On Booking - Part 2: the Smart Audience
As the American wrestling scene continues to be dominated by the WWE it’s hard not to see them as representatives of the scene entirely. This represents a number of problems for us as wrestling fans. The biggest problem, of course, is the booking. Who does the WWE creative team want as an audience? Do they want the longtime fans? Do they want a new, hip audience? What demographics are they shooting for? In my views, the WWE is floundering; unable to make a distinction as to which crowd they want.
In this series of articles I will be taking a look at various aspects of what makes a WWE show and the problems with each. These booking aspects are comedy, booking to the smart audience, edginess/traditional booking and pet favorites.
If you wish to read the earlier installment, please click the link below.
Part 1: Comedy
2. Booking to the Smart Audience
Let’s face it: chances are if you’re reading this you are part of the “smart” crowd of wrestling. This automatically means that you are not the intended audience of a WWE program. Despite being the “internet age” there are still plenty of wrestling fans who don’t get online and read the dirt sites or read the dirt sheets with any regularity. Like the majority of the audience, even the casual fan today knows that wrestling is scripted. But the similarities between the audiences ends there.
Wrestling promoters now regularly admit that their shows are scripted during off-camera promos. But a few years ago wrestling audiences were treated with this knowledge during the shows. This treat came to us via Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara. What we’d see in these shows is the Boss gimmick telling workers on camera that they wanted them to lose or sometimes even having workers discuss what they will do in their matches together just before they have their matches.
I don’t think I really need to get into the problem with that type of booking but for clarities sake I will. Actually, I think I do very well need to precisely because it expresses the problem with booking to the smart audience. There is a concept in narrative storytelling called metatext. Metatext, to put it simply, is when the narrative stops addressing the story itself and starts addressing the process behind drafting the story.
We’ve all encountered metatext before whether it was covert such as the author expressing his difficulties in writing through a character or whether it is incredibly over such as with the film Adaptation which was about screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s struggles to adapt an unadaptable book for the big screen. Many people, such as myself, are fans of this literary device while many others are not.
With wrestling metatext can sometimes be unavoidable. It’s a business fueled by testosterone and ego. Wrestlers will sometimes go out and cut a borderline promo on his rival and bring up facts from real life to try to draw heat. The successful promos rely on material that has been in the news recently or will focus on something readily evident to the audience but not focused on in the storylines. The poor ones do not.
The major problem with metatext is that it pulls the viewer out of the experience and forces them to watch from a different perspective. If it isn’t handled with care, the jolt of becoming metatextual can confuse or otherwise put off the viewer from a pleasurable viewing experience. Of course, in rarer cases, it can help bring the viewer into it.
When booking to the smart crowd, a promoter will tend to either live or die by the metatext. The successful bookings that rely on these ideas will merely use the information as a jumping on point. From what could be as innocuous as a throwaway comment in a promo or as involving as a storyline that follows the ideas, a booker has enough rope to either hang himself or build a bridge to the next level in the company.
Years ago, ECW found themselves in a position where their audience were savvy enough to know some ins and outs of the industry. So they did what they had to do to survive: they found new ways to work the audience. Whether it was allowing former WCW or WWF workers to vent on their programming or creating new scenarios and “leaking” reports that an event was “real” they garnered a reputation of “keeping it real”. By using innovative methods a small promotion became one of the most beloved (and missed) promotions of all time.
But where ECW did it well, most every other attempt in the major feds in recent years has failed. Excepting the excellent “Loose Cannon” Brian Pillman angle in WCW, I’d say nearly every attempt to garner this reputation of the real has been a miserable flop. To be fair, sometimes it isn’t the fault of the writers/bookers but sometimes an announcer may have been at fault and, many other times, the workers themselves were unable to sell it.
To book to the smart fans is to handle fine china at the end of a stick; a balance is needed or there will be a mess to sweep away. And when an attempt fails, promoters tend to not hesitate to sweep the mess up under a rug and hope that the fans don’t see it. Problem is, the fans the mess happened to be booked to are the fans who will remember. Excepting a few early examples, WWE seems to have (somewhat) learned this lesson.
