Constituting the Yes! Movement

The Daniel Bryan storyline empowered the fans not only through the construction of authorship and narrator characters, but also by discursively constructing a shared identity for fans capable of influencing the creative process. In the storyline, Bryan referred to the fans who supported him (and by extension were positioned in opposition to the implied authors of WWE) collectively as the “Yes! Movement.” This move differs greatly from how CM Punk addressed

the hardcore fans. Whereas Punk winked at the hardcore wrestling fans as the fourth persona,26 Bryan directly hailed them in his promos. In the pipe bomb promo, CM Punk acknowledged the hardcore wrestling fans only obliquely by referencing subtext that the casual fans would not likely understand. In contrast, Bryan, by naming the fans as a movement, gave them a collective identity by calling them into being as a coherent group. Further, Bryan moves the hardcore fans out of the fourth persona and includes them into the greater whole of the second persona.27

Bryan’s constituting the fans into the “Yes! Movement” works as a small-scale example of rhetorical theories of discursive formations of the “people.” Arguing against prior conceptions of peoples as discrete entities engaged by rhetoric, McGee argued that “’The people…are not objectively real in the sense that they exist as a collective entity in nature; rather, they are a fiction dreamed by an advocate and infused with an artificial, rhetorical reality by the agreement of an audience to participate in a collective fantasy.”28 _{In the case of the “Yes! Movement,”}

Daniel Bryan infused the narrative audience within a rhetorically crafted artificial reality as a coherent group. Further, we can see the power of constituting the fans into a shared group identity by turning to Maurice Charland’s concept of constitutive rhetoric.29

Charland posited that a people who previously had no public collective identity can be rhetorically formed by calling them into being as a coherent group by crafting a narrativized identity and interpellating subjects as agents. Charland begins his argument by following Burke’s

26 _{Charles E. Morris III, “Pink Herring & the Fourth Persona: J. Edgar Hoover’s Sex Crime Panic,” Quarterly}

Journal of Speech 88 (2002), 230.

27 _{Edwin Black, “The Second Persona,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 56 (1970), 111.}

28 _{McGee, “In Search,” 240.}

29 _{Maurice Charland, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73} (1987), 147.

notion that rhetoric is about identification rather than persuasion.30 Charland also builds upon McGee’s understanding of the people, arguing that “audiences do not exist outside rhetoric, merely addressed by it, but live inside rhetoric.”31 _{Charland borrowed the notion of}

“interpellation” from Louis Althusser to examine the specific case of the Peuple Québécois, showing how a “people” can be constituted through a piece of rhetoric.32 _{Basically, a text can}

call “a people” into being by offering a narrative in which individuals recognize themselves as part of a collective, or “public” with a potential for agency. Importantly, Charland argues that constitutive rhetoric features three ideological effects: the formation of a collective subject, the positing of a trans-historical subject, and providing the illusion of freedom for the protagonist. Thus, Charland ties his theory intimately to narrative theory, stating, “constitutive rhetorics are ideological not merely because they provide individuals with narratives to inhabit as subjects and motives to experience, but because they insert “narratized” subjects-as-agents into the world.” 33

By turning back to the Daniel Bryan storyline, we can see how the narrative addresses the narrative audience constitutively.

In constituting the fans as the “Yes! Movement,” Daniel Bryan fulfills all three of Charland’s ideological implications. First, Bryan forms the collective subject position for the fans around the “Yes!” chant they used in support of him. Because the fans used the “Yes!” chant to raise Bryan to the main event at SummerSlam, it works to position the audience in a narrativized history. Further, the chant functions as an empty signifier to pull in fans to provide a

30 _{Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Berkeley: University of} California Press, 1966), 301.

31 _{Charland, “Constitutive Rhetoric,” 147.}

32 _{Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes toward an Investigation,” in Lenin and}

Philosophy, and Other Essays, ed. Louis Althusser (London: New Left Books, 1977), 170-171.

logic of equivalence between hardcore and casual fans.34 Ernesto Laclau argues that populist movements coalesce around empty signifiers in an antagonistic frontier against a hegemonic force.35 The “Yes! Movement” coalesced around the empty signifier of “Yes!” against the implied authors of WWE.36 In so doing, the movement gained the illusion of freedom, in that the narrative empowered the fans to use the chant as a rallying cry to insist on change in the

narrative direction of WWE. Perhaps the most powerful implication of the construction of the “Yes! Movement” was that the address to the narrative audience inserted “narratized subjects-as- agents into the world” by making the narrative audience a character within the diegetic world of WWE.

