Subscribe to Culturedarm

A monthly subscription supports Culturedarm while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
• Culturedarm's weekly newsletter straight to your inbox
• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

Lock it in and fuhgeddaboudit with an annual subscription to Culturedarm, which supports the site while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
• Culturedarm's weekly newsletter straight to your inbox
• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

placeholder text
3
25
0

Albums

Booker T & The Plasmic Bleeds – Ode to BC/LY . . . And Eye Know BO . . . da Prez

The saxophonist Booker T. Williams is something of an...

Sun & Rain – Waterfall

Back in 2010 the tenor saxophonist Travis Laplante, guitarist...

Will Mason Quartet – Hemlocks, Peacocks

Hemlocks, Peacocks the new album by the Will Mason...

Nate Wooley – Henry House

If the possibilities latent within the world of free...

Behind the Song

Behind the Song: Robyn – ‘Be Mine!’

Beginning her career in pop music at the age...

Behind the Song: Van Morrison – ‘Crazy Love’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIaKy1vM9hs 'Crazy Love' is the third track from Moondance, Van...

Behind the Song: Animal Collective – ‘Summertime Clothes’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxhaRgJUMl8 Animal Collective's eighth studio album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, was...

Themes and References in Joanna Newsom’s Sapokanikan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky9Ro9pP2gc In the music video for 'Sapokanikan', Joanna Newsom saunters...

Behind the Song: David Bowie – ‘Subterraneans’

'Subterraneans' is the closing song on what has become perhaps David Bowie's most critically acclaimed album: Pitchfork placed Low at number 1 on their 'Top 100 Albums of the 1970s', on Q's list of the '100 Greatest British Albums Ever' Low was Bowie's highest entry at number 14, and while...

Tracks of the Week

Tracks of the Week 19.01.25

Benjamin Lackner plays the piano with a plangent grace...

Tracks of the Week 12.01.25

Not since Jerry Seinfeld groggily awoke to witness Tim...

Tracks of the Week 04.01.25

Fresh beginnings plus a few festive odds and ends...

Tracks of the Week 17.08.24

Allen Lowe's short bio says that the veteran saxophonist...

Tracks of the Week 10.08.24

David Lynch, the transcendental meditator and itinerant Eagle Scout...

At the Movies

Risky Business (1983)

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - Joel (Tom Cruise), a teenager coming towards the end of his time in high school, lives with his parents in a leafy Chicago suburb. He is good-looking and his parents are wealthy, but they are also demanding, and he subsumes a fluent strain of existential angst with worry over schoolwork and his future prospects. Beyond a litany of tests, he is involved in a Future Enterprises programme...

Teen Wolf (1985)

★½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - It would be naive to suggest that things were simpler back in the 1980s, but when it came to the movie preferences of adolescent males, they were less demanding at least. True it was the era of high concept film, of space operas and extra-terrestrials and all-action archaeologists, of darkening or neon-clad dystopias, of robots and terminators, of zombies and ghosts and gremlins...

The Switch (2010)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - Kassie Larson (Jennifer Aniston) is in her thirties, and she's single, and with no romantic prospects on the horizon she decides she can no longer wait to have a child. She talks the matter over with her best friend Wally Mars (Jason Bateman) - they dated six years ago, and though it didn't work out they've got along swimmingly ever since...

North by Northwest (1959)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - A Madison Avenue advertising man, run-of-the-mill if unusually tanned with his grey flannel suit an impeccable fit, stands up at the wrong moment in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Roger Thornhill has theatre tickets. He wishes to send a wire to his mother, but by summoning the wrong waiter and ostensibly responding to the wrong call, he gets mistaken for George Kaplan, a government agent.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - In February 1969 in Hollywood, fading television star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) frequents bars and gets ferried around by his old stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Booth lives in a trailer with his pit bull Brandy, in an empty lot behind the drive-in in Van Nuys, but Dalton keeps up appearances with a luxury home in Beverly Crest overlooking Beverly Hills...

