Anything to gain from pop culture references?

[Dum Dum Dudley]

Having watched last week's Impact and read the spoilers for this week's, I couldn't help but notice that TNA has started using recent pop culture references in their programming more prominently.*

I'm not saying this is a totally bad thing and I think WWE*occasionally does use pop culture references to their benefit. But having read about how 'The Shore'; a character based on the popular MTV show 'Jersey Shore' did not go over well, is their any benefit to references like this?

Will Jersey Shore fans suddenly become interested in TNA? Or should a TV show/movie more relevant to the audience work?

I am not totally against referencing current trends and TV shows, but when I saw Ric Flair get 'iced' by AJ Styles, a little part of me inside silently died.

 

[blackmetalbuick]

It depends. You have to reference something that is somewhat popular with the same crowd, the wrestling crowd. "The Shore" didn't go over because I don't think too many of us are into the MTV/Jersey Shore scene. Obviously you want to make reference to things *a little* out of the ordinary as to attract a new fan base, but not something that the wrestling crowd totally doesn't "get".

 

[The Man They Call WMD]

wwe wants justin beiber to do wrestlemania. Pop culture and wrestling go together. Cydney lauper was used during periods. Musicians are always coming through wrestling.

 

[dashing]

A little off topic, more like an "unpopular culture" reference but about a year ago Matt Striker referenced about 5 songs by The Smiths whilst commentating. Now for those who don't know, The Smiths are an 80s indie band from England. Probably about 90% of wrestling fans would never have noticed that. He went hugely up in my estimations after that, not because I am a huge Smiths fan by any means, more the fact he probably had a wager with a friend that he could name 5 Smiths songs whilst commentating.

It was something like; ""How Soon is Now" for Dolph Ziggler? "This Charming Man" John Morrisson is really taking it to him looking for the victory, there is almost "Panic" in his eyes...1...2...and Ziggler kicks out, and "Heaven Knows he's Miserable Now"!"

It was great, totally unexpected.

Anyway I hate the idea of Beiber being used for Mania but I can understand why, PG audience may get some kids into WWE etc but it still feels a little out of touch, at least get some sort of "cool" macho rock band play, don't ****e the product so blatantly.

 

[wushady]

I believe involving certain aspects of pop culture if done right can be successful. It's definitely not a new concept in wrestling some were very successful some were not. Crossing over with MTV, and using many celebrities. Had a lot to do with the rise of the WWF into major popularity and success in the mid 80's.

In the late 90's raunchier shows like The Jerry Springer Show and South Park were huge in pop culture. The WWE definitely used those as a catalyst to the attitude era. The WCW has also used pop culture as well most of those angles were huge failures though. Like the whole Ready to Rumble promotion involving Arquette, and the horrible Kiss and No Limit soldiers gimmicks.

The Shore gimmick I think will fail miserably that was obvious by the crowd reaction last night. I think it's odd they debuted it while Jersey Shore was on. I really don't see how, but Jersey Shore out draws Impact by having close to seven million viewers.

 

[Big Nick Dudley]

I think something out of Pop Culture can work, if done in quality fashion.

The Shore segment sucked because the acting sucked. The guy playing "Robbie" just wasn't very good (not in the ring, on the mic). He didn't sell it very well, and it came off looking like a cheap rip-off.

Also, this could work if there were any possibility that you could get someone from The Jersey Shore show to be involved at some point. Do I want to see this? No, because I hate "The Jersey Shore." But, it's obviously popular amongst young people, and drawing a crowd of otherwise non-wrestling fans in is never a bad thing. Will that happen? Doubtful, seeing this gimmick probably won't last all that long.

 

[RickDotMark.13]

Styker is the king of pop culture references...Last week with the "Hide Your Kids Hide your Wife the Undertaker is back..If you dont get it you tube Antoine Dodson... Anyway its good because it shows that they are aware of whats happening currently.Not just in there own little wrasslin world... And also im not into the Jersey Shore because its a terrible show, but i am aware and into pop culture. Who doesn't like The Soup??? Just because we post on Wrestling message board doesnt make us total nerds.......... Or does it??

 

[RKOHBK9693]

if tna were smart theyd try and get the real jersey shore to come to tna some how... imagine how many viewers that could draw towards tna

 

[It's Damn Real!]

Pop culture is called pop culture because it stands for popular cultures — of course the use of it or even the reference to it is a good thing. it's popular, isn't it? Wrestlings job is to draw ratings — what better way than to reference whatever is popular in culture at the time that is almost certainly drawing (high) ratings itself?

It's worked for years now, and it'll continue to work.

