Kayfabe

I’ve posted this little vignette once or twice on FB because it tickled me so much back in the early 2000’s. I mention this fact just so that you know my recounting it here is purposeful rather than a sign of progressive neuro-degenerative disease inflicted by drink, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and age.

I was driving to work one morning when I came upon an old, beaten-up, pick-up truck with a bumper sticker that read, “Wrestling is Real. Everything Else is Fake.” It made me chortle and put me in a good mood to arrive at work that morning.

Of course, like a good movie, wrestling on TV is a story. The wrestlers (actors) are meant to play their parts as if everything in the story is real – the conflicts, vendettas, and so forth. And it is so even if the outcome of the match is predetermined. The punches, locks, and the musculoskeletal strains and injuries, of course, are real.

The idea of sticking to the plot of the story so that the audience can suspend disbelief is called kayfabe. And it is expected that wrestlers, as professional actors, will stay in character. To break kayfabe would be akin to Superman looking at the audience and saying something like, “What the hell are you idiots thinking? Nobody can shoot x-rays from their eyes!” It just isn’t done.

This brings me to Donald John Trump whose entire life has been an act – kayfabe. He was doing it as his father’s legacy – claiming that he was a self-made man when in reality he had inherited his wealth. He was doing it as a real-estate persona who parlayed his acting skill and confidence act into enormous loans. He re used it as guile in cheating on his taxes, claiming assets that he didn’t have, ripping off contractors and workers, and appearing on Forbes list of the wealthiest people. The Apprentice was one big exercise in kayfabe – acting the part of a competent mogul who assigned tasks to his minions and when displeased by their performance, or lack thereof, pronounced their sentence, “You’re Fired.”

What is amazing about Trump’s life-long performance is that so many of his TV viewers suspended disbelief so completely that they bought his political rally kayfabe that he was a self-made billionaire who was going to finance his own election and was going to fix everything because only he knew how to fix it. They believed that he was going to create more jobs than any other President, etc. It was all a performance. It was all bullshit. When he addressed the United Nations General Assembly and claimed to be the best American President ever, the attendees laughed at him. They didn’t buy the kayfabe.

So here we are today. There is a huge part of the American electorate that is in his thrall. They have bought Trump’s lies because he has become so good at staying in character. They have, to their own peril and ours, suspended rational disbelief.

They believe that the wrestling is real, and everything else is fake. Alas! 🙁