Roland Barthes' 1957 essay "The World of Wrestling" analyzes wrestling as a spectacle rather than a sport. Barthes views wrestling as a theatrical performance with sign systems embodied in wrestlers' physiques and gestures that convey meaning to spectators. Like theater, wrestling presents human suffering through exaggerated performances and costumes that represent the "tragic play." While resembling sports, wrestling has no true winner but aims to perform expected motions. The villainous wrestler embodies past misdeeds through their physique and usually suffers defeat, representing the moral concept of justice. Barthes argues wrestling presents an "absolute" display that spectators accept without question.

1. THE WORLD OF WRESTLING
by Roland Barthes

2. ‘’The World of Wrestling’’ is an essay taken from
Roland Barthes’ book Mythologies which consists of
two sections, one containing a series of short
essays on different aspects of French daily life
written in a humorous journalistic style, and the
second containing a longer theoretical essay
entitled “Myth Today” that explores the methods
behind the construction in greater detail. Barthes
clarifies the layers of meaning that lie behind
everyday texts.

3. In 1957, the cultural theorist Roland Barthes wrote
an essay, entitled “The World of Wrestling“ which analyzes
and essentially criticizes many things from the world of
wrestling. One of the first things that will draw your attention
is that Barthes calls wrestling in the professional sense a
spectacle and not a sport.

4. Barthes’ essay examines wrestling in light of the theatre,
and wrestling being a theatrical act. Like theatre, wrestling
is based upon a sign system. Each element of wrestling,
whether the wrestler’s physique or his gestures indicate an
“absolute clarity, since [the spectator] must always
understand everything on the spot” (20).

5. In the theatre, the private becomes public; in wrestling the
“Exhibition of Suffering’’ is the very aim of the fight (22).
Like the theatre, the public watches wrestling for the “great
spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice. As in the
theatre, “wrestling presents man’s suffering with all the
amplification of tragic masks” (23).

6. The comparisons to theatre continue as Barthes argues
that wrestling is not a sport but a spectacle, one in which
the audience is not concerned with “what it thinks but what
it sees” (23).

7. He compares wrestling to boxing and judo, which he considers
sports, but unlike sports,wrestling, has no winner (19). It is not
the function of the wrestler to win, “it is to go through the
motions which are expected of him” (20).

8. The bastard or villain is usually the sufferer in wrestling. Barthes
describes how the body of the bastard sums up all of his “actions,
his treacheries, cruelties and acts of cowardice” (23). “The physique
of the wrestlers therefore constitutes a basic sign, which like a seed
contains the whole fight” (23). The costumes, like those of the
theatre, represent the tragic play of wrestling.

9. According to Barthes, Defeat and Justice go hand in hand.
Defeat is not an “outcome”, but a “display” (21). Defeat of
the bastard “is a purely moral concept: that of justice” (21).
The defeated must deserve the punishment (21) which is
why the “crowd is jubilant at seeing the rules broken” (21)
as long as it is just.

10. “In wrestling, nothing exists except in the absolute, there is
not symbol, no allusion, everything is presented exhaustively”
(25). Again, as compared, there is no question of truth, the
spectator just accepts what is presented to them as the way it
is and should be.

11. http://cltrlstdies.blogspot.com/2007/09/world-of-wrestling.html
“ Roland Barthes’ Mythologies: A Summary“. http://gcoon.wordpress.com/ 3 May 2013
http://gcoon.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/roland-barthes-mythologies-a-summary/
Works Cited/ Consulted
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies France: Editions de Seuil, 1957.
“Abstract of Roland Barthes’ The World of Wrestling”. http://cltrlstdies.blogspot.com/.2 May
2013