World Cinema

The Blind Side (2009)

★ (1 out of 4 stars) - The Blind Side purports to tell the real-life story of Michael Oher, depicted here as a poor oversized black kid from the ghetto. He's in and out of foster homes thanks to an absentee father and a drug addict mother, until the father of one of his friends - on whose couch he has been sleeping - brings him to the attention of the football coach of a local Christian school...

Little Women (2019)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Greta Gerwig imbues the seventh film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic coming-of-age novel with deft characterisation and heady momentum, across and finally through the screen. Each scene bustles with gesture and intonation even when its components aren't rushing headlong through the streets of Manhattan, idling about the parks of Paris, or swirling the ballrooms and striding fields and beaches in the vicinity of Boston, Mass...

Rams (2015)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Ageing, unmarried, and unkempt, brothers Gummi (Sigurður Sigurjónsson) and Kiddi (Theodór Júlíusson) work side by side as sheep farmers in a cold and desolate valley in Iceland's northeast. Each the master of their own flock, they have not spoken for forty years owing to a dispute over their father's inheritance: considering Gummi the more conscientious worker, their father left him the whole of the land...

Risky Business (1983)

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - Joel (Tom Cruise), a teenager coming towards the end of his time in high school, lives with his parents in a leafy Chicago suburb. He is good-looking and his parents are wealthy, but they are also demanding, and he subsumes a fluent strain of existential angst with worry over schoolwork and his future prospects. Beyond a litany of tests, he is involved in a Future Enterprises programme...

Cactus Flower (1969)

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - More than mere confection, which by nature lies there enticingly and dwindles the more that we eat, and just like the titular cactus which sits on dental assistant Stephanie Dickinson's desk, cannily marking her transformation, Cactus Flower positively blossoms. The third film in three years from director Gene Saks - hot on the heels of two resounding Neil Simon success stories...

Earthy Anecdotes

Earthy Anecdotes: Katharine Hepburn Steals Stephen Sondheim’s Plant

By the turn of the twentieth century, the Turtle Bay neighbourhood on the east side of Midtown Manhattan was a 'riverside back yard' for the city of New York. Imposing brownstones and squalid tenement housing butted up against the breweries, gasworks, and slaughterhouses which lined the waterfront. Eventually the waterfront would be reshaped by the United Nations headquarters, with dozens of diplomatic missions...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Hellish Dinner Scene

One of the most influential horror movies of all-time,...

Earthy Anecdotes: Alex Ferguson, Mick Harford and The League That Got Away

In the winter of 1991, Manchester United stood atop...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Premiere of The Rite of Spring

On 29 May 1913, The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...

Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at Médan by Paul Cézanne

In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...

Poetry

Rabindranath Tagore, E. E. Cummings; Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Björk

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali polymath, best known...

Emily Dickinson – ‘I Can Wade Grief’ (1862)

Emily Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in...

The Early Poetry of Mina Loy

When the first issue of Others: A Magazine of...

Pierrot Through the Arts

Pierrot, the sad clown in white face and loose...

James Joyce

Daily Visual 16.06.15: Bloomsday 2015

Bloomsday today in Dublin marks the culmination of a...

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits; and the Jesuits and James Joyce

With the election yesterday evening in Rome of former...

Joyce, Nabokov, and Dirty Books: The Publications of Ulysses, Haveth Childers Everywhere, and Lolita

With Ezra Pound acting as intermediary, from the spring of...

Obituaries

Brazilian Architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha Dies at the Age of 92

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NidZvaQQrsA The Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha died on...

Charles Grodin, Star of The Heartbreak Kid and Midnight Run, Dies Aged 86

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT6HIfhwtKo The actor, author, and talk show host Charles Grodin...

Toots Hibbert, Reggae Pioneer and Lead Vocalist of the Maytals, Dies Aged 77

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErQ2UB44k-o Toots Hibbert, the pioneering reggae musician who imbued his...

Ned Beatty, Deliverance, Nashville, and Network Actor, Dies at the Age of 83

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TwyrAS2lU8 The actor Ned Beatty died of natural causes on...

