Real Housewives Is Wrestling

Hello, may I have your attention please. I have an announcement: Real Housewives is wrestling.

By Eric Shorey

Andy Warhol was a big wrestling fan. The effete, pale artist can be spotted in the front row of various events at Madison Square Garden throughout the 1970’s. He was a huge mark for Mean Gene Oakerland. In a rare backstage interview between the hyper-capitalist art star and the notorious correspondent, Warhol deadpans directly to the camera: “It’s just so exciting. I just don’t know what to say … It’s the best [thing] I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s the most exciting thing. ”

Warhol loved spectacle, he loved ostentatiousness, celebrity, obnoxiousness. He loved the boundary between art and commercialism, he loved things with mass appeal. He loved whatever was popular. He loved products, he loved consumer goods. He loved anything that made money.

Perhaps the only thing he loved more than money was banality. He loved grocery stores. He loved shadows and sunsets. He loved shoes. He loved emptiness. Warhol’s films are infamously unwatchable because … nothing happens in them. Empire, for example, is a 485 minute film that is just a stationary shot of the Empire State Building. Sleep is a 321 minute film of one of his lovers taking a nap.

Chelsea Girls was filmed at his uber-chic hangout / studio space, The Factory. In the 210 minute movie, his camera is focused on various ne'er-do-wells who made the spot their home. The film meanders aimlessly; mostly, it’s recordings of tedious conversations between characters as they lounge around or put on makeup. Most of them were “playing” themselves. The audio is so bad you can barely hear what any of them are saying. It hardly matters what they’re actually talking about.

Chelsea Girls has been somewhat jokingly / somewhat seriously hailed as the first reality entertainment: a strange blend of scripted drama, documentary style, experimental cinema, and gonzo journalism.

Maybe the reason Warhol loved wrestling so much was because it already was doing what he hoped to do with his films — maybe wrestling and reality TV are the exact same things.

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In a narratological sense, both wrestling and reality TV function on the same principal: perpetually delayed gratification — eternal serialization. Both reality TV and wrestling are commercials for itself: an advertisement for the next episode. The moment a new champion claims victory, another fighter runs into the ring to challenge him. The second a cocktail is hurled, a “To Be Continued” inter-title appears. The episodes exist to set up the next episode: the purpose is never resolution of a story — only its endless continuation. This type of structure can be contrasted with another ubiquitous TV formula: the Monster of the Week, in which each episode is its own self-contained story that may or may not advance the plot at all. But the monster is (almost) always defeated, thus creating its own stand-alone narrative arc with a distinct beginning, middle, and end. Wrestling and non-competition reality TV are just middle, middle, middle. You can always pick up the story at any given point because nothing ever really concludes.

Real Housewives, a franchise created by Scott Dunlap in 2006, is perhaps the ur-example of reality television — and the series that most resembles the narrative structure of pro-wrestling. Indeed, plenty has been written on the similarities between wrestling and soap operas — but what this comparison obscures is the meta-textual quality of both pro-wrestling and reality television: the tension between fiction and non-fiction, the conflation of what is “real” and what is “fake.”

In the post-kayfabe era of wrestling, part of the appeal of wrestling is the various intersections between what is “actually” happening versus what is depicted on-screen. (Kayfabe refers to the illusion of reality within wrestling: it’s the mutually agreed upon fictional universe that wrestling exists within.) Fans clamor to find dirt sheets and insider gossip that will help understand or clarify why certain booking decisions were made when they were. Matches are rescheduled on the spot due to injuries or internecine politics — one of the pleasures of wrestling in its current form is the ongoing disentangling of IRL backstage intrigue and choreographed in-ring action.

So too do Housewives aficionados endlessly debate which parts of the “drama” were producer-created. What the women often refer to as “the blogs” function as an analogue to dirt sheets. Fans wonder what “storylines” the women are manufacturing to get more camera time. They debate about “the edits” that depict certain characters as villainous or heroic.