Another major problem with metatext is the inherent laziness involved. When WCW was on its sickbed, they tended to be quite lazy in the creative department. Let me illustrate my point: One instance that sticks out is when Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo demanded that Sid Vicious return the WCW Heavyweight Championship to them. Upon Sid’s reluctance to drop the title, Eric quipped “What are you going to do? Stab me with a pair of scissors?”
Let’s examine that a moment. Here we have what is essentially a throwaway line. Not a problem until you consider that it is a throwaway line that only a small percentage of the fan base will understand. Now, this small fan base may be shocked or even appreciate that something is booked for their little group but this group isn’t going to care enough that it will benefit the company. This leaves us with the rest of the viewers. What they get from this is confusion. Why would the heel, with a smirk on his face and bass in his voice, accuse the babyface champion of attacking somebody with a pair of scissors? This isn’t how a face would act. And they certainly never saw this on television. So what you get is the belt being handed over for something only a small part of the viewers understood and a much larger viewership confused.
If this had been at a smaller, more intimate regional or otherwise underground promotion then chances are most of the audience would understand. But this was at the number two promotion in the country. The bookers made the decision to use a very intriguing real life event from the past and trivialize it. Yet in the trivialization, they attach this event to a major moment in the direction of the company. And given the hero/villain roles in the provided example, fans are left to contemplate the characterization they had just been presented.
Sadly, the scissor comment is one example of many. Writers in WWF/E (and WCW when it was around) routinely make the mistake of not considering the implications of metatextual writing. Before committing to this brand of storytelling a writer has a few steps he must consider:
1) Will this help the storyline?
2) If it doesn’t matter for the storyline, will it help with character development?
3) Should the viewership not know the reference will it take away from the show for them?
4) Will my performers effectively sell this?
5) Is there any other course of action I could take?
If the writer have more “No”s than “Yes”es then he needs to explore another direction. But as a creative person the writer should welcome the challenge. An important factor in being a creative writer is being creative. Laziness and shortcuts will only work so far and are generally not an effective foundation to the story being built.
An even more dangerous route to go is to take the real and to draft a long-term storyline around it. As we’ve seen countless times whether it was the Hogan/Kidman feud in WCW or the more recent Matt Hardy/Edge feud, there is far too little room for error in storylines that involve working the real.
These extended storylines tend to involve the same pratfalls as the metatextual throwaway lines but, because the storyline is derived from real situations and conflicts, the presentation needs to be handled with even more care. With the extended meta textual storylines a major problem is following the text too closely and not allowing the workers the levity they would need to bring it to life. It’s understandable that the writers feel the need to make it seem as real as possible so, in their eyes, it is best to present the real in as close a manner as possible. Unfortunately, this seldom, if ever, works.
A key component to writing is to bring out the truth in the given story. Now, something may have “really happened that way” but that doesn’t necessarily follow that it will ring true to an audience. And, usually, it does not. Instead the audience is left with something that seems unbelievable, or worse, something that seems like a static, reproduced photocopy of an original that may have the same characteristics of the source material but is actually dull, lifeless and lacking heart.
With the reality-derivative storyline, one major aspect that is often ignored is that of the announcers. Not to slight anybody, but when it comes to these storylines the people who tend to ruin them the most is the announce team. And this really isn’t their fault. Their role is to sell the action on-screen to the audience at home. Now, when there is a storyline that is not a standard script, then the announcer do need to adjust accordingly. They can’t yell too much but they also can’t get too quiet either. If the script calls for this to be shown on the air then they need to find the right balance for the announcers to perform.
I haven’t got an answer for how this could be done better, I just know it can be. It’s really something that needs worked on and I think the best course of action would be to review tapes of newscasters reporting on major events as they happen. They tend to remain calmer and less secretive. Perhaps that is a direction to go, but again, I can’t say for sure.
[One aspect I haven’t discussed is the political nature of the wrestling industry. Often the promoter will get in the way of the script and use it to push his own favorite stars in spite of the storyline. But this discussion we will leave for another day.]
Metatextual writing is a sometimes important literary device but it isn’t one that can be handled by just anybody. It takes a very capable writer to properly handle it. To be fair, many of my favorite authors have done metatext to less than desirable effects. In a bastard medium such as professional wrestling, you not only have the writers handling the scripted portion but you also have to rely on the performers to make it work, the announcers to further sell it and audience response to give that little extra nudge to the singular viewer. A failure at any one of those stages, especially in the case of metatext, can be very detrimental to the product. If a writer isn’t strong enough to write something convincing, believable and known to the audience then they either need to hand off the responsibilities for the segment to a more capable writer or be creative and find another way to make the angle work.
