Dispatches from the Wrestling Underground: Randy Orton and the Anti-Hero

Columns, Features, Top Story

A recent article by an author for the website SLAM! Wrestling recently examined Randy Orton’s face turn:

Orton just isn’t a babyface

The article in question outlines why the author feels Orton’s face turn is not working. At the forefront is the assertion that Orton’s character is still too selfish and reacts too much like a heel. The author explains that without any redeeming qualities Orton won’t fully connect with WWE’s audience. While this kind of thinking is nothing new, it is inherently flawed.

American pop culture has been littered for decades with both heroes exemplifying redeeming character traits and anti-heroes that have little to nothing respectable to show about themselves. This latter group has arguably usurped the traditional hero today as the most popular character archetype for modern protagonists in almost all forms of media, ranging from one of literature’s best-known examples in Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye to one of the film industry’s first true rejections of the Western myth, and its traditional hero, in The Man With No Name. Wrestling too has a long history of somewhat despicable men becoming its most beloved stars, the two most notable examples being WWE’s own Steve Austin and The Rock.

The reason these characters tend to capture the imagination is for the exact reason the author of the article is confounded: they reject most modern ideas of acceptable behavior or morality; Caulfield as a youth outwardly rejecting adulthood, the Man With No Name as little more than a lucky bandit, and Austin and Rock as full-scale sociopaths with egomaniacal tendencies. These characters are loved because they represent everything they are a contrast to — the John Waynes and Hulk Hogans of the world that always follow the rules and do what society expects of them. Steve Austin was just as likely to attack his own partner, or even Santa Claus, without provocation or even a valid reason beyond just wanting to. The fans could live vicariously through this character and pretend they too could go around attacking their boss or annoying co-workers without any repercussions.

Randy Orton is drawing on the same concepts as these characters. In fact, Orton has gotten over by being the anti-Cena. For almost five years now WWE’s audience has enjoyed a second coming of Hulk Hogan in John Cena, a smiling, virtuous babyface that always does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. In stark contrast to that, Randy Orton has been all raging iD; he doesn’t care about anyone but himself, his every action has been done in pursuit of his desires, and he has an outright comical disregard for proportionality when meting out those actions (i.e. attempting to blow up John Cena to win a title). Basically, Randy Orton is another full-scale sociopath. And that’s exactly why the fans love him.

What eventually ruined characters like the Rock or Austin is when WWE stopped allowing them to act as they naturally would and forced “redeeming qualities” on them, such as when the Rock inexplicably started acknowledging Mick Foley as his friend (and helping to get him reinstated in the company after being screwed by the McMahon/Helmsley faction) after months of treating the character like garbage; part of what made the Rock/Foley dynamic great was Rock’s absolute contempt for Foley, feeling the manchild was a nuisance and beneath him. It seems, actually, the idea of a redeeming quality is being confused for a character flaw which can help empathize despicable characters to an audience over the long-term when the cheap thrill of amoral behavior wears off.

The greatest example of this is ECW’s greatest anti-hero, The Sandman, a character that drew his original appeal from being a callous asshole that enjoyed hurting people. The character was both physically tough and mentally represented such an extreme careless disregard for society that little could be done to damage him physically or toy with him mentally. He would be hit with any weapon yet keep coming, and when an opponent tried to get inside his head by sleeping with his wife, he proudly responded that he didn’t care because he had already “pimped her out to half the locker room.” The only dent in his armor came when another wrestler manipulated his son, the only person he legitimately cared about besides himself, to turn against him. While a father’s love could be seen as redeeming, it wasn’t being used in the traditional sense of “babyface runs out to save former rivals just because it’s the right thing.” Sandman was still the same callous asshole that enjoyed hurting people, and the introduction of his son actually encouraged his bloodlust as it allowed him to take greater pleasure in hurting Raven and his cronies. But it also presented a humanizing flaw for a character that until then was almost invincible.

While it’s understandable that Randy Orton’s character could use character flaws to help develop his face run, adding redeeming or outwardly heroic characteristics to his character would only derail the momentum he has and cheapen what is one of the more unique characters in wrestling today. The fans began cheering for Orton because he wasn’t the hero they were being offered, but rather because he was the anti-hero they wanted.