ABSTRACT
The culture industry runs sign systems rampant, the projections of its media exacting immeasurable influence on minds young and not so young. It does not discriminate between those possessing innocence and those wanting knowledge in the age of consumer-oriented global economies where the desire for instant gratification is driven by the digital mantra of the day. Popular culture filters through the media the interests and obsessions of an audience yearning for an “ethics of fun” into easily digestible forms of entertainment not always morally sanguine. There is more to professional wrestling than meets the eye. Understanding its appeal, especially to adolescent males—their main market share demographic—but also females spectators is like trying to explain why stopping a person's vehicle to gawk at the morbid aftermath of a car accident is construed as a “natural human response”. It is quite easy to use the Freudian theory of obsessive compulsive behaviour and voyeurism to characterize ongoing psychic state of stereotypical wrestling fan.
