Jimmy Snuka and Misogyny in Wrestling

In light of the charges brought against Jimmy Snuka, Adam Hofmeister examines the history of misogyny in professional wrestling.

TW: graphic descriptions of violence against women, rape, domestic violence.

2015 has been a very rough year for WWE. Dusty Rhodes and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper have vaulted off of the mortal springboard, Daniel Bryan has retired due to being physically broken in 3.5 million places and, most infamously, Hulk Hogan, the very face of wrestling itself, has been unceremoniously fired from the company for racist comments he made in (of all places) a sex tape back in 2007.

Why The Long Face? BoJack Horseman and Depression

Adam Hofmeister takes a personal look at the bizarre yet poignant world of Netflix cartoon BoJack Horseman, and what it has to say to those who may find themselves wandering into it.

“You know, sometimes I feel like I was born with a leak, and any goodness I started with just slowly spilled out of me, and now it’s all gone. And I’ll never get it back in me. It’s too late. Life is a series of closing doors, isn’t it?”
– BoJack Horseman, Horse Majeure

‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper (April 17, 1954 – July 31, 2015)

RODDY PIPER. I LOVE YOU FOREVER. GOD BLESS YOU BUBBA — The Iron Sheik (@the_ironsheik) July 31, 2015

I have said before that I am not a lifelong wrestling fan, but a relative newbie. However, there were three wrestlers from the Golden Age I knew very well despite my overall ignorance: Hulk Hogan (oh, how the mighty have fallen), “Macho Man” Randy Savage and, of course, Roderick George Toombs, better known to the world as ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper.

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015)

Has teenage angst paid off well, or is it bored and old? Adam Hofmeister takes a look at a very different and very powerful documentary.

I was only four years old when Kurt Cobain ended his life, but it wasn’t until I was fifteen that I discovered the music of Nirvana. During a time in which my depression and anxiety were just beginning to take over my life, Cobain’s music provided a voice to channel those demons away from myself. His music took away some of the pain, and opened me up to a wider world of sound.

“As God As My Witness, He’s Broken in Half!” or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Wrestling

Is there more to professional wrestling than perhaps we think? Recent convert and Macho Madness Syndrome sufferer Adam Hofmeister gives us his thoughts on the joy of staged violence and whether it deserves its low status.

It is impossible to deny that violence is a fundamental part of human existence. Every culture has been formed on it and attempted to understand and represent it via artistic expression, whether it’s through the horrific paintings of Goya, the bloody plays of William Shakespeare, or any of the depictions of scenes from the Bible. But enough about all that angsty, teenage nonsense; I’m going to talk about wrestling.

Tony Benn: Will and Testament

In his latest piece for Hollywood Hegemony, writer Adam Hofmeister reviews ‘Will and Testament’, Skip Kite’s “fitting tribute for a socialist hero”, and pays his own respects to the life and ideas of the late Tony Benn.

Gone, but not forgotten.

Modern Times

Dancing on machines to fight the machine, Adam Hofmeister looks at what serious messages Chaplin’s classic has to tell us in a comical fashion.

Released: 1936
Running time: 87 minutes
Cast: Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard
Plot: A factory worker (Chaplin) suffers a nervous breakdown, gets mistaken for a revolutionary and arrested and then struggles to find work in the depression era. Accompanying him is ‘the girl’ who tries to rehabilitate him into work whilst on the run from the law.

Vampire’s Kiss

Bad fangs happen on Wall Street as Adam Hofmeister considers Vampire’s Kiss in detail.

Released: 1989
Running time: 103 minutes
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Marie Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Beals, Elizabeth Ashley
Plot: Peter Loew (Cage) is a successful literary agent in New York who slowly begins to believe he is turning into a vampire after a one night stand with Rachel (Beals). His mental collapse accompanies his wretched abuse of his secretary (Alonso) and his wild rants to his psychiatrist (Ashley).