Today's Stories

February 13 - 15, 2009

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

George Cicarriello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits

February 12, 2009

P. Sainath
Neo-Liberal Terrorism in India: The Largest Wave of Suicides in History

Jean Bricmont
French Echoes of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict

Michael Hudson
Trying to Revive the Bubble Economy: Obama's Awful Financial Recovery Plan

Peter Lee
Pakistan, Not Afghanistan, is the Main Event

Dave Lindorff
Judges Nabbed, Jailing Kids for Kickbacks

February 11, 2009

Neve Gordon
Few Peacemakers in the New Israeli Knesset

Peter Morici
Anatomy of a Hemorrhage

Andy Worthington
Who's Running Guantánamo?

Marjorie Cohn
A Call to End All Renditions

Fred Gardner
Change We Can Smoke?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The G & O (Geithner and Obama) Bank

Zoe Blunt
Vancouver Island Hippies: Top Security Threat for 2010?

Belén Fernández
Politics on the Panamericana

Martha Rosenberg
Don't Breathe the Meat

Website of the Day
George Dyson on Project Orion

Blues of the Day
David Vest on the CBC

February 10, 2009

Kathy Kelly
How Do People Keep Going?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Stimulus Imbroglio

Uri Avnery
Dirty Socks

Michael J. Berg
Will South Carolina be the Center of the Nuclear Revival?

Russell Mokhiber
Et Tu, Atul?

Joe Bageant
A Commodity Called Misery

Gareth Porter
Petraeus' Subterfuge

Dave Lindorff
Seek Truth, But Prosecute Liars

Rannie Amiri
The Implications of Recognizing Israel's "Right to Exist"

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes and the Stimulus

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What We Didn't Learn at Obama's Press Conference

Website of the Day
RIAA Takes Over DoJ Under Obama

February 9, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for Top US Health Job

Paul Craig Roberts
Driving Over the Cliff

Julio Sanchez /
Feliz de Bedout
The Threat of Peace in Colombia: an Interview with Hollman Morris

National Lawyers Guild
Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes

Jonathan Cook
Israeli University Welcomes "War Crimes" Colonel

Alana Smith
The Nightmarish Case of Fahad Hashmi

Binoy Kampmark
Taking the Bong

Sam Bahour
End the Occupation First

Nicole Colson
Can You Afford College?

Ron Jacobs
Remembering the Second Intifada

Website of the Day
The Legacy of Ed Grothus and the Black Hole

February 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's First Bad Week

Ishmael Reed
Saint Thelma's Book

James Abourezk
Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

William Blum
Obama and the Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki's Triumph

Henry A. Giroux
Educating Obama

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Darwin's Living Legacy

Mouin Rabbani
A New Low on Gaza?

David Yearsley
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen!

Saul Landau
The Wrestler: an American Tragedy

Jules Rabin
Israel's Disproportionate Responses

Raymond J. Lawrence
A Country Awash in Money But Going Broke

Janette Habel
Castro's Socialism in Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Economy on a Thread

Missy Beattie
Blackout at the Gaza Zoo Massacre

Dale Gieringer
The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909: Marking 100 Years of Failed Drug Prohibition

John Ross
Davos vs. Belem; Swine vs. Pearls

Richard Rhames
Jobs is a Four Letter Word

Bob Wing
Obama, Race and the Future of U.S. Politics

Robert Bryce
Corn Dog Update: Another Study Exposes Bio-Fuel Scam

David Macaray
AFL-CIO and Change to Win in "Re-Wed" Talks

James L. Secor
Inaugural Questions Nobody Asks: Notes from Kuala Lumpur

Jason Flom /
Anthony Papa
The Scourging of Michael Phelps

Norm Kent
Ten Reasons to Get High About Pot in 2009

Kim Nicolini
When Utopia Crumbles: Why Revolutionary Road was Shut Out of the Oscars

Lorenzo Wolff
Ridiculous Flow: How Cee Lo Green Sells Soul

Poets' Basement
Emily Dickinson (with Commentary by Daniel Wolff)

Website of the Weekend
S.J. Gould: Darwin's Untimely Burial

February 5, 2009

Michael Mandel
Self-Defense Against Peace

Saul Landau /
Philip Brenner
Killing the Monroe Doctrine

Ralph Nader
Tax the Speculators!