The Daniel Bryan storyline addressed the narrative audience as characters within the storyworld. Moreover, the fans were cast as fellow protagonists opposed to the producers of the narrative content as represented by The Authority. Within her explanation of why Bryan did not fit the role of the “face of the company,” Stephanie McMahon stated that, “these people here don’t understand business.” The live crowd responded to this comment with loud heckling. Here McMahon solidified the members of the narrative audience as not only characters within the narrative, but as opponents to The Authority, and thus WWE Creative direction by extension. The commentators during this storyline consistently called the fans the Yes! Movement and pushed the term by asking fans to tweet using the hashtag #YesMovement. Later in the storyline, Stephanie McMahon stated, “Do we listen to the people? Why would we?” Triple H later in the same segment added, “Everything in this arena right now including them (pointing at the crowd)

34 _{Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (New York: Verso, 2005), 73.}

35 _{Ibid., 84-85.}

36 _{In fact, McMahon argued at this time behind the scenes that the fans liked chanting “Yes!” more than they} actually supported Daniel Bryan as a top star. Further, crowds started doing the “Yes!” chants at mainstream sporting events wholly unrelated to Daniel Bryan or professional wrestling in general. These crowds had little to no connection to the demands of the narrative audience on the implied authors of WWE Creative.

and you (pointing at Bryan) belong to us.” These comments show the story positioning the feud around the tension between producers (The Authority as “owners” who provide a ring and a stage for everyone) and consumers (the fans who were demanding a certain story be told).

For his part, Daniel Bryan consistently stated during the storyline that the producers should listen to the fans. In response to McMahon’s line about doing what is “best for business,” Bryan retorted that it sounded like the fans had a different idea about what was best for business. Throughout the following months, Bryan would poll the audience about whether they thought The Authority were doing what was best for business or if he was worthy of being champion. In these polls, Bryan prompted the audience to respond either “Yes!” or “No!” Thus, he let the narrative audience have a voice in response to The Authority. Further, the audience is constituted as an agentic character, as a judge who must render a decision about the creative direction of the narrative. Later in the storyline, Bryan confronted The Authority about them leaving him out of the Royal Rumble match. During this confrontation, Bryan yelled, “Listen! Listen to these people!” Bryan on a later episode directly told the crowd, “You have a voice!” If the story is about what narrative direction is the best for business, and the audience is now a character situated in opposition to the implied author, then the audience is cast as an active agent in the creative decision-making process.

The clearest example of the narrative audience being cast as a character in the narrative storyworld occurred on the March 10, 2014 edition of RAW. This show featured a segment which narratively represented the fans’ hijacking of shows during the previous two months, known as the “Occupy RAW” movement. Drawing off the news coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests, WWE staged a protest by “fans” to get Daniel Bryan into the main event of

have to listen to us because tonight the Yes! Movement is in full effect. And tonight we are going to occupy RAW!” At this point several extras emerged, all dressed in Daniel Bryan t-shirts, filling the ring and the area around it. Dave Meltzer points out that some of the occupiers were employees of WWE in various backstage positions but some were actually fans picked for the spot.37 As the “Yes! Movement” entered the ring, Bryan yelled, “We are not going to take it anymore. We are one! We stand together! We are united! And we are not going to leave this ring until The Authority give us what we want.” The visual of fans crowding the ring, in shirts that were designed to make Daniel Bryan’s image reminiscent of Che Guevera, was a striking image representing the actual dissent from fans as to the narrative direction of WWE.

Later in the segment The Authority attempted to talk Bryan and his followers out of the ring to no avail. When Triple H called for security to “throw all these people out,” Bryan responded by saying, “You want us to leave? What do think if everybody here in this Coliseum just walks out to the parking lot right now? We can set up our own ring and you can have RAW!

in front of an arena of empty chairs.” Here Bryan points to the power of the collective audience to influence the implied authors of WWE. After security failed to move the mass of people, Stephanie McMahon told the fans that they were on a “power trip,” indicating that the

participatory nature of the fans represented by the Occupy RAW! characters had power over The Authority. In response, Bryan told The Authority that they “underestimate the power of these people…. We own this ring!” Eventually, Triple H relented and accepted Bryan’s challenge to a match at WrestleMania. However, Bryan then asserted that he also wanted the added stipulation that if he beat Triple H, he would then be inserted into the main event match for the WWE World Heavyweight Title. Again, Triple H granted the request and the occupiers left chanting “Yes!” The Occupy RAW segment narrativized the power dynamic between producer and consumer

leading into WrestleMania. The narrative constitution of the “Yes! Movement” as characters within the narrative highlights the participatory nature fans demonstrated in resisting the co- optation and commodification that occurred previously with the pipe bomb promo.