Glad-Hand
And so, after an eight year absence, the TV show Gladiators has returned to our idiot boxes. Well, not mine, because I don’t get the satellite channels... but that hasn’t saved me from getting swept along by the hype... and by “hype”, I mean “photographs of athletic women in skimpy outfits”. Personally I stopped watching the show long before it was taken off terrestrial television, because it was so contrived and stupid. I love watching Athletics, but it has to be the real thing. I don’t need pumping theme music, unconvincing “character” interaction and whooping crowds with huge foam hands. I just need the genuine beauty of the human body in all its track-stomping, horse-vaulting, high-jumping, spear-hurling, mat-stomping glory. If they went for the same level of insane soap-opera as “professional wrestling”, then that would be a different matter... but Gladiators is far too generic and clean-cut for any of that. It’s unlikely, for instance, that necrophilia will ever be raised as an issue on the show.
As ever, being anal about things like this, the lack of thematic consistency with the Gladiators’ names bugs me, but I’ll try not to let it keep me awake at nights. A couple did make me chuckle though, and one in particular made me frown. First up is poor Shirley Webb, who gets saddled with the name “Battleaxe”. Now, I guess it depends which dictionary you look the word up in, because my computer claims the informal meaning is “a formidably aggressive older woman”, while Wiktionary adds “unattractive” to the mix. Either way, it’s hardly a compliment. If I was a “formidably aggressive” woman, I’d want a name that didn’t make people giggle every time it was announced. Another inspired move was giving Jemma Palmer, an improbably busty WWE Diva and “model”, the name “Inferno”... cuz, y’know, she’s hot. See what they did there?
Slightly more puzzling, or amusing, depending on how familiar you are with recent American history, is their naming a Black female Gladiator “Panther”. Hmmm... I can’t really put my finger on it, but something about that seems odd to me. I somehow doubt very much that it was intended as a tribute to Huey P. Newton and the cause of "black nationalism"... but perhaps this series is going to be edgier than its predecessors? If she comes on with a jaunty beret and an AK-47, you'll know what time it is! Meanwhile, how do I know the name wasn’t Kara Nwidobie’s own idea? Well, one website did little mini-interviews with the new Gladiators as part of the pre-launch publicity, and they actually asked Panther: “If you were an animal what would you be?” Her first answer was... “A horse or a tiger, something fast and strong.” Oops!
