The Main Event:
The Future of the Creative Process
As
professional wrestling continues on with this constant evolution, the rift
created in professional wrestling will widen, or begin to verge into a new era
of the creative process in professional wrestling. I believe that the next
stage of evolution that will solve the rift in professional wrestling is a
hybrid of the traditional skills of a wrestling booker to weave the history of
the sport inside the limitations of the genre fused with the trained skills and
natural talents of a college educated English major with a background in
various creative mediums. In seeing the growth of professional wrestling as an
evolution then the same traits of the theory of evolution apply to the creative
process. The theory of evolution is based on the strongest attributes
“accumulating and the result is an entirely different organism”
(Allaboutscience.org). This belief in the theory of evolution would lead to the
eventual hybrid of traditional booker and creative writer.
The
creative process hybrid that would come from this next stage of evolution would
possess the trained skills of a professional writer to develop in depth story
lines enhanced with the writer's natural talents in the creative realm. These
natural talents in creativity are no different than the athletic skills of a
sports figure. As in sports all athletes must respect and understand the
limitations of their sport to fully achieve success, something understood and
practiced by bookers.
In the game
of basketball the ability to jump is necessary, just as the ability to create a
basic story line is necessary to the creative process in wrestling. If a person
could jump twenty feet that person would be seen in the same light as some of
the professional writers who possess similar amazing abilities when it comes to
creative writing. The limitations of basketball would dictate the restrictions
of this ability as the basketball hoop, which represents the purpose of the
sport, is only ten feet high. If a player has tremendous skills, such as
jumping twenty feet, but is constantly violating the limitations of the sport
by jumping beyond the basketball hoop then that player is letting that
tremendous ability prevent success instead of achieve it.
This same
respect for the limitations of the creative process in professional wrestling
is found in the history of professional wrestling. This ability to know and
excel under these limitations is what the professional booker in wrestling
brings to the new hybrid in the evolution of the creative process. As
professional wrestling moves beyond the niche audience that has made up
wrestling's fan base, and expands to a global audience, the need for bookers to
develop trained skills in creative writing, and to possess a natural ability to
understand how to thrive in the new global digital age, becomes a requirement
for survival.
As
professional wrestling evolved the need for these skills became a kin to that
of predator, who excelled in a small habitat, needing to gain a stronger and
faster approach when that habitat became expansive. No longer can the usual
skills that helped on such a small scale be of the same effect on a larger
scale. This is the purpose of evolution, not only just in wrestling, but in
life. Now that the habitat for professional wrestling has changed; the people
behind the scenes need to change with it, or become extinct.
The Post-Show
Reviews: Criticisms and Conclusions
As with all
things that involve change there can be skeptics toward the evolution of
professional wrestling’s creative process. Gabe Sapolsky, when asked about this
theory of the next phase in professional wrestling, had his doubts when he
said, “This would seem like it would be the best of both world's on paper, in
reality I'm not sure if it would work because the two viewpoints might not be
able to co-exist” (Sapolsky). I agree that the two viewpoints wouldn't exist
because the role of evolution would weave these viewpoints into one viewpoint
creating this new creative process in wrestling. In doing this both viewpoints
become a thing of the past as the evolution in the creative process replaces
them with one viewpoint built on the strengths of both viewpoints while weeding
out the flaws.
While those
in professional wrestling can be skeptical towards change; there is consensus
that wrestling in some way will always be changing. There is an agreement that
for better, or for worse, professional wrestling is in a constant state of
change with new ideas and characters to continue the path of wrestling's
history that extends centuries before today's current state of wrestling. This
new evolution of professional wrestling writing is seen by Jimmy Jacobs when he
says,
“There are old traditional
wrestling bookers who book good enough television aimed to traditionally get
fans emotionally invested with traditional heel and baby face roles; this can
work to an extent but can often be unspectacular. There are also many wrestling
television writers that, while perhaps entertaining, can fail to emotionally
captivate fans and can come off as over the top or cheesy. The foundation of
traditional professional wrestling concepts set in new creative ways will, in
my opinion, always make for good television“ (Jacobs)
This recognition of the need for a hybrid of the strengths
of both traditional booker and professional writer is the beginning of the
evolution of professional wrestling's creative process in the decades to come.
As this
evolution continues through professional wrestling, one aspect will never
change as pointed out by Roland Barthes. This aspect is that “wrestlers remain
gods because they are, for a few moments, the key which opens Nature, the pure
gesture which separates Good from Evil, and unveils the form of Justice, which
is at last intelligible” (Barthes 25). This basic moral situation is the heart
of professional wrestling, and will remain a constant during the evolution of
professional wrestling. As the hybrid form of the creative process begins to
take shape this role of professional wrestling in society will keep wrestling
anchored to its purpose. The evolution of the creative process in professional
wrestling, fusing the strengths of both booker and writer, will bring a new way
to extend the purpose of professional wrestling to a wider audience in the new
digital age for the near future and beyond.
