ABSTRACT

ITV wrestling may be a relatively innocuous example of this, but the author argues that the same mechanism is behind the phenomenal global reach of Vince McMahon's great commercial empire, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), with its shows now watched regularly by 60 million viewers in 90 countries. The WWE is peculiarly self-conscious about the manipulation of the dynamics of outrage but the same rhetorical and theatrical devices are at work in the way that violence is encouraged, condoned and justified in American foreign policy. It falls to God's role at times to inflict such a final outrage on Israel's enemies, or on Israel itself when it is rebellious. It is instructive to see how the WWE management deals with unplanned and genuine horror and outrage which breaks into its world of cultivated outrage. The breaching of the rules about physical violence or the sexual innuendo of the shows is allowable as long as it can be contained in the ring.