A new day for Hulk Hogan: Celebrity selves and racial diversity in contemporary professional wrestling

Abstract

This paper considers contemporary World Wrestling Entertainment’s new racial politics in the light of Hulk Hogan’s 2015 erasure from the Federation after a leaked racist sex tape rant, and the African-American wrestlers The New Day’s rise to fame during the same period. This paper locates WWE’s actions as responses in line with a domestic media marketplace where the rhetoric of racial diversity is fetishised. In doing so, this paper combines literature on corporate social responsibility, race, and the performativity of the self in contemporary celebrity culture. This paper reads World Wrestling Entertainment’s actions as strategies through which the Federation’s corporate social responsibility is spectacularly performed, allowing it to grow and survive in the streaming video era.