Wrestling has always had an odd relationship with reality, often times out of necessity. As the “sport†progressed throughout the 20th century, most of its performers fought, many times literally, to keep a shroud of secrecy and legitimacy over it. Workers would engage fans and critics alike in legitimate real-world fights to prove how “real†wrestling was. Eventually, the luster wore off and even wrestling’s most staunch defenders admitted it wasn’t entirely real. But an odd mindset still seems to permeate throughout both wrestling’s fanbase and entertainers. Despite an acknowledgment that wrestling isn’t real, there’s a deathly serious condescension towards the mark.
What is a mark? Who is it?
In carny terms, a mark was the poor sap you were swindling out of his money; an oblivious yokel to be had through a con. Wrestling, being a form entertainment descended in part from the carnies, adopted this term to describe it’s paying fans – an oblivious group all too eager to part with their money to see staged fights. Over time, though, another group spawned off of the traditional mark, a group that was keen to wrestling’s staged nature but still found entertainment in its traditions and complex nature of the matches – the smart mark.
Neither group could be considered better than the other, as they were both still feeding into the notion that the promoters and wrestlers were pulling a con, even if one group was being willfully conned. This idea came to what should have been its natural conclusion in the 1990s when wrestling exposed itself as, as much theater as sport. The smart mark and mark were now both enlightened. Wrestlers even began adopting their real names as their ring names, signifying that at least in some ways the industry was dropping the con.
Somewhere along the way, though, things got blurred again, and today the industry has mired itself in a self-imposed blackout where it refuses to even admit that it already admitted its false nature. Wrestlers shroud themselves again in secrecy, as if the fans don’t know they’re real people; it’s considered an insult to a wrestler if you refer to him/her by his/her real name, even if the company they work for has acknowledged their real name. In any other industry this would be looked at as extremely odd and borderline delusional. TV actors don’t go by their character names in the real world, even if that’s what the entire world knows them as, yet in the world of wrestling performers escape into their personas as if they’ve never been known by anything else.
This sort of skewed perspective on reality in wrestling also extends to the industry’s view of its fans. Where the industry once sought to level the playing field between performer and spectator, it now seeks to place its performers back on a pedestal above its fans. The term mark has creeped back into the vocabulary with an especially condescending attitude in its use. In very few other forms of entertainment is it common to see the stars so openly mock the very people that pay to see them, yet only in a world as strange as wrestling could you witness someone refer to his own fan as a mark.
Even more bizarre, the lack of empathy in the performers is magnified tenfold by the fans themselves. It’s all too common to hear fans calling each other marks in an attempt to question one’s authenticity as a fan, or loyalty to a specific promotion. There’s been a long list of insults to include the E Tards, the ROHbots, ECW mutants, and so on. It’s a natural response to feel a connection with a specific franchise as sports teams with regional affiliations often attract a following in their immediate area, but in an audience that is already looked down in some ways by the very people it idolizes, why do the fans themselves extend such condescension towards each other?
All of these factors combine to create an odd portrait of the wrestling industry. In wrestling, there’s nothing worse than being a mark. Why is this? Most of the wrestlers were themselves once fans so it would seem odd for them to hold a grudge against a group they were once a part of. With the fans, they share a common bond – even if they have an attraction to a specific style or company, all wrestling fans are looked down upon by fans of “real sports.â€
Could the hatred of marks stem from a fear of marginalization? Marks are weak figures conned out of their money by the more intelligent carnies and grifters. To be a mark is to admit weakness. Wrestling is an industry built on the myth of strength – strong men fighting adversity to prove their worth in the world, even if that worth is considered a joke by everyone but the very fans it looks down upon, a group itself that can’t even come to an agreement on that very worth.
This all seems to be the set up for a great joke, an idea so absurd that someone has to have something funny to say about it, only there’s no punch-line to be had because the mark is serious business and we all refuse to laugh at ourselves for even buying into it.
