Roland Barthes’ “The World of Wrestling” (1957)
Summary
The whole of Barthes’ essay examines wrestling in light of the theatre, and wrestling being a
theatrical act. Like theatre, wrestling is based upon a sign system. Each element of wrestling,
whether the wrestler’s physique or his gestures indicate an “absolute clarity, since [the spectator]
must always understand everything on the spot” (16). In the theatre, the private becomes public;
in wrestling this “Exhibition of Suffering […] is the very aim of the fight” (19). Like the theatre,
the public watches wrestling for the “great spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice. As in the
theatre, “wrestling presents man’s suffering with all the amplification of tragic masks” (19).
The comparisons to theatre continue as Barthes argues that is not a sport but a spectacle (15) one
in which the audience is not concerned with “what it thinks but what it sees” (15). He compares
wrestling to boxing and judo, which he considers sports, but unlike sports, wrestling, has no
winner (16). It is not the function of the wrestler to win, “it is to go through the motions which
are expected of him” (16).
The bastard or villain is usually the sufferer in wrestling. Barthes describes how the body of
the bastard sums up all of his “actions, his treacheries, cruelties and acts of cowardice” (17).
“The physique of the wrestlers therefore constitutes a basic sign, which like a seed contains the
whole fight” (18). The costumes, like those of the theatre, represent the tragic play of wrestling.
According to Barthes, Defeat and Justice go hand in hand. Defeat is not an “outcome”, but a
“display” (21). Defeat of the bastard “is a purely moral concept: that of justice” (21). The
defeated must deserve the punishment (21) which is why the “crowd is jubilant at seeing the
rules broken” (21) as long as it is just. “In wrestling, nothing exists except in the absolute, there
is not symbol, no allusion, everything is presented exhaustively” (25). Again, as compared, there
is no question of truth, the spectator just accepts what is presented to them as the way it is and
should be.
He is clearly trying to get this point across in his examination of wrestling. Everything about the
wrestler carries a message. The body of the wrestler, Barthes argues, carries the first message.
The repulsiveness of the wrestler, his ugliness and the crowd’s reaction to that reflect on the
characteristics of the wrestler. Even the wrestler’s commentary reflects upon his character, the
gestures he engages in only further represent the character he is meant (assigned) to be.
Barthes argues that French and American wrestling are different in that the “heroes in French
wrestling […are] based on ethics and not on politics” (23). He also states the American wrestling
is based on “a sort of mythological fight between Good and Evil” (23) with the bad wrestler
always some sort of Communist (red dress) But at the end of his essay he states:
In the ring, and even in the depths of their voluntary ignominy, wrestlers remain gods because
they are, for a few moments, the key which opens Nature, the pure gesture which separates Good
from Evil, and unveils the form of a Justice which is at last intelligible.