Perspective.

What I love about wrestling is the storytelling. Everything else comes after. As a storyteller myself, I recognize the beauty of what wrestling has accomplished and how much it has challenged the status-quo as much as novels, films, and comics have.

Every character, as with any story of substance or medium, is a representation and microcosm of a greater cause or mindset than themselves. Every character is a conduit for a bigger moral lesson, and if good enough, a character can become a first-hand commentary on society itself. The mirror that characters and stories hold up to their audiences are what makes them more important than anything else in the world because while everything else fades away with time, including our technology, monuments, and political issues, the stories put forth by any culture or society is all that remains immortal in the grand scheme of time. 

Stories never fade away and characters are as important as any living person because of what they teach us about ourselves and the ways of the world. Stories hold power, and one of the reasons why is because if analyzed, they can illuminate the contrasting routes away from the mistakes of the past for the betterment of our collective future. Adolf Hitler understood this notion, as I do, and that's the reason why he led the charge in burning books as one of his first orders of business upon his dark ascension to power. It's also the reason why I'm highly against censorship of any kind, because I feel that by censoring art, the overall message and impact intended by the artist is usually suffocated by the constraints placed on them by people and systems who are too sensitive to comprehend whatever lessons that might be perpetrated by the art piece and by extension, censorship softens viewers from the realities of whatever world they might be giving themselves over to for whatever reason.

To me, art should not be controlled or tampered with by anyone but the artist - not even the audience - because the point of any artist's story is to bring forth ideas and perspectives that only that one particular artist can put forth in the way that they choose to do so. I've heard the arguments that if something is scripted or is fictional that it essentially doesn't matter and shouldn't have any impact on real life but I've always begged to differ because, amongst other things, even true history can and eventually will be revised and mutilated to the point of dilution; Hence turning anything non-fictional into fiction on some level. There has never been a autobiography or firsthand account put forth into the world that wasn't muddled by it's author's own biases and limited perspective.

So, the next time someone dismissively mentions to you that wrestling or comics, amongst anything else that may be scripted, are fake and shouldn't be taken seriously: Make sure to tell them that those mediums can teach current and future generations on some level while their preferred sports and celebrity-worship never will.

Fortune fades, legacies don't. And that's why the proverbial pen will never be cut down by any sword.