This reading dealt with the development of professional wrestling, it’s connection to the South, and how it propelled stereotypes of Southern people into popular culture. “Early southern stereotypes tended toward either the Tobacco Road and Deliverance view of the white South as home to a class of degenerate subnormal’s capable of horrific violence or the popular romantic primitivism of the hillbilly uncorrupted by modern civilization best depicted in 1960s television programs like Hee Haw and The Beverly Hillbillies. Haystacks Calhoun, a 601-pound “mammoth super heavyweight” from Morgan’s Corner, Arkansas, who wrestled in knee-length overalls, was a crowd favorite in Virginia and the Carolinas in the 1960’s.” This quote stuck out to me while reading because of it’s point of “romantic primitivism”, which is then further displayed in the “sports entertainment” that is professional wrestling. Though Southern had a long connection to wrestling, the sport lagged behind in with wrestling events taking place throughout the south, sometimes breaking out in the streets. The sport was seen as a family event with the controlled environment and wacky characters fun for everyone. Regionally, southerners connected more with wrestling, though the sport expanding into the north and had a short lived success there. When the sport finally migrated back south in the 1970’s, Dusty Rhodes continued the trend of the 1970’s of portraying southerners as having strong American ideals. Though he was still seen as a “good ol’ boy”, the hard working character fought against villains that threated the way of life of Americans. These types of wrestlers helped the sport gain massive popularity in the south, but also promoted the stereotypes that some in the South want to stray away from. At the central of the sport is extreme exaggeration of stereotypes and creation of wacky characters, and the way the Southern U.S gets portrayed in popular culture was a perfect catalyst for wrestling to take advantage of. The quote above captures those stereotypes well, but this article seems to get readers to believe that these stereotypes have evaporated since after the sports massive expansion in the 1980’s, however I think it would be forgetting those in Southern wrestling who used these stereotypes to an advantage to propel the sport to new heights in the South.
