Abstract
Donald Trump has enjoyed a nearly 30-year relationship with World Wrestling Entertainment as a business partner, fan, in-ring performer and 2013 Hall of Fame Inductee. Noting this long running involvement, it has become a widespread contention that Trump’s style as a political campaigner owes a debt to his experiences within the world of professional wrestling. Taking such claims seriously, this article argues that an engagement with concepts developed within professional wrestling studies would benefit political studies by offering new analytical approaches for the study of the political phenomenon that is Donald Trump. Providing a brief introduction to professional wrestling studies, this article outlines how the concepts of kayfabe, smart fandom and marking out help address a key question for political scholars: how to explain a cynical American electorate’s engagement with and emotional investment in the campaign of such an obvious political fraudster.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 47-61 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Political Studies Review |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 4 Nov 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2022 |
Funding
This article grew out of conversations at the 2017 Rhetoric Society of Europe (RSE) Conference and special thanks go to Dimitris Akrivoulis and James Martin for their encouragement to tackle this topic. Thanks also to Peter Allen, Andre Barrinha, Brad Evans, Deivi Norberg, Melina Bangert and Peter Walsh for their valuable comments on multiple versions of this article. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Keywords
- Donald Trump
- US Politics
- professional wrestling
- ideology
- political campaigning
- pro-wrestling
- US presidents