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Raven's Log
Stardate: 1.10.04
Thumbs up my ass from boredom
I have to go to MLW tonight, but there is nothing on TV while I lounge about in my hotel room. I watched the movie "Cheaters." Ugh. There really is, to quote Bruce Springsteen, "57 channels and nothin' on." Now for today's sermon.
One of the key problems with the business is the lack of any upgrade in the visual medium. All wrestling looks the same. When ECW broke on the scene, they ushered in a whole new visual medium as did Vince before them in '84 when the WWE went national. Vince used state of the art production, shot his shows from huge arenas instead of tiny TV studios and created larger than life characters to fill his screen. Paul E. with ECW reinvented the wheel a decade later in 94 - 95 in a completely different fashion. He used cutting edge music videos with cutting edge artists. He used a smaller more intimate building (ECW Arena) with rabid hungry fans. He developed and fostered edgy talent instead of over the top cookie cutter characters. He had one of his stars drink and smoke, he bleeped out swear words instead of banning them, allowing people to talk less sanitized and more like they do in real life. He edited footage to highlight the strengths of his talents and hide the weaknesses. He used smaller faster wrestlers, he encouraged and upped the violence quotient making tables a new part of the wrestling vernacular, as well as garbage cans, pots and pans, and my personal favorite, the cheese grater. In other words, he brought hardcore wrestling to your local TV screen. This and a thousand other things made wrestling look entirely different than it ever had before. In short, what I thought would've made a hell of a catchphrase, "the revolution will be televised."
WWE and WCW soon followed suit. It is now 2004, and wrestling's visual medium hasn't changed one iota in the last five years. If you've seen one wrestling show, you've seen em all. It's time for another small step for the producers, one larger step for the wrestling fans (which of course trickles down into everyones pockets from the promoters, to the wrestlers, etc).
TV shows like "24" and "In the Line of Fire" as well as movies like "The Hulk" have tried to change the way we see the product. What makes me extremely happy is TNA is trying as well. They are experimenting with split-screen/different colors, etc. Small steps which will lead to larger ones. It makes me happy because:
a) I work there and I prefer to work for a product that is hip and trendy and changing with the times.
b) because if we don't change the visual medium, this will be one more monstrous reason why the wrestling business will remain stagnant.
I love this business and I want it to prosper.
I love doing it and I want to prosper.
Wallowing in mild affluence.
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