I don’t follow professional wrestling for a multitude of reasons - I don’t have enough time to get into its complex and arcane narratives, I don’t particularly enjoy the increasingly graphic nature of its violence, and it’s simply never been something that’s piqued my interest (unlike the other, lesser-heralded predetermined-results ’sports entertainment,’ monster-truck racing, which completely captured my attention for a few weekends when I was seven or eight.) I do enjoy playing my friend Keith’s wrestling video game, and I’ve gotten so that I’m pretty good at it, whenever I visit him in San Antonio.

But I do respect wrestling, which is not something a lot of people I know do, because I find it fascinating. Professional wrestling, and especially the insanely operatic form of wrestling pioneered by Vince McMahon and the WWE, is pretty much the most popular melodrama in America, and has been for a long time. WWE is entirely in tune with the melodramatic tradition, focusing on dynamic moral oppositions, tableaux, dramatic reversals, and unlikely events as its chief narrative elements. There are lantern-jawed heroes, mustache-twirling villains, and damsels in distress (who can kick your ass). The only thing missing is some rope and a railroad track. And those of you who know me know I love nothing more than honest-to-goodness old fashioned melodrama. Short of daytime TV, there’s no place else in the world you can get more unbridled melodrama than in wrestling.

So when real life gets in the way of ‘kayfabe’ - an old vaudeville-derived term signifying the illusory narrative continuity of the wrestling universe - it’s always fascinating for me to reflect on professional wrestling and its place in our culture. The recently announced death of wrestler Chris Benoit and his family is such an instance, joining quite a few recent deaths in the wrestling world (mostly former wrestlers, but we’re still less than a decade than the dramatic death of Owen Hart, who fell 78 feet to his death when the early release mechanism on a harness snapped), and it’s illustrative of larger discursive questions regarding wrestling. Namely, given the strong connection between reality and kayfabe (where real-life incidents are often worked into the ongoing narratives), at what point does kayfabe begin to interact with and disrupt reality?

Well, here’s an instance: I thought it was fake.

And why not? After all, Vince McMahon, WWE Chairman and the greatest mustache-twirling villain of them all, ‘died’ recently as part of an ongoing plot. That McMahon had obviously intended to resurrect himself later is without doubt, but the oblique nature of WWE’s discourse concerning McMahon’s death - seen in press releases, faked documents, and other materials - made initial reports of Benoit’s death suspect. After all, Benoit’s wife, who also died under the still-undisclosed conditions that took Chris’s life, was also a figure in professional wrestling, Benoit’s manager and a constant ringside presence (though never a narrative figure, at least in WWE - she had previously participated in ECW and WCW).

Tonight’s episode of Raw was cancelled for an extended tribute to Benoit, showing testimonials from friends, highlights from his greatest matches, and assorted ephemera. McMahon, character and professional figurehead of American wrestling, was forced to break kayfabe and discuss the crippling loss the WWE felt from the tragic death of one of its stars (Benoit had been slated for a pay-per-view match for the championship in coming weeks). Like the old vaudevillians would have, the cast of America’s enduring melodrama came together and mourned as a family.

Edit: Well, this was a pretty little post, but now reports are coming out that suggest this was a case of double-murder suicide, with Benoit killing his wife and child over the weekend and himself today. “Instruments of death” - a phrase horrifying precisely because of its imprecision - were reportedly found at the scene, and if these reports are true, then the story becomes an even grimmer encapsulation of the muddied space between reality and kayfabe. Tasteless though it may be in their family’s time of grief, I suggest it is perhaps not surprising that an overpaid pituitary case whose life, by his own admission, was centered around a perpetually darker narrative of violent melodrama, might commit such a heinous act. That he took his wife and young child with him is simply stomach-churning.

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