Wednesday, December 19, 2012

John Cena, a Hero for the TMZ Generation

Man, what a jerk
Photo Credit: WWE.com
John Cena is a bad, bad man. He treats women like second-class citizens, as shown both with AJ Lee recently and Eve Torres in the beginning of the year. He's a spiteful jerk, preventing Dolph Ziggler from cashing in a Money in the Bank he had to win TWICE to be able to use, mainly because Cena's also the least deservingly entitled wrestler in history. He isn't afraid to slur the gays either, unless he has to from a corporate mandate because of a partnership with Susan G. Komen. He's elitist, denying CM Punk respect he should have gotten and held the moment he beat him at Money in the Bank last year. Sure, he grants wishes and does cool stuff for sick/dying kids, but shitty people try to proverbially buy their way into heaven all the time.

So, if Cena is this awful person, then why is he so beloved? Usually, the popular in wrestling are reflections of the time. Hulk Hogan was our rock against the Communists. Steve Austin struck a similar nerve as Office Space, only he got to beat up his Bill Lumbergh. So what does that make Cena a reflection of? You need look no further than what the pulse of popular culture is. There are still people who are newsmakers because they make good movies or produce great music. However, what about the Kardashians? Honey Boo Boo? Lindsay Lohan? Charlie Sheen? They're famous in part because they do outrageous shit. People love them reading news about celebrities behaving badly.

For whatever reason, the most dire pits of human behavior are the most popular. I'm not a psychologist, nor do I have access to the brains of everyone who reads TMZ or follows the gossip rags for what Kim Kardashian's doing next. However, there's a reason why Angelina Jolie carrying a vial of her ex-lover's blood with her is more newsworthy than her and Brad Pitt building houses for Katrina victims in New Orleans.

For better or worse, WWE's audience coincides a lot with TMZ's. So, would they gravitate towards a guy who saves damsels in distress, or would they go for the guy who calls Eve Torres a hoeski and beats the shit out of a dude because he's all bitter over a loss? Yeah, I think the latter is more likely to yield popularity among the majority of WWE fans. That doesn't explain the boos he gets, but Cena might be more complex than to make generalizations such as these.

However, the funny thing is that people who boo Cena might cheer Sheamus or Punk despite the fact that they too at times act as terribly as a hero as Cena has. It only seems to solidify that WWE at least is wrestling for the gossip rag crowd nowadays. I'm sure this may not always be the case, as audiences change. As the people who are scoffingly and stereotypically referred to as "hipsters" begin to claim ownership of wrestling crowds (that Barclay's Center crowd was big and vocal), maybe the alignments will shift towards a different set of social mores and behaviors.

But for right now, even if we don't think Cena is the hero WWE needs right now, he's probably the one it deserves. For a crowd that might overlap with one that deifies Charlie Sheen for acting the misogynist or lashing out, Cena, for all of his multiple foibles, might just be the perfect guy to place on the hero's pedestal, no matter how sad that may sound to someone outside of that bubble.