Culturedarm

Subscribe to Culturedarm

A monthly subscription supports Culturedarm while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
• Culturedarm's weekly newsletter straight to your inbox
• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

Lock it in and fuhgeddaboudit with an annual subscription to Culturedarm, which supports the site while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
• Culturedarm's weekly newsletter straight to your inbox
• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

placeholder text
3
25
0

Albums

Booker T & The Plasmic Bleeds – Ode to BC/LY . . . And Eye Know BO . . . da Prez

The saxophonist Booker T. Williams is something of an...

Sun & Rain – Waterfall

Back in 2010 the tenor saxophonist Travis Laplante, guitarist...

Will Mason Quartet – Hemlocks, Peacocks

Hemlocks, Peacocks the new album by the Will Mason...

Nate Wooley – Henry House

If the possibilities latent within the world of free...

Behind the Song

Behind the Song: Leonore Overture, ‘Farewell Amanda’, ‘One Night’

Ludwig van Beethoven - Leonore Overture No. 1, Op....

Behind the Song: Van Morrison – ‘Crazy Love’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIaKy1vM9hs 'Crazy Love' is the third track from Moondance, Van...

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Behind the Song: Chuck Berry – ‘You Can’t Catch Me’

'You Can't Catch Me', one of Chuck Berry's early singles, proved an unexpected commercial flop. It failed to chart upon its release at the onset of 1957 - despite being given prominence by the fledgeling rock and roll feature Rock, Rock, Rock!, which had opened in cinemas the previous month...

Behind the Song: Animal Collective – ‘Summertime Clothes’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxhaRgJUMl8 Animal Collective's eighth studio album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, was...

Tracks of the Week

Tracks of the Week 19.01.25

Benjamin Lackner plays the piano with a plangent grace...

Tracks of the Week 12.01.25

Not since Jerry Seinfeld groggily awoke to witness Tim...

Tracks of the Week 04.01.25

Fresh beginnings plus a few festive odds and ends...

Tracks of the Week 17.08.24

Allen Lowe's short bio says that the veteran saxophonist...

Tracks of the Week 10.08.24

David Lynch, the transcendental meditator and itinerant Eagle Scout...

At the Movies

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) owns a warehouse which manufactures and sells novelty goods - toilet plungers with supposedly non-breakable handles and so on - but channels all of his hopes into one venture: having carried out his research diligently, and as far as the vagaries of the promotion will allow, he has come to understand that by purchasing gross quantities of Healthy Choice pudding...

Paris, Texas (1984)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton) was introduced against a backdrop of blue skies and sandstone buttes, but his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) wears a yellow Stetson cap and stands in front of a commercial tower block, which turns out to be painted. He sells billboard signs for a living, but agrees to travel to Terlingua, South Texas, to pick up his brother...

Kalifornia (1993)

★★½ (2.5 out of 4 stars) - Brian and Carrie plan to drive from their home of Louisville, Kentucky to the golden state of California, stopping off at renowned murder spots along the way. Brian hopes to gain material for his book, with Carrie providing the photographic illustration. To top up their gas-guzzling Lincoln Continental, their notice for a ride share is answered by a curious couple, the childlike Adele Corners and her ragged minder Early Grayce...

How to Steal a Million (1966)

★★½ (2.5 out of 4 stars) - Nicole Bonnet (Audrey Hepburn) is the daughter of an art forger, who has gathered so many supposed masterpieces in his private collection that he has won considerable renown in the world of art. Approached by the Kléber-Lafayette Museum, he proudly loans to the illustrious Paris institution (which for the sake of the film occupies the building of the real-life Musée Carnavalet) his most prized possession, his Cellini 'Venus'...

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

★½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - When it comes to the blockbuster action movie, three franchises remain. There is the Marvel Cinematic Universe and other assorted comic book pictures, y'know, for kids; Tom Cruise, most clearly for the ever stellar Mission: Impossible series, wilfully forgetting Jack Reacher but with shoutouts to American Made, Edge of Tomorrow, and the upcoming Top Gun sequel, sure to be a success; and then there's The Rock...

World Cinema

Toni Erdmann (2016)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Winfried Conradi is so given to practical jokes that he practically depends on them. When he opens the door of his home in the spa town of Aachen, he regales the postman with an elaborate deception featuring look-alike brothers, prison terms, erotic magazines, and mail bombs, tipping the postman for any distress accrued and to make amends for his own strange excesses. He carries a pair of false teeth...

