AS AN ADOLESCENT, I regularly watched professional wrestling on television. Showing early geek tendencies, I usually enjoyed the ring-side interviews more than the matches themselves. My favorite interviews were the ones where a villain with a thick foreign accent hurled invective at America, attacked the manliness and lineage of his next good-guy foe, and denied committing the dirty deeds witnessed by the television audience the previous week. Whether the foreign villain was named Fritz von Erich, Ivan Koloff, or Professor Tanaka, the critique of America usually centered on the same theme–decadence. Minority groups such as blacks and Jews could not be attacked directly, but if a racist or anti-semitic subtext seeped through, that was okay.

Not all villains remained bad forever, and those who reformed could expect extra rough treatment from their former comrades. Wrestler reformation always occurred dramatically. In the middle of a match, a villain would suddenly join forces with a former antagonist, and the two “strange bedfellows” would subdue, for example, an over-the-top foreigner.