{"product_id":"the-world-of-lucha-libre-secrets-revelations-and-mexican-national-identity-hardcover","title":"The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity - Hardcover","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eHeather Levi\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe World of Lucha Libre\u003c\/i\u003e is an insider's account of \u003ci\u003elucha libre\u003c\/i\u003e, the popular Mexican form of professional wrestling. Heather Levi spent more than a year immersed in the world of wrestling in Mexico City. Not only did she observe live events and interview wrestlers, referees, officials, promoters, and reporters; she also apprenticed with a retired \u003ci\u003eluchador\u003c\/i\u003e (wrestler). Drawing on her insider's perspective, she explores lucha libre as a cultural performance, an occupational subculture, and a set of symbols that circulate through Mexican culture and politics. Levi argues that the broad appeal of lucha libre lies in its capacity to stage contradictions at the heart of Mexican national identity: between the rural and the urban, tradition and modernity, ritual and parody, machismo and feminism, politics and spectacle.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLevi considers lucha libre in light of scholarship about sport, modernization, and the formation of the Mexican nation-state, and in connection to professional wrestling in the United States. She examines the role of secrecy in wrestling, the relationship between wrestlers and the characters they embody, and the meanings of the masks worn by luchadors. She discusses male wrestlers who perform masculine roles, those who cross-dress and perform feminine roles, and female wrestlers who wrestle each other. Investigating the relationship between lucha libre and the mass media, she highlights the history of the sport's engagement with television: it was televised briefly in the early 1950s, but not again until 1991. Finally, Levi traces the circulation of lucha libre symbols in avant-garde artistic movements and its appropriation in left-wing political discourse. \u003ci\u003eThe World of Lucha Libre\u003c\/i\u003e shows how a sport imported from the United States in the 1930s came to be an iconic symbol of Mexican cultural authenticity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eBack Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn The World of Lucha Libre,\" Heather Levi offers up a backstage pass to the scene of muscles, sweat, passion, and politics that is \"lucha libre.\" It's a world in which performing a public secret reveals that what is deadly serious is also a sham and that what is frivolous speaks of the grit and business of living. Levi illuminates lucha libre's fractal relationship to Mexican politics and its playful and serious regulation of gender and mestizaje as a dramatic staging of embodied contradiction that brings the messy world of lived experience into brute contact with its cultural ideals.\" The World of Lucha Libre\" is important not just for wrestling fans but for any student of popular performance and social practice.\"--Nicholas Sammond, editor of \"Steel Chair to the Head: The Pleasure and Pain of Professional Wrestling\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHeather Levi is Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Temple University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 288\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1 x 9.4 x 6.3 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eIllustrated:\u003c\/strong\u003e Yes\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e October 24, 2008\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48457182773497,"sku":"9780822342144","price":182.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/2782\/3097\/files\/KHjHVY4vXo9780822342144.webp?v=1780077476","url":"https:\/\/bookscloud.io\/products\/the-world-of-lucha-libre-secrets-revelations-and-mexican-national-identity-hardcover","provider":"BooksCloud Book Dropshipping","version":"1.0","type":"link"}