We’re the Millers (2013)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - In what sounds like a riff on an old joke, a drug dealer, a stripper, a runaway, and a nerd climb into a camper van south of the border. David Clark (Jason Sudeikis) is a low-level marijuana dealer who finds himself beholden to his supplier, the sleazy businessman Brad Gurdlinger (Ed Helms), when a couple of street hoods make off with his stash. To cover the debt with a little added compensation, David reluctantly agrees to smuggle a 'smidge' of weed from Mexico...

The Blind Side (2009)

★ (1 out of 4 stars) - The Blind Side purports to tell the real-life story of Michael Oher, depicted here as a poor oversized black kid from the ghetto. He's in and out of foster homes thanks to an absentee father and a drug addict mother, until the father of one of his friends - on whose couch he has been sleeping - brings him to the attention of the football coach of a local Christian school...

High Noon (1952)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Will Kane (Gary Cooper), the marshal of a small frontier town in New Mexico Territory, gets married in a small civil ceremony to his beautiful young wife Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly), a Quaker whose imminent plans include a family and a convenience store someplace else. Fully intending to play the doting husband, to that end it is also Kane's last day on the job, and he hands in his badge...

North by Northwest (1959)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - A Madison Avenue advertising man, run-of-the-mill if unusually tanned with his grey flannel suit an impeccable fit, stands up at the wrong moment in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Roger Thornhill has theatre tickets. He wishes to send a wire to his mother, but by summoning the wrong waiter and ostensibly responding to the wrong call, he gets mistaken for George Kaplan, a government agent.

Earthy Anecdotes

Earthy Anecdotes: Katharine Hepburn Steals Stephen Sondheim’s Plant

By the turn of the twentieth century, the Turtle Bay neighbourhood on the east side of Midtown Manhattan was a 'riverside back yard' for the city of New York. Imposing brownstones and squalid tenement housing butted up against the breweries, gasworks, and slaughterhouses which lined the waterfront. Eventually the waterfront would be reshaped by the United Nations headquarters, with dozens of diplomatic missions...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Hellish Dinner Scene

One of the most influential horror movies of all-time,...

Earthy Anecdotes: Alex Ferguson, Mick Harford and The League That Got Away

In the winter of 1991, Manchester United stood atop...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Premiere of The Rite of Spring

On 29 May 1913, The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...

Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at Médan by Paul Cézanne

In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...

Poetry

Emily Dickinson – ‘I Can Wade Grief’ (1862)

Emily Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in...

Rabindranath Tagore, E. E. Cummings; Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Björk

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali polymath, best known...

Pierrot Through the Arts

Pierrot, the sad clown in white face and loose...

Alexander Blok – ‘Night, street, street-light, drugstore’ (1912)

Alexander Blok (Александр Блок) (1880-1921) was the foremost of...

James Joyce

Joyce, Nabokov, and Dirty Books: The Publications of Ulysses, Haveth Childers Everywhere, and Lolita

With Ezra Pound acting as intermediary, from the spring of...

Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits; and the Jesuits and James Joyce

With the election yesterday evening in Rome of former...

Daily Visual 16.06.15: Bloomsday 2015

Bloomsday today in Dublin marks the culmination of a...

The Homeric Parallel in Ulysses: Joyce, Nabokov and Homer in Maps

When Ulysses was published on 2 February, 1922, it was the...

Obituaries

Dean Stockwell, Star of Blue Velvet and Quantum Leap, Dies at 85 Years Old

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhPosL3UAN8 The actor Dean Stockwell died of natural causes on...

Kenzo Takada, the Japanese Designer Who Revolutionised French Fashion, Dies at 81

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7E4bITT4t8 With the wet weather and surging coronavirus already putting...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice, Dies at the Age of 87

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRlEFT-44Ik Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the Supreme Court...

Toots Hibbert, Reggae Pioneer and Lead Vocalist of the Maytals, Dies Aged 77

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErQ2UB44k-o Toots Hibbert, the pioneering reggae musician who imbued his...