In this series of articles I will be taking a look at various aspects of what makes a WWE show and the problems with each. These booking aspects are comedy, booking to the smart audience, edginess/traditional booking and pet favorites.
If you wish to read the earlier installment, please click the link below.
Part 1: Comedy
2. Booking to the Smart Audience
Let’s face it: chances are if you’re reading this you are part of the “smart” crowd of wrestling. This automatically means that you are not the intended audience of a WWE program. Despite being the “internet age” there are still plenty of wrestling fans who don’t get online and read the dirt sites or read the dirt sheets with any regularity. Like the majority of the audience, even the casual fan today knows that wrestling is scripted. But the similarities between the audiences ends there.
Wrestling promoters now regularly admit that their shows are scripted during off-camera promos. But a few years ago wrestling audiences were treated with this knowledge during the shows. This treat came to us via Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara. What we’d see in these shows is the Boss gimmick telling workers on camera that they wanted them to lose or sometimes even having workers discuss what they will do in their matches together just before they have their matches.
I don’t think I really need to get into the problem with that type of booking but for clarities sake I will. Actually, I think I do very well need to precisely because it expresses the problem with booking to the smart audience. There is a concept in narrative storytelling called metatext. Metatext, to put it simply, is when the narrative stops addressing the story itself and starts addressing the process behind drafting the story.
We’ve all encountered metatext before whether it was covert such as the author expressing his difficulties in writing through a character or whether it is incredibly over such as with the film Adaptation which was about screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s struggles to adapt an unadaptable book for the big screen. Many people, such as myself, are fans of this literary device while many others are not.
With wrestling metatext can sometimes be unavoidable. It’s a business fueled by testosterone and ego. Wrestlers will sometimes go out and cut a borderline promo on his rival and bring up facts from real life to try to draw heat. The successful promos rely on material that has been in the news recently or will focus on something readily evident to the audience but not focused on in the storylines. The poor ones do not.
The major problem with metatext is that it pulls the viewer out of the experience and forces them to watch from a different perspective. If it isn’t handled with care, the jolt of becoming metatextual can confuse or otherwise put off the viewer from a pleasurable viewing experience. Of course, in rarer cases, it can help bring the viewer into it.
When booking to the smart crowd, a promoter will tend to either live or die by the metatext. The successful bookings that rely on these ideas will merely use the information as a jumping on point. From what could be as innocuous as a throwaway comment in a promo or as involving as a storyline that follows the ideas, a booker has enough rope to either hang himself or build a bridge to the next level in the company.
Years ago, ECW found themselves in a position where their audience were savvy enough to know some ins and outs of the industry. So they did what they had to do to survive: they found new ways to work the audience. Whether it was allowing former WCW or WWF workers to vent on their programming or creating new scenarios and “leaking” reports that an event was “real” they garnered a reputation of “keeping it real”. By using innovative methods a small promotion became one of the most beloved (and missed) promotions of all time.
But where ECW did it well, most every other attempt in the major feds in recent years has failed. Excepting the excellent “Loose Cannon” Brian Pillman angle in WCW, I’d say nearly every attempt to garner this reputation of the real has been a miserable flop. To be fair, sometimes it isn’t the fault of the writers/bookers but sometimes an announcer may have been at fault and, many other times, the workers themselves were unable to sell it.
To book to the smart fans is to handle fine china at the end of a stick; a balance is needed or there will be a mess to sweep away. And when an attempt fails, promoters tend to not hesitate to sweep the mess up under a rug and hope that the fans don’t see it. Problem is, the fans the mess happened to be booked to are the fans who will remember. Excepting a few early examples, WWE seems to have (somewhat) learned this lesson.
Another major problem with metatext is the inherent laziness involved. When WCW was on its sickbed, they tended to be quite lazy in the creative department. Let me illustrate my point: One instance that sticks out is when Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo demanded that Sid Vicious return the WCW Heavyweight Championship to them. Upon Sid’s reluctance to drop the title, Eric quipped “What are you going to do? Stab me with a pair of scissors?”
