WWE has toyed with the boundaries of controversial wrestling characters throughout its history, some of which succeeded due to cultural relevancy and others that tanked for failing to resonate with the audience.  Or in some cases, characters that failed due to executive pressures to remove potential threats to that network’s overall bottomline.  A major breaking point in this field occurred for WWE in 2005 in what I could coin the MHS (Muhammad Hassan Syndrome).  Hassan was a character that was well ahead of its time and circumstantially relevant, but when the untimely 2005 London Bombings occurred right at the peak of his push, UPN (at the time) wanted zero affiliation with a radical muslim terrorist character on its programming.  Understanding the changing culture and lack of patience the corporate environment has for anything resembling controversy in today’s society, it is no wonder that WWE has steered away from every truly pushing boundaries to the extent they were able to pull off in the 1980, 90s, or even as short a period as sixteen years ago.

We still occasionally see controversial characters enter the frame, but their overall presentation is always given a corporatized spin to try and “play it safe.”  There is a problem, however, when WWE introduces potentially “controversial characters,” but merely presents them in such dull, politically correct spins that make the characters come off as inauthentic, artificial, and fake.  Enter the frame: Joe Gacy. 

Gacy debuted a woke social justice warrior character on NXT television on September 21 with the sole mission of WWE using him to poke fun at radical leftist activists; it was immediately met with fan backlash and outrage, as to be expected when involving a character that targets the ideologies of a mob-infested agenda.  The concept of WWE booking and writing for an SJW character is, on the surface, not a bad idea; the problem is their methodology as to how the character has been booked.  Much of this problem reverts back to the MHS dilemma as previously discussed.  WWE is walking a tightrope as a publicly traded company with striking any potential backfire and controversy over the Gacy character, thus they likely will not experiment with pushing the envelope too far.  Hence, most of Gacy’s segments revert to extraordinarily empty, dry social justice verbiage that does not resonate with the audience, and the character comes off as contrived and fake.

That said, there are ways WWE can make this character work on television.  And yes, it does involve them pushing boundaries and pissing some people off.  This is why standup comedy is a dying form of entertainment today, because societally weak people just can not accept that the art of comedy is all about pushing boundaries and offending people.  In order for Gacy to succeed as a woke “heel” on television, WWE needs to do more than have him preach about collectivism and safe spaces; he needs to go out and do the work to engage with these communities.  WWE should be booking segments with Gacy engaging in radical activist “protests.”  He should be walking around backstage trying to recruit people that share his ideologies into his cult.  He should be “protesting” and reeking havoc on particular segments on NXT each week, be it story-driven or just to generally be destructive of the flow of the programming.  WWE can also adopt a lot of the elements from the Summer of 2020 by analyzing the situations that occurred in places like Portland, Minneapolis, and most of the big cities across the country.  Yes, it would be extraordinarily controversial, but you know what else it would do?  It would garner attention.  And it was also make the Joe Gacy character far more compelling from week-to-week, because Gacy’s character can evolve to something beyond a preacher of peace.  He can escalate into something resembling a real-life radical extremist.

The point here is that Gacy’s current incarnation is nothing short of a watered down, low shelf life version of what could be so much more if they just went all the way with it instead of holding back.  Judging how things usually turn out with big corporations and their willingness to cave-in to mob pressure, Joe Gacy’s woke character will probably never evolve beyond the level it is at, and that is a true shame.