Culturedarm

The Culturedarm Newsletter

Sign up to Culturedarm's weekly newsletter, which features a carefully curated blend of current articles, posts from the archive and sizzling hot tracks of the week.

Modal title

Featured Posts

Related Posts

WWE Survivor Series 2015 Slaps Fans in the Face

Survivor Series Sheamus Triple H

At Hell in a Cell just last month, after a string of PPVs boasting mediocre undercards and slapdash main events, there were finally some signs of life in the wheezing machine that is WWE. Inside the cell Brock Lesnar and The Undertaker put on the strongest match of their three-match series, a physical bout with an inventive finish which managed to wrap some of the angst of their feud into a neat narrative of in-ring cunning and professional respect. And with such a prestigious main event, elsewhere on the card some of WWE’s younger or more marginal talents were given their due.

First there was the surprise return of Alberto Del Rio, who defeated John Cena for the United States Championship. Roman Reigns vs. Bray Wyatt and Charlotte vs. Nikki Bella proved compelling showcases for four tough competitors. Seth Rollins and The New Day, the best things about WWE in 2015, achieved convincing title defences, belated but well deserved. And most startling of all at Hell in a Cell, and apparently most indicative of a real desire to make new stars, at the end of Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker, The Wyatt Family emerged and beat down the Deadman before carrying him away from the ring.

The momentum continued on to the following night’s RAW. A tournament took place to determine the number one contender for Seth Rollins’ World Heavyweight Championship, and it was packed with promise: Dolph Ziggler, Cesaro, Roman Reigns, Alberto Del Rio, Neville, Kevin Owens, Kofi Kingston, and Big E. Ziggler, Reigns, Del Rio, and Owens made the final four, with Reigns emerging triumphant – and despite his hazardous journey towards the title picture, an issue between Reigns and Rollins was something the WWE audience were willing to buy into, given their shared history as members of The Shield.

On RAW Paige also completed her turn on Charlotte, positing a feisty new feud for the Divas Championship. And The Wyatt Family consolidated their assault on The Undertaker by beating and capturing Kane. Not everything was a success. The new alliance of Del Rio and Zeb Colter rambled something about ‘MexAmerica’, apparently conceiving an expanded nation without borders, and as Colter spoke Del Rio’s second stint in WWE shrunk before our very eyes. By making the MexAmericans heels, WWE were perilously close to a celebration of anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant sentiment. And if the analysis is unfair, it is only because the angle seemed so barely thought out.

MexAmerica already stands as a failure, one of the clumsiest ideas WWE has ever conjured, and so clumsy that it has made Zeb Colter, one of the company’s best talkers, sound incoherent and confused. Still the trend on this post-Hell in a Cell RAW was overwhelmingly positive, a shake-up in the absence of John Cena, the crucial first steps towards the elevation of new superstars.

Then everything went to the devil. Little more than a week later, Seth Rollins suffered a devastating injury to his right knee at a house show in Dublin. Tearing his anterior cruciate ligament, medial collateral ligament, and meniscus, after undergoing surgery he will be out of action for between 6-9 months. Now another tournament had to be devised, with the aim of crowning a new champion come Survivor Series. Beyond WWE’s year-long endeavour to establish Roman Reigns, this at least presented the opportunity for a more radical restructuring of the main event. But despite some excellent matches along the way, the chance was squandered at the behest of predictability: Reigns, Del Rio, and Owens again made up three of the final four, and left the final match at Survivor Series in little doubt.

If the title tournament always risked being compromised by WWE’s determination – at the expense of more rounded and organically popular superstars – to persist with a one-dimensional push of Roman Reigns, the angle between The Brothers of Destruction and The Wyatt Family felt like a sure thing. The Undertaker and Bray Wyatt fought at WrestleMania 31 back in March, but then Wyatt was alone, and left to carry a minor feud in The Undertaker’s absence. Now with an expanded Wyatt Family – Braun Strowman, a physical match for The Undertaker and Kane, added to the original pairing of Luke Harper and Erick Rowan – and looking dominant after the climax to Hell in a Cell, Wyatt seemed ready to command the world’s attention as the heir to The Brothers of Destruction’s peculiar brand of darkness.

