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Daniel Bryan is one of my favorite wrestlers. His in-ring work is unimpeachable, his wrestling style is totally different from anyone else currently in WWE, and courtesy of his new, constantly evolving gimmick, he's finally getting a chance to show everyone that he isn't the uncharismatic geek that the promotion seemed so intent on painting him as (check out an interview between Bryan and myself very, very early in his WWE run). Though it's been a slow, steady evolution, it's safe to say that Bryan is, as of this writing, a full-on heel, but watching the crafty, clever underdog character he's developed, the character he most resembles is actually a hero: Odysseus.
For those of you who couldn't keep up with both professional wrestling and English homework in high school, a little refresher: Odysseus was the protagonist of Homer's Odyssey (see how that works?), which saw the pride of Ithaca struggle to return home after the Trojan War, surviving encounters with all manner of monstrous threats through the use of his cunning wit. But Odysseus doesn't appear only in classical Greek literature, he's also an important part of Virgil's Aeneid, which tells the story of the Trojan Aeneas, whose raised-by-wolves descendants later founded Rome. In the Aeneid, Odysseus is referred to as the Romanized Ulysses, but there was also a far more important difference in his character. In contrast with how the Greeks saw their wily hero, the Romans viewed Ulysses as a treacherous villain.
Odysseus returns home to son his wife's suitors, from Gustav Schwab's Sagen des klassischen Altertums.
Already you might see where I'm going with this: A fan's opinion of Bryan's actions has more to do with their personal perception of them and their personal values, than whether he is inherently evil or not. In fact, right up until Bryan started shouting at the crowd about being vegan (borrowing CM Punk's villainous hardline straight edge shtick), a fair argument could be made that Bryan wasn't even really a heel yet, but rather a multi-faceted tweener. While it's true that some wrestling heels are little more than Iago-esque, motiveless monsters (we're looking at you, Kane), most wrestling villains do in fact have a point-of-view and goal they've set out to accomplish. But the characterization of Bryan's persona goes deeper than just wanting to hold onto the World Heavyweight Title.
Like the best fictional characters, Bryan carries with him a large degree of ambiguity. As of now, it's still unclear (though the truth has been hinted at) whether Bryan actually planned on his girlfriend A.J. getting hurt by Big Show. Did he lure Big Show around the ring intending for him to collide with A.J.? Was this all part of a master plan to keep the title around his waist? Was A.J. in on it from jump street? Right now, all of that is up in the air, and the answers to those questions will go a long way toward further defining what type of character Bryan is developing. Intentionally putting his lady in harm's way is unquestionably dickish, but what if that wasn't something Bryan foresaw? It could be that Bryan's just a guy doing the best he can with the hand he's been dealt, which brings us back to Odysseus/Ulysses...
A man, his lady and her neck brace.
In the Greek tradition, Odysseus is unquestionably heroic, but he's a hero that lies, cheats, steals and does whatever he can to get what he wants - he's the Eddie Guerrero of the ancient world. Whether that means pretending to be crazy in order to not be sent off to conquer Troy, sneaking into the city via giant wooden horse or even tricking a big dopey Cyclops, Odysseus is up for it. Throughout, his morally questionable behavior is more-or-less forgiven (by the audience, if not the gods) because hey, Odysseus is smart and talented and that, in and of itself, is something to be respected, valued and cheered.
For long-time Daniel Bryan fans who have watched his journey to WWE, or even just for smart marks who are as entertained by rumors of wrestling's backstage soap opera as the on-screen one, the above description pretty well sums up Daniel Bryan. He's one of us, but better, an admittedly nerdy vegan wrestler who takes more inspiration from classic grapplers and shooters than flashy television stars. He's more Gene LeBell than Ultimate Warrior, so of course we want to cheer him, especially when he finally gets one of WWE's top prizes around his waist. So what if he maybe-kind-of-intentionally gets himself disqualified, or capitalizes on his girlfriend's injury? He's our guy, just like Odysseus was the Greeks', and if he has to do some dastardly stuff to a cyclopean monster like Big Show, so be it.
Why would I want to cheer this guy? He's terrifying.
But the Romans had a very different take on Ulysses. To the guys too lazy to make up their own wacky gods, the character wasn't a crafty underdog with a silver tongue and a sharp mind. Instead, he was a liar, a cheat and all-around dishonorable scumbag. This is partially due to the fact that the ancestor of Rome's founders, Aeneas, was on the wrong side of the Trojan War, and likely didn't see the humor in the whole Trojan Horse thing. But a larger part of the Romans' qualms with Ulysses has to do with his character and the way it fails to jibe with Roman ideals of honor and virtue.