Robert Bryce
The Unraveling of the Ethanol Scam

Russell Mokhiber
Occupied Territory

Sameh Habeeb /
Janet Zimmerman
Innocents Lost

Dave Lindorff
Small Change

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Beyond Green Capitalism

George Ochenski
A Blow to Big Coal in Montana

Website of the Day
Putting CEO Pay in Context

February 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
On Corruption

Paul Craig Roberts
The War on Terror is a Hoax

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Elections

Jonathan Cook
An IDF Jihad?

Fred Gardner
Obama's Mixed Messages on Marijuana

Stan Cox
Slumwrecking Millionaires: India's Fragile New Temples

Margaret Kimberley
The Deepening Economic Crisis

Lawrence Velvel
Agony & Desperation: Madoff's Victims

Dave Lindorff
A Generals' Revolt?

Doug Giebel
A Helping of Bitter Beltway Baloney

Serge Quadruppani
Student Protests Sweep Italy

Website of the Day
The San Francisco 8

February 3, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency & Anthropology: Roberto Gonzalez on Human Terrain Systems

Bill Moyers
Obama's Wars: an Interview with Pierre Sprey and Marilyn Young

Kirkpatrick Sale
Obama's Lincoln Thing

Conn Hallinan
When Mind Wounds Don't Count

Peter Morici
The Slippery Slope of Stimulus

George Ciccariello-Maher
From Oakland to Santa Rita: "Fired Up, Can't Take It No More"

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The BBC's Nadir

Allan Nairn
What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

February 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

Ralph Nader
What to Do About Wall Street

Gareth Porter
Generals Move to Obstruct Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Orders

Paul Craig Roberts
The Death of American Leadership

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuclear Industry's Latest Money Grab

Rannie Amiri
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak

Cal Winslow
Stern's Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall

Steve Early
Checking Out of Stern's Hotel California

Alan Farago
Superbowl as Panopticon

Diane Farsetta
Banning Domestic Propaganda

January 30 / February 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama and the Oddsmakers

Michael Hudson
Obama's New Bank Giveaway

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
"Too Big to Fail:" a Bailout Hoax

Dave Lindorff
The Ugly Truth: the American Economy is Not Coming Back

Saul Landau
Freedom Fighters, Terrorists or Schlemiels?

Andy Worthington
Blame the Chef: How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo

Subcomandante Marcos
Gaza Will Survive

Robert Jensen
Future Farming: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ron Jacobs
Return of the Democrats

Gareth Porter
Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

Allan Nairn
Hope for the Dump Cities?

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Feelings of a Stranger

Christopher Brauchli
From Gitmo to Supermax?

Jules Rabin
Israel and the Bomb

Col. Dan Smith
Thoughts From an Inauguration Refugee

Missy Beattie
The US Garden of Evil

Tom Barry
Obama's Immigration Challenge

J. Michael Cole
The Downfall of an Academic

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Burning the First Amendment

Dan Bacher
How Dam Removal Can Save the Klamath River

David Rosen
Last Gasp of the Culture Wars?

Don Monkerud
Religion in the American Bedroom

Binoy Kampmark
Updike: Apostle of the Middlebrows

Lorenzo Wolff
Playing Down a Bad Reputation: the Lovin' Spooful's Near Perfect Record

David Yearsley
When Orfeo and Euridice Lived Happily Ever After in Upstate New York

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Rihn

January 29, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Tom Paine's Birthday

Paul Craig Roberts
Is It Time to Bail Out of America?

Riz Khan
The Future of Gaza: an Interview with Jimmy Carter

M. Reza Pirbhai
Pakistan: a New Cambodia?

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Al-Arabiya Interview

Gregory Vickrey
What About the Environment? Cap and Trade and Selling Out

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
Whither the Two State Solution?

