As young teenagers, my brother and I watched a lot of professional wresting. I still remember the wrestler Mad Dog Vachon. Wrestling brought kayfabe into my life. TV scaled the delivery of wrestling bringing it into the lives of millions of people.
In professional wrestling, kayfabe (pronounced KAY-fayb; IPA: Template:IPA) refers to the portrayal of events within the industry as real, that is the portrayal of professional wrestling as not staged or worked. Referring to events as kayfabe means that they are worked events, and/or part of a wrestling storyline. In relative terms, a wrestler breaking kayfabe during a show would be likened to an actor breaking character on camera…
Pro wrestling can trace some of its stylistic origins back to carnivals and Catch Wrestling, where the term “kayfabe” is thought to have originated as carny slang for “protecting the secrets of the business.” The term “kayfabe” itself may ultimately originate from the Pig Latin form of “fake” (“ake-fay”) or the phrase “be fake.”
Kayfabe may also derive from another trick used by traveling carnival workers. With money tight, a carny would call home collect and ask for “Kay Fabian.” This was code letting the people at home know they had made it safely to the next town without paying for the cost of a phone call.
The authors of this short film explore the relationship between authenticity, media (TV, social media) and politics, through an analogy with professional wrestling; the performance of a simulation and one we all know is fake.
Video no longer available //www.youtube.com/embed/KqJ5lRa_bj4?wmode=opaque&enablejsapi=1
Support the production of future episodes, and the SCHISM feature film: https://www.patreon.com/schismfilm. The term ‘kayfabe’ originated as carny slang: a w…
There is a clear circle of dependencies. Wrestling cannot exist without a large audience. A large audience cannot exist without media. TV / social media producers will not deliver the material without sponsorship. Sponsors will not support material without a sufficiently large audience.
The problem is when kayfabe enters politics. The problem is that we, the audience, let it.
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