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| The Rock is mad at Lana because girls like Lana don't sleep with him Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Watching RAW last night, I received a revelation, one with such stunning clarity that I wasn't entirely sure if it was an epiphany or whether a week of sleep deprivation and emotional duress had finally caught up with me. I slept on it and thought about it, though, and it all started to make sense. This revelation explained so much of the history and behaviors of one of WWE's most iconic characters that I am shocked and dumbfounded that I haven't come to this revelation a long time ago.
Basically, the character of The Rock has either never had sex, or he's had such little sex in his life that he's still super-repressed after all these years.
The first telltale sign has been slapping everyone in the face for the last 15 years. The Rock has always had a super-confrontational relationship with women. When he comes across a woman whom he pretends is sexually repulsive to him (Vickie Guerrero) or who has wronged him in some way (Lana, Stephanie McMahon, etc.), he batters her with awful, misogynist insults. Do you think someone who knows the touch of a woman would have sat down and ad libbed a trashy, hateful song towards Guerrero for no other reason than her telling him to be quiet while people are working? Basically, Rock's script towards women is cobbled straight out of men's rights activist forums. More accurately, maybe The Rock was a greater influence on the current crop of fedora-clad champions of r/MensRights than people realize.
Even when he tried putting the moves on various women over the years that met his standards of attractiveness, his moves have always reeked of the sleazy, one-liner-drenched pickup artist shtick that the "red pill" consuming subgroup uses to get sex. Remember when he'd use to hit on Lilian Garcia and she'd pretend to act flattered? The puzzle pieces are starting to fit together quite nicely, and the pattern has been noticeable and defined since the day he came into WWE.
Rocky Maivia entered the company as the fresh-faced, blue-chip, can't-prospect dressed in a warped, Middle American view on what was cool in 1996. He was an exceedingly "nice" guy who played the right way, but he got abused by the system and became jaded. If that sequence sounds familiar, head into the murky waters of self-pitying MRA forums and see how many people self-profess as nice people whom the ladies often abuse and use. His next step was to join the Nation of Domination, which oddly makes sense as well. While the Nation never really lashed out against women in general, Rock's motivations to get into the group in the first place could have been because he didn't have any luck with the ladies. Maybe if he threw himself into activism, he could get his mind off the evil, gross, MEAN women who wouldn't give him WHAT HE DESERVED.
But then he evolved into The Rock, and he got all the accolades. He showed off his massive charisma and won Championships and grew into his body all that other jazz, and yet the ladies were still repulsed by him. And then when he became a movie star, he got so busy between shuttling back and forth between Hollywood and WWE that he didn't even have time for sex. But that didn't stop him from assuming that the lack of action was because women were evil. His mind became so warped that today, his first reaction to a ravishing bombshell who happened to be the most vocal anti-American zealot WWE has seen since Ludvig Borga was to demean her for her gender.
But why would WWE so blatantly and obviously promote a sexless, hateful MRA as its biggest pop icon, even before the time he became a legitimate Hollywood box office draw? Well, to whom did WWE market shows during the Attitude Era? The answer is the 18-34 male demographic. While any large group of people is super diverse both in appearance and mindset, I've been around enough late-'90s devotees to know that a healthy amount of MRA-types populated those crowds back in the day. The Rock was a handsome, ripped, charismatic dude who represented everything some people in the crowd wished they could be, but even in the depths of vicarious living, those fans had to have identified with Rock on a different level. He was more famous than they were, but they shared the common bond that none of them were getting laid on a regular basis. He talked like they did, only he was that portion of the crowd's most successful avatar.
I can't believe it took me so long to realize that Rocky really is just a sexually repressed asshole who strikes a chord with a vocal portion of the crowd. Sure, some people who have healthy sex lives like him for whatever reason, and again, not having sex isn't a crime or a sin or something to be ashamed of, which is why someone ACTING like their own lack of sex is a "problem" makes them such a delicious heel, or at the very least, an antiheroic emblem for a community with misplaced ideals. WWE has always seemed askew when it came to its morality alignments, but maybe its portrayal of The Rock, especially during the times when he's called upon to be cheered, can shed some light on the twisted ideas of heroism and villainy among its braintrust.