In fact — like wrestling — Housewives has its own heel/babyface dynamics. (Heel is wrestling lingo for “bad guy” — “babyface” is slang for “good guy.”) Characters are depicted as either churlish, rude, absurd, argumentative, spoiled, sadistic — or as down-to-earth, reasonable, kindhearted, and generous. And yet — as with wrestling — the alignment of any character can switch at any moment, sometimes within the same episode. Alliances, stables, and friendship groups are broken and re-formed, sometimes in the course of 45 minutes. Housewife heels are sometimes lovably nefarious, at other times viciously cruel. Housewife faces are sometimes endearingly plucky, at other times tediously goodie-goodie. Just like wrestling.

In Real Housewives characters cut promos in confessionals. They mint catchphrases (and sell merch emblazoned with said catchphrases) in the opening credits. They engage in actual, literal battles at luncheons and galas. There are one-on-one fights and battle royales (usually on vacation, when the entire cast can be assembled for multiple day shoots). They have an endless parade of decadent outfits. They have signature moves (see: Ramona Singer’s crazy eyes).

Real Housewives even has a Vince McMahon: the affable (and uber-wealthy) Andy Cohen, who inserts himself quite fantastically into a plethora of absurd storylines and whose favoritism fans spend considerable time speculating on. Cohen, like McMahon, calls the shots IRL (he is officially the franchise’s Executive Producer) but also furthers the in-kayfabe drama while hosting reunion specials — during which he frequently acts in ways that are hideously inappropriate.

(Perhaps the only key difference between the two is that Housewives narratives do not focus on championships — which raises the question: what would wrestling look like without belts and title shots to structure each story? Probably… like Real Housewives.)

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Both wrestling and Real Housewives are currently undergoing reckonings of their own as well. Faced with questions about the ethics of entertainment, both exist in a post-modern crisis pertaining to their “political” responsibilities. Wrestling has seen an ongoing rethink with regards to the treatment of racial and sexual minorities — fan movements and industry insiders engage in endless debates about the optics of representation and the importance of diversity, despite a sometimes apparent lack of tangible progress. Real Housewives has been equally as resistant to meaningful changes in casting decisions. Unsurprisingly, retrogressive fans and conservative producers alike repeat the same tedious talking points: “This is my form of escapism!” or “Don’t bring politics into something that’s supposed to be fun!” or “Why does everything have to be about race/gender?”

The treatment of Black wrestlers has recently arisen as a discussion topic once again, with former AEW athlete Big Swole raising concerns about the lack of Black performers in the brand’s title picture. Meanwhile, Eboni K. Williams, the first Black housewife to ever be featured on The Real Housewives of New York, made race a frequent talking point in her appearances on the show. This led to considerable fan backlash, with many speculating that the discussions resulted in a distinct drop in viewership.

Questions about the lack of LGBTQ+ representation in both worlds have populated discussion forums and social media commentary for a while. Only recently have queer people truly been showcased properly in either universe: Nyla Rose, a wrestler with AEW, was crowned in 2020 as the first out transgender champion on a major TV franchise. Despite flirting with gay subplots in a handful of episodes throughout the franchise, Real Housewives of Miami is just now featuring the first lesbian Housewife, Julia Lemigova, in its currently-airing 4th season.

If wrestling and Real Housewives reflect a certain aestheticized version of reality: whose reality do they reflect? What responsibility does reality TV or kayfabe have in depicting a variety of voices? What is gained in featuring characters or people whose lives don’t resemble the bulk of the audience? To what extent does escapism need to be less escapist?

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Surely wrestling has commonalities with a handful of other media: the aforementioned serialized nature resembles that of comic book media or shonen anime (no wonder so many wrestling fans love Marvel movies), the exaggerated gender presentation resembles drag, and the epic, inter-generational plotting often resembles straight-up Shakespearean drama, or even Wagnerian opera. But when you examine the specific narrative and formalist structures, the differences between Real Housewives and pro-wrestling are almost nonexistent.

Wrestling fans in particular are extremely protective about what they call “the product” — all that fragile masculinity intermingling with perceived victim complexes and an outsider culture attitude —so much so that they often fail to see the genre delimitations of wrestling itself. If fans were to start considering what else might be wrestling, maybe they’d be a little less touchy about their beloved form of entertainment.

But what is “the product” anyway? What are we being sold? Who is the mark and who is the worker? What is the difference between a TV show and a commercial? To what extent can wrestling or reality TV be considered anything other than, well, products — and to what extent are we fooling ourselves by discussing their narrative structures or their political potential at all?

“Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art,” said Warhol, tediously.