Greetings,
On Monday, Americas swore in our 47the president. I try to stay away from empty politics in this column and focus on deeper issues, but in inauguration week what else is there to talk about? There’s nothing more consequential for our democracy than the peaceful transfer of power (something we’ve done successfully in 73 out of 74 attempts) but it’s dressed up with over-the-top flag waving, parades, gushing sycophants, and rabid detractors. People in almost every political system are familiar with this difference between the vapid public performance of politics and the ugly sausage-making they do behind the scenes, even if we don’t dwell on it. But I learned a new word this week that gave me a new way to see this dichotomy… the lens of kayfabe.
“Kayfabe” (rhymes with “hey babe”) may sound like a crypto-currency website, but it has roots at least 40 years old and some go all the way back to carnival side-show days. Kayfabe comes from the world of professional wrestling and refers to the unwritten agreement between the wrestlers and audience to pretend wrestling is real even though everyone knows it’s not. It’s more than the willful suspension of disbelief required during any theater experience, it goes beyond the performance and into the wider world.
Kayfabe was a new word to me but when I Googled it I quickly learned just how many people knew it already, and how deep the concept is. I learned about the ‘faces’ and ‘heels’ (good and bad characters) and the ‘turns’ between them, the ‘marks’ (audience), and ‘heat’ (audience support). I learned that a ‘shoot’ was when reality accidentally peeked out from behind the curtain. I learned how important it was to ‘keep kayfabe’ (stay in character) not just in the ring but outside it in venues like interviews, podcasts, and even private lives. Wrestlers could drink together or even get married outside the ring, but the marks better not see them doing it!
And I learned that today’s wrestling enthusiasts mourn the loss of kayfabe. For decades the WWF (now WWE) had successfully worked to consolidate all the old-style, small, regional wrestling leagues under one umbrella. When Vince McMahon bought it in the 90’s, WWF was facing inquires about regulations and taxes relevant to sporting events. To avoid meeting these regulations Vince chose to commit the ultimate sin by ‘breaking kayfabe’. He admitted that wrestling wasn’t real and began calling the product ‘sports entertainment’. But the marks wouldn’t buy the steak without the sizzle and WWE floundered for several years.
Enter ‘neo-kayfabe’, which expanded the story beyond the ring. Wrestlers began bringing events, fictional or not, from the real world into their ring performances. From the book Ringmaster… “An owner might direct a wrestler to pretend he’s going rogue against the company in an outrageous monologue, then tell gullible journalists that he’s in big trouble with his employer, all to juice interest in what might happen next on the show. You knew wrestling was usually fake, but maybe this thing you were seeing, right now, was, in some way, real. Suddenly, the fun of the match had everything to do with decoding it.”
Once you look through the lens of kayfabe you can see it everywhere. Sports rivalries, celebrity feuds, corporate competitions, even financial hype machines all have a tint of kayfabe, but perhaps there’s no more dangerous place to blur reality than our political system. On some level, we know (and have always known) our votes don’t determine policy; at best they determine the players. Yet still we vote, and we should. Throughout human history political leaders have portrayed themselves as ‘faces’ fighting against evil ‘heels’, even when the good or evil of either side wasn’t always as clear as they wanted us to believe. Yet we still have friends and enemies at home and around the world and must deal with them differently. Kayfabe necessarily taints every politician on every point on the political spectrum, yet we still have enough shoots to make educated guesses to guide our political decisions.
If my goal in these columns is to look past the surface to the deeper issues then kayfabe may be the best way to think of it. Our politicians pose and our pundits preach and just like in professional wrestling, some fans can’t tell the difference between the show and the reality. But there’s elements of both in everything. It’s up to us ‘marks’ to see through the kayfabe dressing to the reality beneath.
Make a great day,