For this storyline to work, The Wyatt Family simply had to look strong going into Survivor Series. But WWE couldn’t get any of the details right. With four members, it made sense for Wyatts to face The Undertaker and Kane in a traditional Survivor Series elimination tag match. This would have allowed a role for all of the Wyatts, as well as a high-profile spot for two additions to the Brothers of Destruction team. Finn Balor seemed an obvious candidate, given his ‘Demon’ entrance attire, and he would have gained substantially from a main-roster debut on the side of two legends. Instead, WWE booked a standard two-on-two tag match. This didn’t bode well, and it became increasingly apparent that the Wyatts’ numerical superiority would count for naught.

On the RAW after Hell in a Cell, we had seen The Wyatt Family carry Kane not only off the arena floor, but through the backstage and out of the stadium entirely. Logic dictated that he and The Undertaker were being held somewhere by the Wyatts, presumably in the dilapidated barn of their vignettes. Instead, on the same RAW that saw the inauguration of the title tournament, The Brothers of Destruction blithely returned and laid the Wyatts to waste. Amid overly contrived special effects and the brazenly silly onslaught of midget druids, the Wyatts never recovered from the beating all four members received at the hands of the rejuvenated Undertaker and Kane, and they went into Survivor Series looking distinctly second best.

As for the other matches on the Survivor Series card, Dolph Ziggler vs. Tyler Breeze received too little screen time and felt underdeveloped, and the same was true for Charlotte vs. Paige until they were shoved into the ‘go home’ segment at the close of the pre-Survivor Series RAW. Paige’s reference to the death of Charlotte’s brother Reid jolted the feud, but the off-screen reaction – with WWE foisting responsibility for the remark on to Charlotte, and showing a familiar lack of respect by apparently failing to discuss the matter first with Ric Flair – had the perverse result of fostering sympathy for Paige, who was supposed to be playing the ruthless heel.

* * *

More than anything, it was the routine feel of the title tournament which left viewers underwhelmed and uninspired going into Survivor Series. The 14,000-strong crowd at the Philips Arena in Atlanta, Georgia were quiet from the start. The PPV opened with Roman Reigns vs. Alberto Del Rio in the first title tournament semi-final, and their match was solid enough, but with Del Rio’s MexAmerica fiasco and the ambivalence which remains towards Reigns, it received little response.

After some action on the outside, back in the ring a nice spot saw Del Rio take his time getting up from a Superman punch, playing possum before preventing a spear with a stiff kick. But when Reigns escaped from the cross armbreaker, Del Rio missed a double foot stomp and succumbed to the spear for the 1-2-3. Throughout the match Reigns shook at the ropes and rocked his head back and forth in an aping of the Ultimate Warrior, but he is a straight and stern figure who achieves none of these excesses with much conviction.

Dean Ambrose is one of WWE’s most compelling figures, but also one whose ‘Lunatic Fringe’ persona is most hamstrung by the product’s PG rating. He is an exceptional wrestler, but his style is free-form, a sort of oral narration that doesn’t always fit with the WWE house style. Ambrose has put on some great matches this year, not least with Seth Rollins in their unconventional and highly destructive 35-minute ladder match at Money in the Bank; and with Dolph Ziggler in their quarter-final match on RAW, where they wrestled in a slow-paced, methodical catch style.

On the other hand Kevin Owens suits the WWE house style to a tee, boasting a series of signature moves that transition seamlessly into near-falls: the cannonball in the corner, the senton splash, the neckbreaker, the moonsault, the fisherman suplex from the top rope. Whether these different styles resulted in a lack of chemistry or some other issue was at fault, Ambrose and Owens failed to click in the second title tournament semi-final. Ambrose managed little offense until a seamless conclusion to the match. Slipping out the back of a pop-up powerbomb attempt only to turn into a superkick, he received another stiff kick as he sought to come off the ropes with a clothesline. But when Owens went for the pop-up powerbomb once more, a hurricanrana followed by the Dirty Deeds saw Ambrose progress to meet his friend Reigns in the final.

