All-in Wrestling in Inter-War Britain: Science and Spectacle in Mass Observation's 'Worktown'

All-in wrestling was established as a spectator sport in the 1930s and appealed primarily to a working-class audience. All-in was controversial because of its excessive violence and its blend of the spectacular and dramatic with sport, which led to accusations that it was not really a sport. Neverth...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of the history of sport 2013-06, Vol.30 (12), p.1418-1435
Main Author: Snape, Robert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
20th century
Americanisation
Americanization
Audience
Audiences
commercialism
Commercialization
Consumption
Drama
England
Entertainment
Interwar years
Science
spectacle
Spectators
Sports
Sports Violence
United Kingdom
Working Class
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Summary:All-in wrestling was established as a spectator sport in the 1930s and appealed primarily to a working-class audience. All-in was controversial because of its excessive violence and its blend of the spectacular and dramatic with sport, which led to accusations that it was not really a sport. Nevertheless, it retained many characteristics of sport, and audiences consumed it as such. All-in wrestling was an outcome of the evolution of a traditional ancient sport into a commercial entertainment and represented an extreme conflation of sport and drama. Using records of All-in wrestling in the Mass Observation Archive, this paper explores the ways in which audiences negotiated the tensions between sport and spectacle.
ISSN:0952-3367
1743-9035
DOI:10.1080/09523367.2013.804812