Ann Arbor Film Festival 2009

This short film is a perfect illustration of the ideas contained in Roland Barthes' famous essay from the early 1960s called "The World of Wrestling." Found in his book "Mythologies," the essay describes wrestling as pure theater, emphasizing the desire of the audience to center its attention on the "bad guy" characters. The "good guy" wrestler characters are all generic, interchangeable, essentially faceless. It's the 'bad guys' everyone goes to cheer/jeer at. In this film, a young Muslim American walks an edgy line by depicting a character that might be too easy to hate, for some Americans. The film would be a starting point for many excellent conversations about race, identity, archetypal characters, and sports in the American body politic. Remember, he whispers, "It's a show."