The third match on the card was unannounced prior to the show itself, and featured a traditional Survivor Series elimination tag – the match that should have been given to The Brothers of Destruction and The Wyatt Family. In fact this was the second unannounced Survivor Series match on the night: another five-on-five affair, which told a similar story, had appeared on the pre-show, involving Neville, The Dudleys, Titus O’Neill, and Goldust vs. Stardust, The Ascension, Bo Dallas, and The Miz. The Dudleys, O’Neill, and Goldust ended the winners after Stardust, the heel team’s only remaining participant, attempted to flee.

On the PPV proper your tag team champions The New Day – Big E, Kofi Kingston, and Xavier Woods left without a storyline heading into the event – aligned with Sheamus and King Barrett against Ryback, The Usos, and The Lucha Dragons. The New Day provided the night’s only entertainment, with Sheamus playing the fool during his team’s collective entrance, briefly attempting to dance and becoming irate when he lacked rhythm.

Xavier Woods’ hair was a delight, in a pompadour reminiscent of Little Richard. Otherwise this match was a bit of a mess. The Usos and the Lucha Dragons collaborated with nice dives out onto the floor, and then Ryback too came crashing down from the top turnbuckle onto all the standing competitors. Barrett, Jimmy Uso, Sin Cara, and Big E were quickly eliminated. And with their teammate gone, The New Day took the opportunity to depart altogether, citing a potential injury. This left Sheamus up against Ryback, Jey Uso, and Kalisto.

This was hardly a heel situation for the Celtic Warrior, but as far as the crowd were concerned, the match was dead as soon as The New Day absconded. The remainder was too long and did nothing to change their opinion, as Sheamus managed little substantial offense and failed to mount anything resembling a comeback, merely persisting until a triple-tag culminated in a Shell Shocked to give Ryback the pinfall for his team. This felt like a waste of time and a misuse of talent, but it became especially ridiculous given what was to transpire in little over an hour.

Much like the opening two singles bouts, Charlotte vs. Paige for the Divas Championship wasn’t short on effort, but it failed to engage the crowd and build any tangible suspense. A physical match featuring plenty of strikes inside the ring, and outside slams into the announce table and ring apron – with Paige adopting a peculiar posture, as though always attempting to toss her opponent head first – it impressed in spurts but was spoiled by the finish. As Paige stood posing atop the fan barrier, Charlotte mustered enough strength to jump up and spear her onto the arena floor. But when she rolled Paige into the ring and applied her Figure Eight leglock, Paige was in the corner surrounded by ropes, and struggled in vain before meekly submitting.

The angle that developed out of this on RAW on Monday – with Paige successfully calling for a rematch on the basis that Charlotte’s arm had been under the ropes during the hold – did nothing to rectify the error. It made no sense that Paige failed to grab a rope to break the submission. More, the announce team of Michael Cole, JBL, and Jerry Lawler did little to sell Charlotte’s spear, so that the audience watching at home had no appreciation that the match was reaching its climax. In all the lack of selling and the senseless submission meant a damp ending to this title fight.

Dolph Ziggler vs. Tyler Breeze was the only match of the night which managed to effect its own energy, but it was given barely any time, a meagre six minutes. Breeze is an accomplished wrestler who developed an appealing personality in NXT, and he needs wins: he rather than Alberto Del Rio should have taken John Cena’s United States title. At the same time Ziggler’s defeat at Survivor Series – courtesy of Breeze’s Unprettier – only emphasises how far he has fallen since this time last year, when he prevailed against The Authority and finally seemed destined for a push to the top.

Lacklustre up until this point, Survivor Series descended into abject farce with the two final matches of the night. There is not much worth saying about The Undertaker and Kane vs. Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper, because the whole affair was so depressingly and destructively one-sided. Instead of establishing Bray Wyatt at the top table of WWE, it served only as a victory lap for The Undertaker, who was given an especially unwieldy entrance.