Alison Weir
Killing Palestinians Doesn't Count: Fact-Checking Ceasefire Breaches

Alan Farago
Economy Without Escape Routes

Walter Brasch
Taxing a House of Cards

Website of the Day
Madoff Inc.

January 28, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
Behind the Bloodbath in Gaza

Noam Chomsky
Obama's Emerging Policies on Israel, Iraq and the Economic Crisis

Patrick Cockburn
Is Mitchell's Mission Already Doomed?

Rob Larson
The Clinton Foundation Donors

George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak for the Forests?

Allan Nairn
South-East Asian Groups Threaten Retaliation Over Gaza Invasion

M. Junaid
Levesque-Alam
A Muslim's Memo to Obama

Stefan Simanowitz
The Silent Trade

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of the Patriot

Website of the Day
Veggie Love: PETA's Banned Superbowl Ad

January 27, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Save the Economy by Cutting the Defense Budget

Yigal Bronner /
Neve Gordon
Fueling the Cycle of Hate

Joshua Frank
Obama's Neocon: the Curious Case of Richard Holbrooke

Jordan Flaherty
Torture at a Louisiana Prison

Ralph Nader
Access to Economic Justice

Rev. José M. Tirado
How Iceland Fell: a Hundred Days of (Muted) Rage

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Looking Forward

Russell Mokhiber
What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood?

Martha Rosenberg
Who Says Technology Transfer Doesn't Pay?

C. G. Estabrook
The Inaugural Address: the Digested Read

Website of the Day
Who Profits From the Occupation?

January 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event

Deepak Tripathi
The BBC's Day of Shame

Vijay Prashad
The India Lobby: Drunk with the Sight of Power

Peter Lee
Geithner's Pop Gun Volley at China

Allan Nairn
The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture

Uri Avnery
On the Wrong Side of History

John Sayen
The Next Shoe to Drop

Dave Lindorff
Afghanistan is No Threat to America

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff

David Macaray
Obama vs. Labor

Roger Burbach
Winds of Change in Cuba

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of LBJ

Website of the Day
Landscapes of Occupation

January 23 / 25, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ghosts at Obama's Side

P. Sainath
The Freefalling Economy

Patrick Cockburn
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

Saul Landau
Reasons for War?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Our Current Economic Crisis: the Monks' Cure

Alan Farago
The Problem with the Stimulus

Christopher Brauchli
When Due Diligence is a One-Way Street

Andy Worthington
Return to Law?

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pentagon: Bowing to the Masters of War?

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Four)

Henry A. Giroux
The Audacity of Educated Hope

David Yearsley
The Music That Wasn't There: Chamber Music for Obama's Masses

Raymond F. Gustavson
Here We Go Again: General Shinseki and Veterans

Dave Lindorff
The Way Forward

Roberto Rodriguez
Fighting for Migrant Justice in the Desert

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
The Struggle of an Un-People

Fidel Castro
Meeting Cristina

J. Michael Cole
Can Obama's Shift on Terror Succeed?

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
It's Time to Free Leonard Peltier

Ramzy Baroud
Breaking Gaza's Will

Mohammad Ali Shabani
The Aftermath of the War on Gaza

Richard Rhames
Panning for Pyrite on a Cold Day at the Mall

Stephen Martin
Voices in the Mirror

Lorenzo Wolff
Jurassic Radio

Kim Nicolini
Katrina's Endless Loop

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Henson, First, Jaramillo and Glendinning

Website of the Weekend
Cartoon Love

January 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit

Kathy Kelly
Worse Than an Earthquake

Allan Nairn
US Intel Nominee Lied About Church Murders

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Three)

Andy Worthington
Halting the Gitmo Trials

Peter Morici
How to Fix the Banks

Joseph G. Davis
The First MBA Presidency and the Business Academy: a Damage Assessment

Adriana Kojeve
The Democrats on Israel: a Brief Oral History

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote

Website of the Day
Support the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

January 21, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Understanding Gaza

Harry Browne
Obama's Work Ethic

Michael Colby
Ready. Aim. Organize.

