problematic to make broad assumptions about an entire wrestling crowd ’ s social status and political affiliation . Instead , I think it is more appropriate to analyze the wrestling crowd as a performance of the homogenized American societal ideal . Included in the spectacle of professional wrestling is the image of an American society akin to the melting pot myth , a society of homogenized “ Americans ,” and the ideal of allowing outsiders to seamlessly assimilate into the status quo . The wrestling audience is , in reality , not a monolith , and comprises an array of individuals — and the melting pot myth of American society is often complicated by practices of exclusion . In “ The Multicultural Paradigm ,” Guillermo Gómez-Peña explains how “ multiculturalism ” in the United States can become a dirty word , in which marginalized outsiders are required to “ sacrifice their particular identities ” ( 27 ) in order to assimilate . “ Multiculturalism ,” he writes , “ is a dangerous notion that strongly resembles the bankrupt concept of the melting pot with its familiar connotations of integration , homogenization , and neutralization . It is why so many Latino organizations are so distrustful of the term ” ( 27 ). In other words , the melting pot myth of a multicultural American society is a social construction based on practices of exclusion and cultural whitening , and we must remember that although the wrestling audience consumes , participates in , and performs images of whiteness , it is , in actuality , an audience that comprises a spectrum of racial , gender and ethnic backgrounds .
Yet , the staged spectacle of wrestling allows the audience to perform this idealized construction of American society . This aspect is illustrated clearly by the fact that WWE takes its product on international tours — reaching Canada , Europe , the Middle East and throughout Asia , Africa , and South America . Of course , the content of 195