Some might have expected that Braun Strowman’s build over the last couple of months was leading to something: a match at the very least, if not a career. Instead he was double-chokeslammed through the announce table and instantly lost all of his mystique. Erick Rowan had already disappeared after taking an early double-chokeslam, and now Wyatt was chokeslammed by The Undertaker and Harper by Kane, with Taker dropping Harper with the Tombstone Piledriver for the easy victory. The Wyatt Family – and Bray in particular – did not need to win this match, an outcome which was never likely on The Undertaker’s 25th birthday. But they needed to look as though they were worth something, and instead they were utterly squashed.

The in-ring action of the main event proved similarly unworthy: it was only getting started when Roman Reigns beat Dean Ambrose with a spear. We have seen too many curtailed and thrown away World title matches this year: The Undertaker interfering during Seth Rollins vs. Brock Lesnar at Battleground, Jon Stewart costing John Cena at SummerSlam, and Kane providing the conclusion after Seth Rollins vs. Sting at Night of Champions. Reigns vs. Ambrose was the final we all knew were were getting from the outset, but it still had the potential to make for an enthralling match, and with a heel turn could have stirred up an interesting period for WWE. When it ended after nine minutes, and with twenty minutes of Survivor Series to spare, it made a mockery of the title tournament, and it was abundantly clear that we were going to see a Money in the Bank cash-in.

So when Triple H and then Sheamus came down to the ring, there was no sense of surprise, only irritation at the remarkably stubborn and backward decision to give the World Championship to someone labouring without fan interest in the midcard. Sheamus has a great look and he is one of WWE’s best workers, but as World Champion he is a failed experiment, tried several times before without success because the fans do not buy in to the Irishman at such a high level. Nor will they get behind Roman Reigns as a contrived underdog against the corporate machine, because Reigns has no wealth of organic support, and most observers realise that behind the scenes he is the decidedly corporate choice to follow in the footsteps of John Cena’s bland and childish heroics.

Reigns winning the World Heavyweight Championship cleanly and then quickly losing it to Sheamus amounted to a death knell for many longtime followers of wrestling. Comforting themselves with sure failures and their myopic and self-important points of view, those who lead today’s WWE continue to dismiss the fans as intelligent beings capable of making their own decisions. Favourites like Cesaro, Dean Ambrose, Dolph Ziggler, Bray Wyatt, Rusev, and Sasha Banks – like Daniel Bryan and to some extent CM Punk before them – are continually slapped down and held back in favour of lesser talents who have friends at the top, or are deemed to possess a commercial appearance.

Some of these superstars have enjoyed long spells of overwhelming support, but they will become unsalvageable if they keep playing a distant second fiddle, entered into senseless and meandering storylines and always coming up short in meaningful matches. Now an overworked Cesaro, in truth WWE’s top babyface, has joined Seth Rollins on the injury list, a torn left shoulder rotator cuff likely to keep him away from the ring for between 4-6 months. In the meantime WWE have tossed away a golden opportunity: in a few years, they won’t be able to wheel out old legends to spur a sentimental interest in the product, and they will have created nobody to stand in their place.

There continues to be so much wrong with WWE in 2015. An astounding lack of attention to detail when it comes to storytelling, wins and losses which are traded back and forth to nobody’s benefit, the utter refusal to trust in new talent, a women’s division still not taken seriously and undermined by the very name ‘Divas’, a contemptuous insistence on attempting to outthink the audience, an inability to move with the times and appreciate just how stale their show has become. And this goes on and on with only Mick Foley in the entire WWE Universe a voice of reason: an outrageously bad product is ruled with an iron fist, and few people connected to the company dare to speak up.

For all the acclaim Triple H receives for NXT, he and Stephanie McMahon are arrogant and unhelpful presences on television. While other talents face punishment for having lives outside of the ring, these two will shift between face and heel several times on a single broadcast. Under their leadership The Authority is played out, and even a new-look lineup of Sheamus, King Barrett, and Rusev will prove insufficient when it comes to the almighty task of getting Roman Reigns over. On the night and for all it suggests about WWE’s future, Survivor Series had nothing in its favour. In twenty years, I cannot remember a worse or a more thoroughly disappointing PPV.

Christopher Laws
Christopher Lawshttps://www.culturedarm.com
Christopher Laws is the writer and editor of Culturedarm, currently based in Umeå, Sweden.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Popular Articles