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience

Audrey Stewart
Starting Over in Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Obama and the Muslims

Binoy Kampmark
The Marketing of Hope

David Kεr Thomson
Abolition

John Ross
In My Own Bones

Allan Nairn
Killer in Chief: Will This President Murder Civilians?

Sheldon Richman
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

Website of the Day
Globistan

January 20, 2009

Chuck Spinney
Hosing Obama Israeli Style

Kathy Kelly
The Strongest Weapon of All

Raymond Deane
The EU, Gaza and the Lisbon Treaty

Ralph Nader
State Terrorism Against Gaza

Audrey Stewart
Why I am in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

Harvey Wasserman
A Ten-Point Solar Agenda for Obama

Christopher Ketcham
Inauguration Ad Nauseam

Robert Jensen
A Citizen's Oath of Office

Dave Lindorff
Commie Chorus on the Mall: This Land Really is Made for You and Me

David Macaray
SAG Watches It All Slip Away

Weekend Edition
February 13 - 15, 2009

What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

The Body of the Worker

By KIM NICOLINI

Mickey Rourke’s body bursts and bulges onto the screen in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, and it doesn’t let go for the duration of the 110-minute movie. This is not just Mickey Rourke’s body, however; it’s the body of Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a washed up pro-wrestler doing gigs in gymnasiums and union halls trying to make a comeback or at least pay the rent.  Everyone is talking about how much they love Mickey Rourke in this movie. They love his body. They love his performance. They love his energy. They love him. What is it about this beaten, bruised, scarred, muscle-laden body that makes people love it and identify with it? I’ll tell you what it is. This is not just the body of Mickey Rourke or Randy “The Ram” Robinson. It is the face and body of working class America. It is the body of every single person who has spent his/her life performing labor for shit wages. It is the body of everyone who has drunk too much to dull the pain of life; who has fucked up their homes and families; who has brutalized his/her body just to sustain existence. Randy The Ram is the beaten body of labor, but it is also a victorious body. By making his body the very product of his labor, Randy The Ram actually liberates himself from the fetters of the system where he sells his body to others, and he gives his audience, both on the screen and in the movie theater, a source of identification, victory, and release.

Randy The Ram puts a face and body on the pounding the laboring class takes everyday. He articulates it for us.  He goes to work and gets beaten, punched, cut open, scarred, and brutalized in the performance of his labor. Yes, pro wrestling is a performance, but the movie is also reminding us that all labor is a performance.  The movie clearly shows how the fights are staged. Yet even within the staged boundaries, the body is still battered and used, just like it is in any other physically demanding job, like acting. The camera drills in on The Ram’s body, so there is no doubt in our mind about the toll it has taken in its work. Utilizing intense close-ups, it shows us how Randy prepares for his physical labor just like any other job. He tans and dies the hair of his body for his performance. He wraps tape on his ankles and elbows, and he stashes razors inside his wrist wraps. When he’s done with his work, the camera brings us even closer to the body as it gets stitched up and bandaged.

But Randy isn’t just the brutalized worker. By making his very body the product of his labor, he becomes an icon of the defeated and the victorious all in one. Rather than leaving the workday in silence with nothing but an empty lunchbox to show for his efforts, Randy exits the arena to the crescendo of his fans and to the greetings and support of his fellow wrestlers. Randy articulates an existential class despair while also providing a kind of gritty utopia where, even when you can’t escape being defeated by your class, you can take control by exploiting your labor by making your body your own product. This is why everyone loves Mickey Rourke’s body.