In the pages of the Aeneid, the character is referred to as "cruel" and "deceitful." Even more telling, in the Inferno section of Dante's Divine Comedy, the poet even goes so far as to place Ulysses in hell on account of three offenses for which he is actually glorified in the Odyssey: that nifty Trojan Horse gambit, convincing Achilles to grab his nuts and join the battle and swiping the statue of Athena that protected Troy. While the Greeks admired Odysseus for his abilities and the way in which he used them to his advantage, the Romans found his behavior dishonorable, which negates any inherent virtuousness that might be ascribed to his talents.
Beware Greeks bearing gifts.
WWE then, with its predominantly simplistic morality plays, exhibits a moral scheme that is much closer to that of the Romans than the Greeks. While commentators and more innocent fans (as opposed to those of us who write and read 1800+ word articles on the internet comparing wrestlers to the heroes of epic poems) respect Bryan's abilities, they will not accept the way in which he uses his cleverness to continually thwart the efforts of a more honorable (thought decidedly more frightening, less relatable) opponent like the Big Show.
This isn't entirely new of course, as any wrestling promotion worth its spray tan budget knows that even their most hated heels need to be built up as legitimate talents in some way or another. There are even instances of wrestlers who used questionable behavior to straddle the line between face and heel, But what makes Daniel Bryan's performance so different and impressive is the ambiguity on display.
Typically, fans know without a doubt whether they are supposed to be cheering or booing any given wrestler, even if he's a cheating face like Guerrero or a virtuous heel like Kurt Angle. It's even obvious with most tweeners, as the crowd reaction is normally predicated on who the guy is facing or even the way in which he's wrestling. But with Daniel Bryan, it's been much harder to tell exactly what the guy is up to, not on account of inscrutable writing, but because of the character's intentional ambiguity.
I haven't called another man "Papi" since.
In well-written dramas, the best, most fascinating characters are never purely good or evil. With its roots as an ephemeral form of public entertainment, however, wrestling still mostly trades in clean-cut good guys we know we're supposed to cheer or scheming villains who rarely win a match without cheating. Remnants of a similar problem can still be seen in American superhero comics, but starting in the1960s or thereabouts, writers began to give their characters feet of clay - the heroes didn't always act heroically, and the villains were often just as relatable and understandable as their rivals.
For a number of reasons - many of them historical and institutional - this change has been a long time coming in professional wrestling. While we might love characters like the Rock, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Kurt Angle or even Hulk Hogan, it's a rather uncomfortable stretch to claim that any of them have what you could call a fully developed character. Thankfully, that appears to be changing with Bryan's current persona, which is neither fully admirable nor completely evil (depending on your general feelings toward vegans, natch).
If Doctor Doom isn't your favorite Fantastic Four character, you're doing it wrong.
While everyone watching Bryan compete will agree that he's a talented young guy, opinions can, will and should differ about whether he's in the right or deserves your cheers or not. If played properly, and put in a program with another morally grey character, Bryan's sticky, ambiguous morality could lead to some fantastic, rich, satisfying storylines. It's not exactly being utilized to the best possible extent at the moment, as Big Show is a more-or-less squeaky clean babyface who cries when he accidentally runs into women, but the potential is most definitely there.
A match in which the crowd is legit divided down the middle, not simply over whether they like one wrestler more than the other, but over actual moral quandaries, would be something wildly different and more complex for professional wrestling. While not as cathartic, as say, screaming along with thousands of fans while a reviled heel gets his comeuppance, more ambiguous characters along the lines of what Bryan is developing into would help professional wrestling develop and mature into a thematically richer, more satisfying genre of entertainment.
Not that I don't find this extremely satisfying already.
It's true that Bryan has been becoming less and less ambiguous over the past few weeks, with numerous instances of the wrestler haranguing the audience over their failure to go vegan. At the end of the day, however, professional wrestling isn't just a television series, where instant gratification can be ignored in the interest of long-term storyline pay-offs - it's also a live event, and the people who plunked down money for their tickets want to feel something immediately, not when musing over a few weeks' worth of character developments in their rear-view mirror. Aside from odd, unique instances like Chris Jericho's recent comeback, wrestlers need some type of response every time they go out, and Bryan's vegan bragging is the way he gets his.
Top wrestling talents will likely never display the sticky, ambiguous morality on display in shows like Breaking Bad - nor should they, given the peculiar genre's strengths and restrictions. But while certain concessions have to be given when holding wrestling up to other forms of televised entertainment, there's certainly room for growth on the character development front, and at the moment, Daniel Bryan is somewhat ironically on the bleeding edge, due to his invocation of one of Western literature's oldest ambiguous heroes.
