Dear Wrestling,
Today instead of the normal letter from me to your incorporeal excellence, I have a treat! A guest post by the wise and kind Volpa Nera, @volpettinanera, about our Best Beloved, Sami Zayn. Please give her all the love this is due and help me convince her to start a blog her ownself.
In 2017, the real world is a turbulent and terrifying place. The microcosmic world of wrestling reflects this, for better or worse: jingoism is back in fashion, and our heroes are apathetic, hypocritical, egotistical. Beloved tag teams end in shattering betrayal. Skilled performers fall to the bottom of the pile, and 205 Live goes unloved despite showcasing some of the best wrestling on television. At the time of writing, of 9 available titles, 6 are currently in the possession of ‘heel’ characters. Who’d be a good guy at a time like this?
In 1970’s Britain the world was a stagnant and stifling place. The Sex Pistols opined that there was ‘no future’; recession, unemployment and social unrest among the working classes spawned the British punk movement. The rich were getting richer, the poor left to rot at the bottom of the pile. Society, according to punk ideology, had failed; conforming to societal norms was anathema to young British punks. The attitude was slightly different in the US, where punk was largely a middle-class rebellion: youths rejecting the middle-class values they had been brought up to revere in favour of their own, self-determined values. Nonetheless, the rejection of the establishment proved a common thread present in both movements.
Sami Zayn goes by the WWE-appointed moniker of ‘The Underdog from the Underground’; the Underground points to both his past life in the indies, but also his well-documented love of punk rock. His ska-influenced entrance theme stands out in a sea of metal riffs and on the surface it is tricky to reconcile the cheerful, good-guy persona Sami presents with the aggressive nihilism popularly associated with punk.
But punk isn’t solely about nihilism; it’s a nebulous ideology, and its definition depends on our ability to specify a space & time to which we can relate it as a concept. But the spirit of nonconformity remains a constant: the subversion of the establishment, the rejection of the status quo, the elevation of anarchy as a viable alternative. In a narrative environment in which grey morality has become the accepted norm – in which a character accepted as heroic may be applauded for torching another’s house, in which selfishness and egotism are character quirks, in which it is no longer possible to draw a clean line between Evil and Good – if we are to accept the spirit of nonconformity as being key to punk philosophy, then what could be more punk rock than being kind?
(I should add here that punk and kindness are not necessarily antithetical: in 1978 a ‘Rock Against Racism’ concert was held in London’s Victoria Park. Notable punk bands of the era played in support, including The Clash, X-Ray Spex, Generation X and Sham 69. Punk may demand the destruction of social norms, but one could argue that some social norms deserve to be destroyed.)
In a traditional Good vs Evil dichotomy – the kind Barthes posits is the nature of American wrestling, “‘a sort of mythological fight between Good and Evil’” – the archetypes are so broadly sketched and so instantly recognisable that we know which side we are supposed to root for. For the most part, this is no longer the case: AJ Styles spent months in Heel/Face limbo before being officially designated a Good Guy, and we cheer for Randy Orton even as he burns down Bray Wyatt’s house.
Sami is a yardstick by which we can measure the relative ‘Evil’-ness of an act or a character, because we can be sure that his actions and reactions will be consistently and demonstrably the opposite. The precedent for this goes all the way back to his NXT days, in a piece of exemplary storytelling (and which, I believe, has not yet been equalled on the main roster). Sami wants to win the title, but consistently falls at the last hurdle. The potential moral of the story is that nice guys finish last; that you don’t get anywhere without a well-polished ruthless streak. Empirical evidence bears this out, not least when Sami’s friend (and one-man Greek chorus) Neville demonstrates the efficacy of flexible morality. Ultimately, Sami holds firm, does not give in to the temptation to cheat his way to victory, refuses to compromise his morals for success. And when he wins, it feels as though every single heart under the Full Sail roof is about to explode with joy. We, all of us, have wanted this every bit as much as Sami has. We’ve all been on this journey together. (Inclusivity is a key feature of Sami’s character: he frequently pauses to show he’s aware of the audience singing along to his music, or chanting for him. Even the “Let’s Go!” motif is an invitation.)
The key to creating a believably Good character, in my view, is that Good should be a characteristic they strive for. It’s difficult for us to relate to a person for whom Goodness is a personality trait, something innate and embodied, but we all recognise the struggle inherent in choosing to do Good when the alternative seems so much easier. There is an almost Kantian distinction in Sami Zayn’s character between doing a ‘good’ thing and doing the ‘right’ thing – the latter is something we hear from Sami time and time again. For Sami, ‘Good’ is a byproduct of doing what is ‘right’.
