Heroes, villains, and other less distinguishable characters
This one is about pro-wrestling and wikipedia
I’m trying something new for a little bit. I hope you like it!
I went to library school, which means, primarily, that I have edited Wikipedia pages a greater than average amount. I have been in lectures many, many times about how Wikipedia works, and I have done my duty in quite a few edit-a-thons. I love Wikipedia. I use it a lot. However, as I started to get interested in professional wrestling, and especially Japanese pro-wrestling, I have encountered, again and again, the limits of Wikipedia’s usefulness.
Wikipedia, despite some reputational difficulties, is mostly written and edited, not by fanatics who are interested in a specific noun (or are themselves the noun in question), but rather people who are scrupulously devoted to rules, and who apply those rules within an area they are generally interested in. If you think, for example, that Shaun King’s wikipedia is mostly edited either by his fans or detractors, you would be wrong. The person who removed most of the controversies section was one of the primary early authors of the page. It’s not Shaun King, it is, in fact, someone who is dedicated to writing biographies of living persons. This editor removed the bulk of the controversies, not because they like Shaun King so much, but because they didn’t think the sourcing was great, and that a lot of it was repetitive. I know this editor is not Shaun King because they made Wiki pages for every incoming member of the Delaware state senate in 2020. Their name is Wallyfromdilbert.
The scrupulous and law-abiding nature of the average Wikipedia editor is, in fact, where the issue arises. Wrestling is, famously, fake. But as with any fiction, it is created. It is created by people, who work very hard, and deserve credit for the fiction that they have created, but pro-wrestling is not about attribution. One of the things that distinguishes the narrative aspects of pro-wrestling from any other time-based art is that it is created in secrecy, and that the secrecy is the point. It is supposed to remain that way. In wrestling you probably won’t see anything like Jonathan Larson’s (that’s the guy from Rent) dramaturg (the person who helps make your play better) coming forward after the fact to say “I made this so much better that my name should be on it.” While this sort of thing may or may not happen within companies, or between workers, this isn’t the sort of drama that wrestling fans typically become aware of.
The secret nature of narrative production in pro-wrestling means that the “news outlets” that cover pro-wrestling are often covering storylines (the ones performed by “heroes, villains, and other less distinguishable characters”). There are publications that operate almost completely within the realm of fiction, but are treated, by Wikipedia editors, as valid, because they fit the mold of a legacy publication. There’s a publication in Japan called Tokyo Sports that operates basically like the 1930s Hollywood gossip rags, in that every story is a plant by a company that serves to advance a storyline. This doesn’t translate to English Wikipedia editors though, because Tokyo Sports also seems to publish plenty of Real News about Real Sports, so it’s assumed that the news about fake sports is also real. There are, on the other hand, blogs that people maintain that catalog mundane things like “when did X wrestler first appear in X company” that are treated by Wikipedia as invalid because they are hosted on blogs. It’s annoying. It’s annoying to me, personally, because one of my favorite wrestlers doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, and I think he deserves it, but it’s also annoying because the scrupulous editing of Wikipedia in general means that things come to be accepted as true if they are written there (much as with any other Authoritative Resource, we all know Wikipedia is basically the Encyclopedia Brittanica at this point, whatever), but because of the strict rules about sourcing, what winds up being presented as fact in Wikipedia is actually a storyline.
It’s a complicated issue, but it also seems really right for the Wikipedia pages of wrestlers and pro-wrestling companies to be so ambiguously truthful. That is, in a way, the most honest thing that could happen, for a pretend sport that is about telling lies with your body. Wrestling can force us to reflect on what is and isn’t real, on what is and isn’t an “authoritative source,” and what it means to fit that mold. Of course, it is mostly just stupid and fun.