Let’s examine that a moment. Here we have what is essentially a throwaway line. Not a problem until you consider that it is a throwaway line that only a small percentage of the fan base will understand. Now, this small fan base may be shocked or even appreciate that something is booked for their little group but this group isn’t going to care enough that it will benefit the company. This leaves us with the rest of the viewers. What they get from this is confusion. Why would the heel, with a smirk on his face and bass in his voice, accuse the babyface champion of attacking somebody with a pair of scissors? This isn’t how a face would act. And they certainly never saw this on television. So what you get is the belt being handed over for something only a small part of the viewers understood and a much larger viewership confused.
If this had been at a smaller, more intimate regional or otherwise underground promotion then chances are most of the audience would understand. But this was at the number two promotion in the country. The bookers made the decision to use a very intriguing real life event from the past and trivialize it. Yet in the trivialization, they attach this event to a major moment in the direction of the company. And given the hero/villain roles in the provided example, fans are left to contemplate the characterization they had just been presented.
Sadly, the scissor comment is one example of many. Writers in WWF/E (and WCW when it was around) routinely make the mistake of not considering the implications of metatextual writing. Before committing to this brand of storytelling a writer has a few steps he must consider:
1) Will this help the storyline?
2) If it doesn’t matter for the storyline, will it help with character development?
3) Should the viewership not know the reference will it take away from the show for them?
4) Will my performers effectively sell this?
5) Is there any other course of action I could take?
If the writer have more “No”s than “Yes”es then he needs to explore another direction. But as a creative person the writer should welcome the challenge. An important factor in being a creative writer is being creative. Laziness and shortcuts will only work so far and are generally not an effective foundation to the story being built.
An even more dangerous route to go is to take the real and to draft a long-term storyline around it. As we’ve seen countless times whether it was the Hogan/Kidman feud in WCW or the more recent Matt Hardy/Edge feud, there is far too little room for error in storylines that involve working the real.
These extended storylines tend to involve the same pratfalls as the metatextual throwaway lines but, because the storyline is derived from real situations and conflicts, the presentation needs to be handled with even more care. With the extended meta textual storylines a major problem is following the text too closely and not allowing the workers the levity they would need to bring it to life. It’s understandable that the writers feel the need to make it seem as real as possible so, in their eyes, it is best to present the real in as close a manner as possible. Unfortunately, this seldom, if ever, works.
A key component to writing is to bring out the truth in the given story. Now, something may have “really happened that way” but that doesn’t necessarily follow that it will ring true to an audience. And, usually, it does not. Instead the audience is left with something that seems unbelievable, or worse, something that seems like a static, reproduced photocopy of an original that may have the same characteristics of the source material but is actually dull, lifeless and lacking heart.
With the reality-derivative storyline, one major aspect that is often ignored is that of the announcers. Not to slight anybody, but when it comes to these storylines the people who tend to ruin them the most is the announce team. And this really isn’t their fault. Their role is to sell the action on-screen to the audience at home. Now, when there is a storyline that is not a standard script, then the announcer do need to adjust accordingly. They can’t yell too much but they also can’t get too quiet either. If the script calls for this to be shown on the air then they need to find the right balance for the announcers to perform.
I haven’t got an answer for how this could be done better, I just know it can be. It’s really something that needs worked on and I think the best course of action would be to review tapes of newscasters reporting on major events as they happen. They tend to remain calmer and less secretive. Perhaps that is a direction to go, but again, I can’t say for sure.
[One aspect I haven’t discussed is the political nature of the wrestling industry. Often the promoter will get in the way of the script and use it to push his own favorite stars in spite of the storyline. But this discussion we will leave for another day.]
Metatextual writing is a sometimes important literary device but it isn’t one that can be handled by just anybody. It takes a very capable writer to properly handle it. To be fair, many of my favorite authors have done metatext to less than desirable effects. In a bastard medium such as professional wrestling, you not only have the writers handling the scripted portion but you also have to rely on the performers to make it work, the announcers to further sell it and audience response to give that little extra nudge to the singular viewer. A failure at any one of those stages, especially in the case of metatext, can be very detrimental to the product. If a writer isn’t strong enough to write something convincing, believable and known to the audience then they either need to hand off the responsibilities for the segment to a more capable writer or be creative and find another way to make the angle work.
posted by Stefan at 1:49 PM
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