Even if we are to accept that punk is essentially cynical, cynicism in its original, purest form is embodied by the rejection of conventional desires – power, wealth, status. Modern usage has transformed the original concept into something more unsavoury, and yet in many ways punk is largely true to the original spirit of cynicism: ancient Greek Cynicism required that the adherent live their unconventional life in full view of the public gaze, indifferent to insults and derision. So when Neville disparages Sami’s virtuous attitude towards victory – his insistence on doing the ‘right’ thing irrespective of the consequences (i.e. failure) – Sami is refusing to conform to the expectation that he should want to be successful at any cost. And when he eventually wins – complete with heartstoppingly dramatic ‘will-he-or-won’t-he’ moment in which the crowd literally beg Sami not to cheat – it’s so much sweeter because he did it on his terms, in his way, without sacrificing the morality which has become almost unfashionable in modern WWE. We see this again in his recent interaction with Kevin Owens: Kevin asks him to be the referee in his US Championship match against AJ Styles. The reasoning, ostensibly, is that Kevin trusts Sami not to cheat him out of a win, in spite of their past history. And here is a wonderful nod to that history: Even with their mutual animosity, Kevin would put his title shot in Sami’s hands because he knows Sami well enough to understand that he does what is right.
The audience, in our omniscience, know that within the context of their shared history, Sami would be forgiven for accepting the ref’s jersey and proceeding to screw Kevin over. Hell, within the context of the Face/Heel dichotomy, one could even argue that this would be a virtuous act. It would represent Kevin’s comeuppance – both for his treatment of Sami and for his multitude of other transgressions (we all remember JeriKo’s own Red Wedding, the Festival of Friendship – he brought you a magician, Kevin!). And if we want to delve even deeper – if we want to get meta about things – we can recall Kevin’s proclamation that Sami has done very little since coming to Smackdown and recognise that this is his opportunity to be significant. I would bet that most of us watching thought we could see the story unfolding before us: the tentative acceptance signalling a potential reparation of a shattered friendship even as that little voice inside of us yells screw him, Sami, he doesn’t deserve you, culminating in a short, sharp return to the status quo as Sami takes his well-earned revenge. Wrestling rivalries run deep, and like the proverbial elephant, a wrestler never forgets.
But Sami doesn’t choose revenge, or significance, both of which are desires we have come to expect from our (increasingly individualistic) wrestling narrative. Nor does he exhibit what we might consider naivety in believing Kevin’s motivations to be genuine. He chooses, instead, to walk away. He does the ‘right’ thing, because that is what Sami does: his values, in keeping with the American punk ethos, are self-determined. Punk values authenticity, and Sami has this in spades: he doesn’t conform to our expectations, nor the expectations of the narrative, and it’s punk as fuck.
Where traditionally Good characters exist, it seems de rigeur to stomp them down, and the implication is that the audience should be entertained rather than outraged – witness Alexa Bliss’ verbal decimation of Bayley, whose inherent ‘niceness’ has been portrayed as a fatal weakness, a character flaw, and the reason for her present inability to succeed. Unlike Sami in NXT, there has been no redemption arc for her thus far to prove this wrong.
Sami’s recent main roster run has been frustrating to say the least, and as with Bayley there has been precious little in the way of meaningful victory to counteract the notion that his essential ‘goodness’ is, in fact, toothlessness. And we have seen glimpses of that frustration; Sami likes to remind us that he has to work to maintain his positive attitude (again, lending an authenticity to his character – even the best of us has wanted to lash out and fuck the consequences sometimes.) You might consider that piling failure upon insignificance might lead to a – whisper it – heel turn. And yet Sami remains defiantly positive. He’s the person who apologises to the Kanellises for a completely accidental transgression, who takes on the monstrous bully Braun Strowman because nobody else will, who turns down the opportunity to screw over the former best friend that betrayed him. Who stands up to The Man (or, pardon the pun, the McMahon) because he can see that Mick Foley is being treated unfairly, and someone has to be the voice of reason. What’s punk about this, you might ask? It’s that nobody else would do it. The only person authentic enough to do the right thing, regardless of the repercussions, is Sami Zayn.
Even now, seemingly doomed to languish in booking limbo, Sami does not give in to his frustration and opts instead to wear his heart on his metaphorical sleeve. His ring gear carries a lyric appropriately borrowed from ska punk band Operation Ivy: to resist despair in this world is what it means to be free. And in that liminal space between our turbulent world and his, the hole in the fabric of the universe in which fiction and reality bleed together, these words resonate.
What Sami Zayn understands is this: When looking after number one is the dominant attitude, when compassion is portrayed as weakness and consideration as irrationality, when the establishment itself lauds austerity and self-preservation as the way forward, the punk spirit demands fuck the establishment as a response. When apathy is conformity, there is nothing more punk rock than being kind.