The way in which the movie is filmed grounds us in the class reality of The Ram and the world he inhabits. This is not the glamorous world of Madison Square Gardens. This is hardcore working-class New Jersey. The movie is filmed entirely on location, and The Ram is real for us largely because the places and people are real. The only constructed set in the whole movie is the wrestling ring in the final scene. The wrestling matches in the movie were filmed during actual wrestling matches in high school gymnasiums and union halls. The audiences we see in the film are real working class people dumping their anxieties, their dismay, their anger, and their emotions onto men beating the shit out of each other in a ring. We feel the rawness of The Ram’s performances and his connection with real people because the scenes were filmed at actual wrestling matches with a “real” audience. During one completely impromptu scene, one of the audience members removes his prosthetic leg and offers it to The Ram as a weapon against his opponent. “Use his leg! Use his leg!” the audience screams. This improvised, unscripted scene becomes the brilliant literalization of audience members connecting the pain and rage of their laboring bodies with the body of the wrestler. As The Ram grabs the man’s leg and uses it to beat his opponent, the audience and the wrestler become a joined body.

The film’s meshing of documentary with fiction not only gives us the grounding in reality that we need to identify with Randy but also elevates the film just enough to give the sheen of an icon to The Ram’s very real beaten body.  When the camera does pull back from the close-up and provides long shots of the Ram in his environment, we see him mapped within the geographic class context of his existence. In the many overhead shots of him walking across supermarket parking lots or waiting outside medical buildings or putting change in a phone booth, we see him as a man walking through the grim emptiness of his patched-together life. The pieces of duct tape holding his jacket together are always visible and mark his class and the shambles that his body and his life are. The details in this setting clearly bring Randy down to the level playing field of his class. He shops at the 99 cent store for his wrestling “props.” His trailer is full of outdated technology – audio cassette tapes and out-of-date Nintendo games. It is through the details in the mise-en-scene that we are drawn intimately into the Ram as a real person living in this lower working class environment. Something as simple as a folding metal chair becomes the ultimate symbol of the place he occupies on the class scale, or the sound of a bar of soap hitting the shower floor becomes the sound of every fucking obstacle and let down of The Ram’s life and, in turn, our own.

One of those set details is Randy’s trailer home, where he returns after a night’s work to find that he is locked out for not paying his rent. In other words, part of The Wrestler is a “foreclosure narrative” that is so relevant to the here and now of the working class. It is important to note that the only way that Randy is able to regain access to his home is by literally almost killing his body through his physical labor in the film’s central, incredibly brutal wrestling match. In this hardcore wrestling scene, Randy and his opponent adopt the very tools of the working class to fight each other and ultimately to destroy Randy’s body beyond repair. Ladders, staple guns, garbage cans, window frames, and a variety of construction tools are wielded not to build things but to bring bodies down. The scene is a literal battlefield of hard labor. At one point, Randy’s opponent staple guns a five dollar bill to his head, showing literally that his body is exploited for access to capital and cash.

At the end of the scene, Randy’s body drips with blood and open wounds. He is reduced to the beaten remains of an overworked farm animal. Staples and glass are embedded in his flesh. We feel a sickening in our gut like we just witnessed a dog fight and are watching the whimpering remains of an animal. Except that Randy doesn’t whimper. He swallows down his pain, but then drops to the floor with a heart attack. How can an audience not identify with this brutal victorious defeat played out with the very tools of hard labor? Yes, Randy won the wrestling match, but he lost so much in the process. Sure, he is now able to pay his rent and get his home back, but he also lost his ability to fight and has to resign himself to a regular “day job” at a deli counter in a supermarket.

It is important that Randy The Ram is stripped of his wrestling persona and placed in the everyday work environment to make the full identification and cathartic effect on the audience work. When Randy works at the deli, he is given a name tag with the name “Robin” on it, a girl’s name, which is his badge of emasculation. No longer is he in control of his own body. He is selling it for the products of others like the majority of working class people. At first he seems happy enough with his resignation to a “normal” life. The movie even throws in some clichéd tropes that threaten to sentimentalize the movie and therefore sentimentalize the working class. He develops a relationship with a “sympathetic stripper” (who also happens to literally turn her body into the product of her labor) and attempts to mend his relationship with his estranged daughter. We are given the elements for a classic reconciliation/redemption narrative in which Randy happily works at a deli, falls in love with a stripper, and develops a meaningful relationship with the daughter he abandoned.

