by Eric Szulczewski

The Trish Stratus/Vince McMahon humiliation vignette has quickly come into criticism around the Internet for its portrayal of the principals. These people consider it sexual degradation. Paul Heyman took it one step further by calling up the spectre of sexual violation when he said that Trish's dignity had been raped. Like most things involved in wrestling, this is only partially true.

The people who see this only in sexual terms are missing the point. The real issue here isn't sex. It's power. And the dimensions that this situation has taken, it's not only power over others. It's power over one's self. But there are neuroses on all sides of the argument, each of them reinforcing the other in a web of borderline psychotic behavior, entrapping all involved into a situation where there is no escape. I'd like to do an armchair analysis of each of the parties just to show how they're constructing this psychodrama.

I must state, of course, that I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist. My closest connection to that is having been in therapy in the past. I will remind people, though, that I was an actor for twenty years, and the character types that are being presented by the WWF are quite common in drama, and I've dealt with some of them myself, so I have a great deal of understanding of where they're coming from and, maybe, where they're going to.

Let's start with Mister McMahon. He's seen his pride and joy, the company that he's worked hard to build and has sacrificed so much to make successful, slowly slip away from his grasp. Every time he has attempted to reassert his authority, someone has stood in his way or betrayed him. Bret Hart was the first. Then Steve Austin. The Rock. Mick Foley. His son Shane. His daughter Stephanie. Ever since Montreal, the story of Mister McMahon has been one of oscillating control and exile (with the heel periods generally coming during his periods of control and face periods coming in exile, a wonderful commentary on the spirit of Frank Capra still lives in the mass consciousness of America). The one thing he wants more than any other is to stop the roller-coaster, flatten out the sine wave at its maximum. In order to do that, his control over his world must be absolute. He must brook no deviation.

He's carved out a masterful plan to do so. He first eliminated the biggest threat to his direct authority by getting Linda out of the picture. For all those people complaining about what he did to Trish, what he did to Linda was far more degrading. Destroying a thirty-two-year marriage and sending her, drugged, into a rest home, there to spend her days in a zombie-like near-comatose state, is repulsive in the extreme. Why is it that the people who objected to Trish being stripped and put on her knees like a dog aren't objecting to this? Is it because Trish happens to be a beautiful young woman with large, succulent breasts while Linda's rather plain, on the other side of menopause, and not as desirable? If so, what does that say about the wrestling audience?

The Vince/Linda situation is the mild, made-for-prime-time version of another sordid struggle for control of another rich New England family, Claus and Sunny von Bulow. The only difference here is that Linda hasn't wound up dead. Yet. If Mister McMahon could have killed Linda, would he have done so? At this point, yes, he would have. Mister McMahon has realized that he has to reach a level of ruthlesness that he'd never even thought possible within himself in order to achieve the control he desires. And this time he has perfect allies to join him in that.

Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley, in retrospect, has been perfectly set up for this role in the WWF. She was originally cast in the role of universal victim, her two most celebrated incidents in that role being placed under someone else's control: kidnapped by the Ministry of Darkness and forced into a "dark marriage" with the Undertaker, and then kidnapped and forced into the real thing by Hunter Hearst Helmsley. In December 1999, she decided to fight back. However, she knew something that, honestly, most people don't: how to calculate the path of least resistance, something that, arguably, her father's never learned. She realized that the quickest and easiest way to her variety of control was to utilize the situation she was in to her own advantage. After fighting against her father enough to establish her independence from him, she took her natural place, by his side, but as an equal, not an adjunct. She realized how to do that from the lesson of her brother Shane, who had to do the same in order for Daddy to respect him. Now she's the most powerful ally that McMahon could have in his corner, having helped to institutionalize her own mother. There's also that little frisson of incest involved in this that simply can't be avoided when you're doing a plotline of this nature. It's excusable in this instance, and only adds a nearly-subconscious subtext to the proceedings.

Assisting them is William Regal, who's playing out a wonderful old movie cliche, that of the Faithful, Obsequious British Manservant (viz. Anthony Hopkins in Remains of the Day), the man who's taught that the master's wishes are everything, and to assist him at all costs. He acted as a beard for Mister McMahon and Trish when Stephanie became paranoid of Stratus' proximity to Mister McMahon. He's acted as messenger and executor of his master's will, even willing to be publicly humiliated for the advancement of his master's plans, as he was during No Way Out. He's become the perfect living tool, and getting ahead while doing so, perhaps for the first time in his career. He's even more perfect than Patterson and Brisco in the role. What it cost him was his free will. It's unspoken as of yet, but it's very obvious that he suborned his own desires in order to advance. Such repression usually results in violent consequences when it ends. This won't end good for Regal.

(Just as an aside, I wonder how Regal feels about playing this character. The class system still exists in Britain, and being a gentleman's gentleman was often a dream job for previous generations of Brits who grew up in Regal's shoes, on the wrong side of the tracks. Taking a shot at your "betters" is always a good thing. And he's doing a nice job in the role in doing so.)

And then there's Trish. Her motivation is very difficult to figure out. The surface reasons all lead to equally shallow characterizations and mischaracterizations. If she's doing it because she's legitimately attracted to Mister McMahon, then it hasn't been established what exactly about him attracts her. If she's doing it to get a bit of power, she's not smart enough to realize that no McMahon will ever share power willingly with someone. If she's doing it for the money, she's a whore. Legitimate options that could save her from a negative characterization were all cut off. Her lack of intelligence was on display on Raw, when she told McMahon she was sorry and was humiliated by him for it.

So Trish is an airhead, a whore, or both. Does that mean she deserved what she got? In the world of the McMahons, yes, it does. This world respects intelligence and tenacity. Trish showed none of the first and none of the second, because she took the easy way: fuck your way to the top. Someone like that simply doesn't belong there. What the McMahons were doing to Trish was to have her learn the same lesson that Regal instinctively understood: you must belong body and soul to the McMahons. You must pay your dues to be in this club. First the slopping, then the stripping, then the coffee-gathering for Stephanie. It's understood by the troika that she has her uses if she can be properly molded into a willing servant. She has potential to learn.. And the first lesson that has to be learned is who the boss is (or who the bosses are, in terms of being the "dominant female").

But was the humiliation misogynistic? No. It was simply an incidental fact that it was a woman who was being abused in such a fashion. The roles could easily have been reversed and it could have been Regal being stripped in the ring if the characters were set up in a different fashion. Trish isn't paying a penalty for her gender; she is paying a penalty for the fact that she doesn't have the qualities that the McMahons respect in people, and must learn them in as public a fashion as possible. If she possesses the desire to move beyond her shallow existence and can overcome these experiences, then she is worthy of entering the gates and experiencing the Presence. Both men and women can be unworthy. She just happens to be a woman. Nothing more is intended than that.

In a sense, Trish is walking the same path as Dante did in The Divine Comedy. The best post-Godwinns slopping in WWF history, followed by the stripping, is her Inferno. Gathering coffee and doing other menial tasks will be her Purgatorio. And only after she purges her soul of her previous sins of vanity and gains understanding will she be allowed to witness Paradiso. Here's hoping that Trish can handle it and the audience can handle it, because there's more to come.