Are We Having Fun Yet…? 04.05.08: Reality TV What Have You Done?

I remember it like it was yesterday. The music in the arena would blare, and everyone would rise to his or her feet as he walked out to the ring. So down the ramp he would march, decked out in red and yellow with an American Flag slung over his shoulder. Yes, those were the days, when fans were fans and half-naked men were not always on illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Sure I was young and understandably stupid, but there stood a man who never sinned and always told me to eat my vitamins. I watched and grew as he taught me the values of being a “Real American.” Though he was removed from my consciousness for some time when he left the WWE, I always remembered Hulk Hogan fondly. But on July 10, 2005 all of that changed.

Enter “Hogan Knows Best” the latest show on VH1’s new mind-deadening line up of “celeb-reality.” The show would give viewers a window into the everyday life of the “Hogan” family; one they had never seen before. Now everyone could watch their favorite “Real American” strut his stuff within the confines of his own home. Looking back fondly on the Federation years, I tuned in to see what the man was up to. This was a decision I immediately regretted. Sometimes you just learn too much.

Instead of the man I had grown up watching, what I was treated to was a walking, talking caricature of Hulk Hogan. Gone were the days of fighting for “every man,” and in were the days of a wealthy, retired wrestler haggling with people at an antique store. Hulk Hogan’s new finishing maneuver was a vicious combo of cheapness and dropping his own name. See Hogan as he “wrestles” with adolescent boys courting his daughter. And “whatcha gonna do” when the beer belly and the 24 inches of receding hairline run wild on you? What happened to that man that I used to watch every week? What happened to Hulk Hogan?

The answer, put simply, is that the real man Terry Bollea replaced the Hulk Hogan we all knew. The two became one in the same, forever inseparable. This should never have been allowed to happen. To make these two distinct entities one is to erase all the years of character development and build up of the “immortal” sports entertainment icon. Can the man who slammed Andre the Giant in front of millions of people be the same as the man whose insecurities force him to spy on his own daughter? The line between the portrayed character and the actor was erased completely, and the less than perfect side is the one we see most.

Now as wrestling fans, let’s think about the situation for a moment. Have we or will we ever see other great wrestlers outside of the promotions they worked for? Will we ever see Ric Flair in a silk nightgown with bunny slippers on? The answer is no, because the fact remains that seeing the real men who play these larger than life roles diminishes their legacies. Will the average American remember Wrestlemania III and the body slam that shook the world, or will they remember the time good old Terry left his kids alone with an almost-crippled Brian Knobs? The future of Hulk Hogan’s image seems to be in the second choice.

Up until that moment when “Hogan Knows Best” aired in 2005 there was always an accepted separation between in-the-ring personas and actual people. I could still look fondly back at my days of Hogan fandom since I knew that I was following a character, one that was practically the peak of human perfection. The Hulk Hogan that I knew is long dead. Imagine that; the “immortal” Hulk Hogan has written himself off.

To sum things up I leave you with this last taste of the Hulk Hogan legacy:

Well, that’s all for this week folks. Check me out next week when I tackle some of the major issues I have with what TNA has been doing in recent weeks.