Whole lot of diversity goin' on

CHAPEL HILL -- Universities today are full of people who not only embrace diversity but who also talk a lot (endlessly?) about their zeal for social inclusion, their desire for a more democratic culture and a bigger public sphere. Often, they also decry the fact that "social capital" is eroding and the bonds of community are loosening.

These people ought to get out more often, or at least away from the university, perhaps by attending a diverse, inclusive, democratic event in the "squared circle," if not the public sphere.

That is to say, they should take in an event like "RAW LIVE" presented by the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment to the uninitiated).

I've been a wrestling fan for a long time, well before I began to write about it in a scholarly way. Although I could fudge a bit and invoke Roland Barthes and other theorists at this point -- if you're so inclined, Barthes' essay in "Mythologies" (1957) on the semiotics of wrestling is brilliantly suggestive -- I might as well come clean and admit that I just enjoy wrestling because of the conventions of the genre, the moral clarity of the plot lines, the physicality of the athlete/entertainers, the ingenuity of the scriptwriters and the ever-changing identities of the wrestlers themselves.

I mean, you've gotta love the way a snobbish aristocratic "heel" (albeit a massive one) such as Hunter Hearst Helmsley could be transformed into the monstrous and (now) monstrously popular "face" known as Triple H.

All well and good, but perhaps the best thing of all about professional wrestling is the diversity of the audiences at live events such as the one I witnessed Sunday at the RBC Center in Raleigh.

I've lived in North Carolina since 1984 and have attended a zillion public events of one type or another -- high-brow, low-brow, middle-brow, Meister Brau, whatever. None of these events (or types of events) comes close to WWE in terms of diversity and inclusiveness.

Once one got into the RBC arena -- admittedly, after passing through metal detectors -- one found oneself in a wildly mixed crowd made up of African-Americans and Latinos/as (many in large family groups), college students, off-duty soldiers, so-called "rednecks" and white bourgeois like me (and my younger son and two of his friends). Out of an arena about two-thirds full, I'd say the crowd was about 40 percent black, 45 percent white and 15 percent Latino/a.

And even though or perhaps because an enlightened RBC Center allows one to purchase not only beer but liquor as well, everyone got along just fine, pretty much cheering in unison for "North Carolina's own Jeff Hardy" (one of the Hardy Boys), Triple H and Hacksaw Jim Duggan (the last of whom carries around an American flag and leads the crowd in chants of "USA, USA"), and booing Carlito, Snitsky, Mr. Kennedy, the "Samoan" Umaga and some "Russian" heel whose name I didn't catch (who, as a result of inspired scripting, pinned Duggan, by the way). All in all, a fun show.

I only wish -- like many others in the crowd, I suspect -- that a few other RAW superstars such as John Cena, Shawn Michaels or King Booker (with Queen Sharmell) had been on the card as well.

So what does all of this mean? I'm not completely sure, but in some senses at least wrestling is truly democratic, as suggested above. Of course, one might point out that tickets to WWE events ain't cheap (I paid $35 per for middling seats), but in a democracy people should be free, shouldn't they, to exercise consumer preferences subject to their budgetary constraints? Air Jordans weren't exactly cheap a decade ago and neither are cell phones today, but who's to say people don't have the democratic right to buy them?

More interesting perhaps is the possibility -- somewhat analogous to Fareed Zakaria's line in "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad" with reference to the Middle East -- that there may not be a link, or even the possibility of a link, between what many people want and what others think they need.

(Peter A. Coclanis is associate provost for international affairs and Albert R. Newsome professor of history at UNC-Chapel Hill.)