Mick Foley\u27s Mankind and the Performance of Mental Illness in Professional Wrestling

Professional wrestling, as a form of scripted entertainment, has relied on gimmicks and narratives that reinforce and glorify stereotypes related to mental illness. While scholars have studied stereotypes in professional wrestling, most existing work focuses on racial and ethnic stereotypes. Scholarship has also addressed the impacts of violent, theatrical wrestling content on viewers. Professional wrestling uses troubling stereotypes of mental illness to craft dramatic, violent content. Although significant progress has been made in how society understands mental illness, misunderstandings and stigmas persist. For example, individuals suffering from mental illness are often imagined as violent, dangerous, unstable, abnormal, and incapable of forming healthy relationships. Additionally, promos and ringside commentary often supplement stereotypical characterizations by using exaggerated and shocking rhetoric associated with mental illness. These rhetorical strategies include describing wrestlers as deranged, insane, and unhinged. This article analyzes Mick Foley’s wrestling gimmick Mankind as a significant example of a performance of mental illness in professional wrestling. I summarize the origins of the gimmick and describe how the gimmick engages aspects of mental health and mental illness. I reflect on the implications of Foley’s Mankind for wrestling fans and within a broader cultural context where mental health in media is garnering more scholarly attention. This work contributes to a growing body of scholarship on professional wrestling by examining how wrestling uses a widespread public health concern as theatrical material

Depictions of American Indians in George Armstrong Custer’s My Life on the Plains

General George Armstrong Custer remains one of the most iconic and mythologized figures in the history of the American West. His infamous defeat at the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn largely defines his legacy; historical scholarship and popular representations of Custer consistently focus on his “Last Stand.” However, Custer was also a writer with a keen appreciation for arts and culture. This article analyzes Custer’s descriptions of American Indians in his memoir My Life on the Plains (1874). I trace how Custer’s descriptions of Indians and Indian culture clearly reveal a colonial mindset; yet, Custer regularly reflects on Indians and Indian culture with interest, curiosity, and even respect. I analyze these moments of potential commiseration and question whether these moments depart from a colonial mindset. Additionally, I analyze how Custer constructs Indians as the “enemy” and show how these constructions are problematic, yet critical for Custer’s aestheticizing of military conflict. Ultimately, I argue that Custer’s memoir is deserving of increased attention as a literary text and show how to reveal complexities and contradictions with literary and historical implications

Iconic Sports Venues: Persuasion in Public Spaces

Jason McEntee is a contributing author, The Last Palace Standing: Mitchell\u27s Corn Palace and the Rise of an Iconic Sports Venue. , pp.41-65. From the Colosseum of Rome to Wrigley Field and Madison Square Garden, iconic sports venues are larger than life. They often exist in a seemingly sacred space, outside the hustle and bustle of the everyday. At their most basic level, iconic sports venues are revered and idolized. They emanate a sense of persuasion that contributes to how they become meaningful for those who come into contact with them. This book examines how and why iconic sports venues acquire meaning. Looking at different venues, chapters address how the material features of a site participate in the construction of messages and meanings, and how they influence those messages and meanings. Each chapter includes a description of the venue in question; an interpretation of its mystique; and a discussion of the implications of the interpretation. A unique and timely contribution to the fields of composition, persuasion, sport management, sport rhetoric, and communication, the goal of this book is to inspire more scholarly research, essays, and projects focused on the persuasive qualities of sports venues. More broadly, scholars, students, and professionals can use the chapters in this book as models for investigating iconic structures both locally and globally.https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/english_book/1012/thumbnail.jp