Would Mexican Style Luchador wrestling have been popular in Bronze Age Egypt?
Hear me out.
Yesterday, while my wife of 17 (almost 18) years and I were running errands and vibing in silence, I turned to her and asked a question I thought was perfectly reasonable given she had been working on her PhD in Antropology.
"Do you think Mexican Luchador wrestlers would have done crazy numbers in per-unification bronze age Upper Egypt?"
Keep in mind before then we'd been quiet for a few minutes in the car and were heading to Home Depot to pick up moving boxes so the last thing we'd said was about bubble wrap.
She was silent for a moment, I thought she was going over the interesting question and implications that brings up. Instead she just said "Where in the FUCK did that come from?"
So I explained the ADHD thought train. I had been thinking of 16th Century Italian Comedia dell Arte (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_dell%27arte) like one does, and how it's completely forward compatible- it just works and a lot of our comedy is still based on those tropes. It was absolutely backwards compatible too- the character tropes that we had even in Greek and Roman comedy (the greedy, scheming gossiping slave became the shifty servant, the young lovers more into being loved than paying any attention to what the other one is actually like and fumbling while other people tried to help them get together/keep those idiots apart, etc) so you could have absolutely made Comedia Dell Arte work in any time frame. Also it traveled as far as Moscow in it's time, transcending cultural differences even in the 16th-18th centuries. Comedia dell Arte transcends cultures- just like Mr. Bean (not a huge fan but respect for the work) is the most popular in terms of $$$ comedian worldwide because you don't need words to get the jokes from his fascinating facial expressions. It goes beyond language and touches the heart of the human experience.
I mean... who hasn't felt that exact way at some point?
So, what other forms of entertainment are universal or near universal? That transcends cultures, language and time?
US style Pro wrestling would have been a huge hit in certain eras but I don't think it's truly universal. It's part Comedia dell Arte (you have the heel, the face, lots of drama, grown men in skimpy clothing, etc) and in a lot of ways I think of it as "aggressively heterosexual drag without lip syncing while also being deeply, unintentionally homoerotic" . It would, indeed, slap in, say, the coliseums in Rome, but what about Mexican Luchador wrestling? It's got a lot more emphasis on social justice than WWF wrestling. A lot more commentary about the world and what's wrong with it, and gives a lot more voice to the oppressed who are angry about the way the world is and would sure like to punch a physical representation of that nonsense.
So I'm not sure it would slap as hard in super stable long term societies like the stable periods during, say, Egyptian Unification or Indian Maurya Empire or Gupta Empires, because a big part of why those cultures were so stable long term was the whole philosophy that your role in life was mostly cast by fate/karma. That leads to very stable but stagnant cultures in terms of social mobility, would that make Bronze Age Luchadors more or less culturally relevant? I mean there WERE tomb paintings of wrestling, they had it as a sport but not as a sport/theatrical performance/comedy/social commentary.
My wife laughed her ass off and said that's why she loves, me she never gets bored of how my brain works.
You could totally move Luchador wrestling into post-revolution France. If you could have gotten a drag queen style, huge foam powdered wig and a fancy glittered cape on a luchador he'd be a phenomenal heel. Robespierre and friends sitting in a private box so that people wouldn't see they was enjoying such uncouth entertainment as someone with the drag/wrestler name of Nobless Obli Cheese gets the People's Elbow to the gut would totally work.
We agreed that Shakespeare would have LOVED THAT SHIT. He'd have two Luchadors run off stage being pursued by a polar bear, no question in my mind at all. My Dad was a Shakespearean scholar and I wish I could have talked to him about that because he was a big believer in the universality of Shakespeare's work- you can turn them into westerns, samurai movies, all kinds of things.
I was glad she was amused but... I also really want to know what other people think. Would this be a universal art form, giving voice to the powerless about their frustrations with their societies while enjoying a spectacle with drama, elaborate costumes, and oiled up half naked hot men? Or is this an art grounded in it's space, time, and culture?
