“The Wrestler”: Real World is Faker Than Wrestling

By Vincenzo Esposito

Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is an aged wrestler whose glory days are long gone. At the end of the movie we see him on the top turnbuckle, ready to show off his best aerial technique, a trademark that usually results in a win. He’s going to deliver the last “Ram Jam”, a free fall headbutt. He has fought a match through intense pain. Now he’s tired and wants to leave: He leaps from the ring ropes and disappears off-screen; the shot cuts to black and The Wrestler ends up, leaving the audience in the trusted hands of Bruce Springsteen, whose eponymous closing song gives light to the darkness, and turns the off-screen into a clear Steinbeckian in-screen image. “Have you ever seen a one trick pony in the field so happy and free/If you've ever seen a one trick pony then you've seen me/Have you ever seen a one legged dog makin' his way down the street/If you've ever seen a one legged dog then you've seen me”, sings Springsteen; but it’s Randy’s “acousmatic” voice speaking, and explaining how an over-the-hill wrestler feels after diving into the extra-diegetic “real world”. He feels free and happy, but he’s only “a one trick pony in the field…a one legged dog makin' his way down the street”. A deformed character, exactly like those drawn by John Steinbeck. On the contrary, “in the ring, and even in the depths of their voluntary ignominy, 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 a Justice which is at last intelligibile”. (Roland Barthes, "The World of Wrestling", in Mythologies). So, what is real? The ring or the deforming world outside? Wrestling is not a competitive sport, everybody knows it. It is just a spectacle of excess, but it is not faker than Soap Operas, Monday Night Football, Reality Televison Shows, or Premier League Matches. It’s more complicated than mere fakery, because as Mick Foley - champion of some wrestling bestsellers - would say: “The Real World is Faker Than Wrestling”. And this is what Darren Aronofsky’s movie seems to state, whether you like it or not. The Wrestler is a pic shot in a '70s handheld style, which tells the story of man who defines himself "a broken-down piece of meat": an expired product of the Reaganomics, consumed by the false values (and the mediocre music) of the 80s; a relict who thinks that the beginning of the fall is in “the '90s fuckin' sucked”, and has now been relegated to the edge of the Obamanomics crisis. “Wrestling holds the power of transmutation, which is common to Religious Worship”, writes Roland Barthes; There is no doubt that Randy’s metaphysical signs (his countless of scars and injuries) have the power to transform a piece of tortured body into a page of American History. Over the course of 25 years he has learned how to perform predetermined moves and make them real in front of the crowd (and the camera!). And they are as vivid as the New Jersey trailer park where he lives, the crappy supermarket where he works during the week, the impossibile relationship with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), the stripper (the magnificent Marisa Tomei) to whom he has affection for, the game of Nintendo with which he plays… As vivid as the fucking fake Reagan totems!

[Watch Bruce Springsteen at The Golden Globes]