Kayfabe

 De suspensie of disbelief in. Wrestle mania en nu ook in andere situaties nyt 12aug

From pro wrestling’s very beginning, as a circus sideshow in the late 19th century, it has rarely been a legitimate athletic competition. Unlike the wrestling one might see in a school athletics meet or at the Olympics, the outcome of a pro wrestling match is determined ahead of time. The storylines and trash-talking monologues are crafted by writers. The most famous wrestlers — people like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John Cena and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin — are often performing wild exaggerations of their own personalities. The grappling action between the combatants is a cooperative, semi-choreographed illusion of superhuman strength and impossible-seeming pain. Pro wrestling is, to answer a still-recurring question from outsiders, fake.

 never to be intentionally acknowledged to the public.

puppet-masters, giving wrestlers their marching orders about whom they had to pretend to be furious at for the next show

ze weten best dat het nep is, maar enthusiasts didn’t care that it wasn’t on the level; they loved the personalities and the spectacle, and they longed to lose themselves in the illusion. They wanted to believe. Whether out of pride or shame, fans would rarely acknowledge to detractors that their beloved “sport” was fixed. 

neokayfabe: doen alsof de twee spelers echte ruzie hebben, verwijzen naar het privémoeilijkheden van een van de spelers, zodat mensen weer belangstelling krijgen en het lijkt alsof er wel degleijk iets op het spel staat.

Old kayfabe was built on the solid, flat foundation of one big lie: that wrestling was real. Neokayfabe, on the other hand, rests on a slippery, ever-wobbling jumble of truths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods, all delivered with the utmost passion and commitment. After a while, the producers and the consumers of neokayfabe tend to lose the ability to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t.

zie filmpje waarin macmahon en trump het spel spelen:

That Time Donald Trump Clotheslined Vince McMahon On 'Wrestlemania' | HuffPost Latest News

In May of 1999, when Mr. McMahon was approaching the peak of his cultural influence, a wrestler named Owen Hart fell more than 70 feet during a failed zip-line stunt at a wrestling show. He hit the ring. The fall killed him. Thousands of people in the live audience saw it happen, and at least some weren’t sure if what they were seeing was real. An ambulance, used for Mr. McMahon as part of a set piece involving a fake injury earlier in the show, took Mr. Hart to the hospital, where he was declared dead. But the event continued, and eventually the crowd was able to cheer along. In the world of neokayfabe, even something as real as death seemed like it could be fake.