Certainly, there is no shortage of this kind of egregious rainbow veneer applied to the working class in movies. Thankfully, The Wrestler doesn’t buy into that kind of sugar-coated, sentimental narrative. We’re given the elements for a classic reconciliation/redemption story, but the movie fails (thankfully) to deliver the goods. In one scene, Randy buys a gift for his daughter -- a used green satin jacket with the letter S for Stephanie on it. We expect her to learn to love her father and the jacket (even though she visibly thinks it’s hideous) because that’s how redemption narratives work. Daughter accepts jacket, and father and daughter live happily ever after. Except this isn’t a happily-ever-after story, so the daughter rejects the jacket and rejects Randy because he is a “fuck up” and always will be.

The movie sets up the redemption narrative but then tears it apart with a strong toxic dose of reality when Randy ends up snorting crank in a bar bathroom and fucking a strange woman in her kid’s bed instead of meeting his daughter for dinner. The movie sets us up, only to let us down, just like real life does. As the members of the audience who identify with The Ram are probably all too aware, life for the working class doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending, especially these days. The movie does a great job of not subscribing to the sentimentalization of the working class but also allowing The Ram to go out with integrity. It allows the audience to feel liberation in the ultimate destruction of Ram’s body. When Ram leaps to his inevitable death at the end of the movie, our final view is of him flying in his wrestling tights, the audience cheering, and a smile on his face. He has reclaimed his integrity by driving his body to its very end, in the ring, in his costume, in his final victorious performance of hard labor. This iconic image of Randy the Ram is an image for our times – the beaten body of labor that can be victorious even in its defeat. No wonder everyone loves Mickey Rourke’s body.

Any doubts I had about the power this body has over the audience were dispelled by the group of young men who were sitting behind me at the movies. There were about seven guys in their early twenties, just regular guys from working-class families. I could hear them responding to every single scene in the movie. They laughed at the funny, raunchy parts. They grimaced at the brutal staple gun wrestling match, and, most surprising of all, they cried during a scene with Randy’s daughter and at the end of the movie. I could hear a whole row of sniffles behind me as the guys let their tears flow. I was profoundly moved, not just by their crying during the “sad” scenes, but by the fact that this movie grabbed these young men and made them feel things together as a group. At the end of the movie, they all talked about how great it was and how they wanted to see it again. Listening to these young men reminded me of the collective power of cinema, how seeing a movie in a theater with other people is a community experience where people connect through their shared experience of what’s playing on screen. In the case of a movie like The Wrestler people are able to bond over their shared experience of class, labor, and a sense of despair and disenfranchisement (especially in today’s economy) and somehow feel less alone.

I think the fact that The Wrestler was made on such a small budget ($6 million as opposed to $167 million for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) makes the movie so much more accessible for identification and release. Due to its economic limitations, the film had to ground itself in reality (filming on location, relying on available lighting, shooting 16 mm documentary film stock). Though the audience may not know this on a conscious level, the economic limits of the film’s production actually bring the movie closer to home, literally. In fact, it brings it even closer to home to the people in the movie since the audience members in the film are “real” people from actual wrestling matches. In that regard, The Wrestler, through the deployment of Mickey Rourke’s body, provides a cinematic meeting room for the people in the audience and the people on the screen to come together, and for a moment we feel like we have the ability to beat the system that is strangling the life out of us.

Kim Nicolini is an artist, poet and cultural critic. She lives in Tucson, Arizona with her partner, daughter, and a menagerie of beasts. She works a day job to support her art and culture habits. She is currently finishing a book-length essayistic memoir about being a teenage runaway in 1970s San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Bad Subjects, Punk Planet, Bullhorn and Berkeley Review. She can be reached at: knicolini@gmail.com.

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