ABSTRACT
The video I am watching on YouTube right now is shaky and out of focus – all par for the course when it comes to amateur footage of ticketed events sneakily recorded on mobile phones, no doubt, but still, it feels illicit, and disorientingly so. It’s like I shouldn’t be watching it. But then, the video does depict a crime taking place. The scene of this crime is an indoor volleyball arena in São Paulo, which in May 2012 hosted a WWE “house show.” Chris Jericho, in the ring prior to a match with CM Punk, holds the Brazilian national flag aloft and slowly shows it to all four sides of the seated audience, receiving cheers and applause. Then he screws it up, drops it on the floor and gives it a kick for good measure. The boos are deafening and sustained – a strange surplus of negative energy? – and, in this video, a man gives Jericho a vigorous thumbs-down, while somebody possibly shouts “Fuck you!”2
