling from others. I wasn’t aware of any malice behind the phrase or that “Sports Entertainment” presented itself as superior to the territory “wrasslin business” of old. I didn’t know that it was designed as a means of distancing the WWE from negative public perceptions, steroids scandals, and the like.
Read MoreI’ve often thought the best compliment I can give a work of art is that it transports me back to a childlike place of magic and wonder.
We strive to achieve that “kid-again” feeling less because we’re terrified of our own mortality and more because we recognize the purity of a child’s experiences. The untainted mind seems to more fully appreciate and experience life. Art (a book, a film, a painting, a song, a wrestling match) that essentially wipes your insignificant, adult preoccupations away and restores you to that nirvana-like place of purity and joy could be considered a public service; that’s how important that cleansing process is to our lives and why we’ve built our culture around pleasant, inspiring, uplifting fictions. We need these brief excursions into a place where magic exists, where all conflicts inevitably resolve themselves, where love conquers all, and where human beings overcome the psychological traumas and the petty jealousies that plague them daily.
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