The World of Lucha Libre - BOOKS.HCCP.ORG

25 cm, 265 pages

English language

Published July 30, 2008 by Duke University Press.

ISBN:: 9780822342144
OCLC Number:: 226361814

(1 review)

The World of Lucha Libre is an insider's account of lucha libre, the popular Mexican form of professional wrestling. Heather Levi spent more than a year immersed in the world of wrestling in Mexico City. Not only did she observe live events and interview wrestlers, referees, officials, promoters, and reporters; she also apprenticed with a retired luchador (wrestler). Drawing on her insider's perspective, she explores lucha libre as a cultural performance, an occupational subculture, and a set of symbols that circulate through Mexican culture and politics. Levi argues that the broad appeal of lucha libre lies in its capacity to stage contradictions at the heart of Mexican national identity: between the rural and the urban, tradition and modernity, ritual and parody, machismo and feminism, politics and spectacle. Levi considers lucha libre in light of scholarship about sport, modernization, and the formation of the Mexican nation-state, and in connection to professional …

The World of Lucha Libre is an insider's account of lucha libre, the popular Mexican form of professional wrestling. Heather Levi spent more than a year immersed in the world of wrestling in Mexico City. Not only did she observe live events and interview wrestlers, referees, officials, promoters, and reporters; she also apprenticed with a retired luchador (wrestler). Drawing on her insider's perspective, she explores lucha libre as a cultural performance, an occupational subculture, and a set of symbols that circulate through Mexican culture and politics. Levi argues that the broad appeal of lucha libre lies in its capacity to stage contradictions at the heart of Mexican national identity: between the rural and the urban, tradition and modernity, ritual and parody, machismo and feminism, politics and spectacle. Levi considers lucha libre in light of scholarship about sport, modernization, and the formation of the Mexican nation-state, and in connection to professional wrestling in the United States. She examines the role of secrecy in wrestling, the relationship between wrestlers and the characters they embody, and the meanings of the masks worn by luchadors. She discusses male wrestlers who perform masculine roles, those who cross-dress and perform feminine roles, and female wrestlers who wrestle each other. Investigating the relationship between lucha libre and the mass media, she highlights the history of the sport's engagement with television: it was televised briefly in the early 1950s, but not again until 1991. Finally, Levi traces the circulation of lucha libre symbols in avant-garde artistic movements and its appropriation in left-wing political discourse. The World of Lucha Libre shows how a sport imported from the United States in the 1930s came to be an iconic symbol of Mexican cultural authenticity.

1 edition

FUat2mb reviewed The World of Lucha Libre by Heather Levi

A fantastic academic work on Lucha Libre

5 stars

I found this book absolutely wonderful. Levi looks a wrestling from a whole new angle. Granted occasionally I felt she was seeing things that weren't there, but that is true of almost any academic work.

Much of the book is based on her experience, as an American Sociological Academic, training to be a luchadora in Mexico City. Its the way she really get to see how training happens gets to actually have real conversations with Luchadores.

I found it incredibly serprising how Lucha Libre had developed quite differently from its American counterpart primarily because it had been banned from being on TV for almost 40 years.

Her take on the class struggle was interesting and how it relates to various characters and takes on this sport. Her emphasis on the sport of lucha, not sport-like, not sports entertainment was also interesting, always while acknowledging the match outcome is pre-determined still …

I found this book absolutely wonderful. Levi looks a wrestling from a whole new angle. Granted occasionally I felt she was seeing things that weren't there, but that is true of almost any academic work.

Much of the book is based on her experience, as an American Sociological Academic, training to be a luchadora in Mexico City. Its the way she really get to see how training happens gets to actually have real conversations with Luchadores.

I found it incredibly serprising how Lucha Libre had developed quite differently from its American counterpart primarily because it had been banned from being on TV for almost 40 years.

Her take on the class struggle was interesting and how it relates to various characters and takes on this sport. Her emphasis on the sport of lucha, not sport-like, not sports entertainment was also interesting, always while acknowledging the match outcome is pre-determined still argued it was less corrupt than every other sport in Mexico.

The only thing that prevented a 5 star from me was her huge obsession with homosexuality in Mexico and insinuating that ever "straight" man in Mexico City would gladly do another guy in the rear but would never take it. I almost skipped chapter 4 completely because of it, but then it got into gender roles related to luchadoras and it made a lot more sense, would have been better if the chapter took the ladies first and the gays later.

I wanted to add every book in the bibliography to me "queue" but most of them where in Spanish.

Subjects

Mexico Social life and customs
Wrestling Mexico. Social aspects
Nonfiction, Sports, Individual Sports, Wrestling
Nonfiction, History, Americas, Mexico
Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Anthropology