 

[fredstephenson]

drew carrey and kevin federline are they not counted in pop culture references coz im pretty sure the countless guest hosts they had on raw are.
some were fun some sucked but all were big ass attempts to grab mainstream attention which in the wrestling world is simply an attempt to bring the main stream audience in and whats a bigger pop culture refernce then that

 

[onemandynasty08]

I think that pop culture references in wrestling can be successful if like someone mentioned they are done right. Celebrities have been used in wrestling for many years. While something like the WWE guest hosts is a bit of an overkill, the occasional celebrity appearance could work depending upon who it is and how they are used. Even though some of the moments were great and some of the moments were bad, they are still memorable. David Arquette winning the WCW Championship could be considered one of the biggest mistakes of WCW but it was memorable. Mike Tyson at WrestleMania was memorable. If I am correct I believe Karl Malone and Jay Leno wrestled matches in WCW. I believe they can work and they can draw in new viewers. The Jersey Shore rip off might not have worked, because he is just a rip off, he's not the real deal.

 

[CyDeez]

Yeah... Pop Culture goes hand in hand with wrestling. Wrestling promoters and owners and what not, have always tried to blend in Pop Culture gimmicks, references and performers. It is their way or attempt to pull in more fans, by using Main Stream ideas and popularity.

They especially wanna use this in regards to Federation's big events and money making schemes and ideas. Wrestlemania, Saturday Night's Main Event, and merchandise to name a few.

 

[AmericanDragonSW]

Like everybody else, I saw the debut of "The Shore" on TNA and I couldn't go one second without shaking my head. It was just horrible. You could see the crowd hated it as towards the end they were chanting "Boring. Boring." This is not the first time TNA tried a reference to pop culture and blew it completely. Lets not forget when they tried to do a Jackass style thing with Chris Sabin and Sonjay Dutt and Jay Lethal. It was horrible. All the crowd could chant was "That was Stupid" and "No More Jackass." This to me was worse than that. I mean, Robbie E and Cookie, isn't the real deal painful enough to watch? What does TNA do for an encore? Try to make a parody of The Hills or Laguna Beach?

 

[Dum Dum Dudley]

I do believe pop-culture does play a big part of all genre of entertainment, but i strongly believe you have to be selective about what you reference and whether the audience will understand/get something out of it.

Not many wrestling fans are aware of 'The Smith's', so why does Matt Striker feel it necessary to name-drop certain songs from the band? With 'Jersey Shore' airing at the same time as Impact, do TNA believe that they can successfully snare a few JS fans and get them hooked on TNA?

The 'Smirnoff Ice' reference last week with AJ and Flair really got my goat. What do TNA possibly gain from Styles 'icing' a 60+ year old man? It just came across as a shallow, cheap laugh and i think they could easily have done that skit with a comedy act like Eric Young/Orlando Jordan.

As for 'The Shore', blatently ripping off a TV show for a character is probably not the best thing to be doing character-wise, because whose to say that 'Jersey Shore' will still be relevant in a year's time?

But after reading your responses, i want to expand the question a little bit:

Would referencing from a show more popular with the key demographic be acceptable/work succesfully, or does TNA need to create original characters/scenarios?

 

[dashing]

Not many wrestling fans are aware of 'The Smith's', so why does Matt Striker feel it necessary to name-drop certain songs from the band?

Would referencing from a show more popular with the key demographic be acceptable/work succesfully, or does TNA need to create original characters/scenarios?

It's not necessary to name drop them at all, most wrestling fans wouldn't have noticed that or they just would have thought he was being weird. For those who got it though (like me) they may have found it pretty cool. I never would have expected that whilst watching Smackdown. As I say though, it was probably a wager he had with a friend as it was so out of place.

On to your question though, I believe the latter, that TNA should work on creating original characters and scenarios rather than directly ripping off things that are "in vogue" at the moment. In all honesty it's pretty difficult to create completely original characters because almost every popular gimmick or scenario is borrowed in some way from pop culture. Scott Hall said he was just ripping off Al Pacino in Scarface with his Razor Ramon gimmick, Vince only went with it because he had never seen Scarface and thought it was great. Hogan and Cena bare great similarities to Superman, representing truth, justice and all that other stuff and at times being seemingly unbeatable. Sting in the late 90s was obviously Brandon Lee from The Crow, Stone Cold borrowed a lot from ECW's Sandman, a beer drinking bad ass who took no shit... which is possibly even a reference to Charles Bukowski. Raven was basically Kurt Cobain, nihilistic, wore plaid, was always quite dark and mysterious in promos. The list goes on.

Things that have always worked in wrestling comes down to 3 fundamental types of characters *in my opinion of course, would love to see someone argue with me*;

The charismatic superman (Hogan/Cena/Rock)
The arrogant narcissist (Mr Perfect/Miz/"Dashing" Cody Rhodes/Kurt Angle/Ted Dibiase/Edge)
The mysterious silent type (Undertaker/Sting/Goldberg/Orton to a certain degree)

obviously the acting skills of the wrestler themselves come into play as well and you can tweak these a little, but if you keep one of these templates at a wrestlers core and they pull it off well you're remembered forever. TNA needs to build a few of these characters if they really wish to become a product that the casual fan will buy into, as well as having some great wrestlers of course. WWE has always been able to do this very well in general, obviously you get some flops along the way but you'll find generally it's a formulae that works. If you try to follow a current pop culture trend influencing the gimmicks of your wrestlers then it's just going to look contrived and not appeal to anybody.