Between professional wrestling and the public arena: construction of the public persona
Between professional wrestling and the public arena: construction of the public persona

Summary/Abstract: Professional wrestling as a form of live performance has existed in a variety of different manifestations for hundreds of years and masks, both literal and figurative, have been documented as being utilised as a means of creating stage personas and archetypal figures in professional wrestling since the nineteenth century. Expanding upon Heather Levi’s essay in Chow et al.’s recent collection Performance and Professional Wrestling (2017), regarding the utilisation of a popular persona in Mexican culture to promote a specific political narrative, this article utilises examples of both masked and non-masked performers from different professional wrestling cultures, in conjunction with Jungian and post-Jungian theories, to provide an alternative perspective on existing studies of persona and archetypes. It considers sociological notions of identity, social presentation and individual self-conception as well as theories such as separation and integration of the self from the persona, found in Quinn’s “Celebrity and the Semiotics of Acting” (1990), the concept of “the theatre ghost” and how it permeates into the public consciousness highlighted in Carlson’s The Haunted Stage (2001), and how the persona can engage with a broader public sphere as discussed in Balme’s The Theatrical Public Sphere (2014). This article also considers not only how the professional wrestling mask functions as an autonomous entity but also its role in the creation of mythopoeia and how personas created within a professional wrestling context can, effectively or otherwise, transfer from the confines of the wrestling arena into the public arena.

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