The great thing about pro-wrestling is that you are given a narrative, but in bits and pieces, sometimes over years, and the story is told, mostly, in the ring. What happens within the ring is not really an authoritative source, and yet, it is the only authoritative source on pro-wrestling. What happens during the match is the story, so even if it’s a lie, “a work,” whatever, it’s still the only thing that really happens. This creates a problem with citations, because when there is a match, for example, about who has creative control over the company, the match outcome is recorded, and can become recognized in Wikipedia, as a real fact if that recorded outcome is published somewhere “legitimate.” This isn’t a problem with huge companies like WWE, but it does happen with smaller companies, and companies where all the promotional materials aren’t in English.
Many years ago WWE had a ladder match for the custody of Dominick Mysterio. This, obviously, was not registered in Dominick Mysterio’s personal life section on his Wikipedia page, because of course, there was not a ladder match for the custody of Dominick Mysterio. The audience of English speakers who are editing Wikipedia could tell that this was definitely a work of fiction. But the stories that would be so obviously fictional in the US are treated as absolute truth when they happen abroad, in languages the editors don’t know.
There’s a company in Japan called Tokyo Joshi Pro-Wrestling. Tokyo Joshi is a company where women wrestle (no men, please do not ask any questions about Martha, I have another post I’m planning about Martha) and it is run by a man who is famously really into idols.
Japanese idols are really complex, and something that I still don’t particularly understand, but the thing that matters most for us, right now, is that historically girl group idols had the three famous rules: no smoking, no drinking, and no boyfriends. These have also been called the “three taboos.” When Tokyo Joshi, the idol inspired pro-wrestling group started, they adopted these rules as well. At least, that’s what it says on Wikipedia.
What it says on Wikipedia is that the company started with the three rules in 2013, and that in 2018 the rules were ended. It doesn’t say anything else about the heavily contested issue of whether or not the wrestlers could date (or drink, or smoke), which played roles in a number of storylines throughout the company’s history.
Wikipedia doesn’t say what led to Tokyo Joshi ending the three taboos. In March of 2018, Rika Tatsumi went onto a talk show and told everyone that she knew there were rules against boyfriends, but… did those rules apply to girlfriends? Tatsumi said that she had a crush on another woman on the roster, Mizuki, and wanted to know if she could date her. (This is of course irrelevant, because Mizuki is really busy holding hands and doing synchronized breathing with another woman on the roster so I don’t think she’s really in the market for a girlfriend.)
Wikipedia also doesn’t say that in October of 2018 a council on the three taboos was held, and that the future of dating in Tokyo Joshi was decided. In case you were worried, it’s okay, they can date now. I can’t find footage of the council, it’s hard to find, really, anything about this storyline, but there’s a single tweet about it.
In a way, this storyline (which I think it was, but who knows, maybe it wasn’t) becoming enshrined as Absolute Fact on Wikipedia is how this should be. After all, it was presented as absolute fact, who are we to doubt the artists? And yet, when it is presented this way, the other absolute fact, that it was a storyline, and a very funny storyline at that, is erased. Wrestling is, after all, a time based art, in a really pure sense. Plays can be performed again and again, but in wrestling each match, each story, only happens once. In wrestling, the story happens in the time in the ring, the time itself can be an element of the story.
Wrestling is no fun unless you decide to accept that the story is real. The most honest way to engage as a fan is by forgetting, mythologizing, misremembering and telling lies about what happened, that way you are a part of the story too. Wikipedia doing the mythologizing for us is as it should be, and also as it shouldn’t be, but then again, all encyclopedias are kind of fake, right?
Anyway, here’s a recipe from the Woks of Life I’ve been making a lot recently. It’s for five spice tofu with garlic chives and it’s really tasty. It wouldn’t work with regular tofu, but House Foods makes tofu cutlets that I have found before in regular grocery stores. They aren’t quite the same but would probably work well. I’ve had it as a side to pan fried noodles (perhaps my favorite food of all time) but it’s also good with rice (what isn’t?).
I’ve been feeling less than inspired about food and food writing recently, but have a lot of thoughts about pro-wrestling that I can’t seem to contain, so I’ll probably be sharing a bit more writing about that. Idk, I’m not a sports writer, so we’ll see.