Watching Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, or Why Generation X is so MAGA

The importance of 1980s and 1990s popular culture in today's politics

Since its initial release, Darren Aronofsky’s 2008 film The Wrestler has been considered a very well-regarded part of the director’s outstanding oeuvre. Yet having recently watched the film again after Donald Trump’s recent electoral triumph, the film offers considerably more than “just” this. It also serves as a sort of cultural ur-text for understanding how Donald Trump came to dominate 21st century American politics. In particular, its portrayal of well past-his-prime wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson (portrayed by a truly outstanding Mickey Rourke) and his aging stripper sidekick Cassidy and their almost pathetic nostalgia for 1980s America provides viewers a glimpse MAGA in its protean stage. In doing so, it allows us to understand better how Donald Trump has shaped this protean structure of feeling into a mass movement that overturned American politics.

From the film’s beginning, Aronofsky very deliberately associates Ram as well as his female counterpoint, aging stripper Cassidy (played by Marisa Tomei), with the long-forgotten and largely-disliked hair metal bands that briefly ruled white suburban America in the 1980s. Several decades later, Ram’s walkout song for his wrestling matches is still Quiet Riot’s 1985 hit “Bang Your Head”, while we hear him play other long-forgotten bands such as Cinderella, Slaughter, and Accept while at home or driving around in his van. Likewise, Cassidy is the only stripper in her club who dances to rock music; the rest of the time, we only hear hip hop in the background when the other dancers are performing. Not only have both the Ram and Cassidy’s bodies declined to the point where both struggle to make it still in their respective professions, then; their physical decline has been matched by cultural obsolescence.

A scene about halfway through the film manifests this idea most explicitly. Ram and Cassidy are sitting together in a bar, when Ratt’s “Round and Round” comes on:

“Round and Round” by Ratt plays in the background

RAM: (singing) …right from the beginning…

RAM and CASSIDY (singing together): …that you would end up winning, I knew right from the start, you put an arrow through my heart!

RAM: (still dancing) wow

RAM and CASSIDY: (singing together) Round and round!

RAM: Yeah! God damn they don’t make ‘em like they used to!

CASSIDY: Fucking 80s man, best shit ever!

RAM: Oh, you bet your ass, man. Guns N Roses fucking rule.

CASSIDY: Crue

RAM: Yeah

CASSIDY: Def Lep

RAM: Then that Cobain pussy had to come around and ruin it all

CASSIDY: Like there’s something wrong with wanting to have a good time!

RAM: I’ll tell ya something, I hated the fucking 90s

CASSIDY: (laughing) 90s fucking sucked

RAM: (agreeing) 90s fucking sucked

Having lived through the period as a young adolescent I remember very well both the hair metal bands Ram and Cassidy like(d), as well as the impact Nirvana’s Nevermind (the work of that “Cobain pussy”) had when it came out in the late summer of 1991 (when I was 14). And it really was true that Nevermind completely transformed what was both cool and mainstream. Within 12 months of its release, a slew of similar acts—some new, some old—surged to prominence: Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M., to name just the most important. There really was no more place for the hair metal bands on MTV or in the cultural imagination of American teenagers. In other words, Ram and Cassidy’s cultural tastes had been rendered hopelessly unfashionable almost overnight.

The impact of Nirvana feels particularly acute because of the way it singlehandedly changed American youth culture in the course of one song. But Nevermind was not the only cause of cultural transformation at the time. The early 1990s was also the period when hip hop truly cemented itself as one of the nation’s most important musical genres, a transformation whose effects the film also interrogates, particularly through Cassidy’s work at her strip club. Beginning in 1989 when Tone Loc’s Loc’ed After Dark became the first rap album to reach number one, an ever-increasing series of successful hip hop albums and singles flooded the US music market. Initially, this surge was dominated by poppier, less confrontational artists such as MC Hammer, Young MC, and Vanilla Ice. But, rather quickly, more challenging material came to share the spotlight. In this regard, nothing was more significant than when N.W.A.’s EFIL4ZAGGIN (for those who don’t know the title was simply Niggaz 4 Life spelled backwards) shocked observers by reaching #1 on the billboard charts in the summer of 1991. What was so remarkable about this feat was that N.W.A.’s music received no commercial radio or MTV support; this was gangsta rap in its original, rawest form.

Yet, for America’s young adolescents (which I was in the summer of 1991), the success of EFIL4ZAGGIN was not surprising. It was only following up on N.W.A.’s earlier 1988 underground smash Straight Outta Compton, which had received a degree of ubiquity amongst adolescent males by the time their follow up shocked critics by reaching #1. I didn’t know of or buy Straight Outta Compton when it was first released; I only learned about it via word of mouth at school several years later. But when EFIL4ZAGGIN appeared in the summer of ‘91, I bought it within a week of its release.

N.W.A.’s success was merely a harbinger. A slew of hip hop artists made the genre a permanent fixture in mainstream (white) youth culture in subsequent years: Dr. Dre (from N.W.A.), Ice Cube (also from N.W.A.), Snoop Dogg, Cypress Hill, House of Pain, A Tribe Called Quest, Naughty By Nature, the list goes on. And this was only a beginning. By the year 2000, hip hop music was the mainstream. Indeed, while Nirvana’s mainstreaming of 80s college rock felt more important in the moment, it was the more glacial hip hop revolution that did the most to transform American cultural tastes in the long run. So much so that, as Aronofsky’s film insinuates, every stripper born after 1980 would be dancing to hip hop music by the first decade of the new millenium—even in largely white communities like those in exurban New Jersey where The Wrestler takes place.

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Obviously, as Ram and Cassidy demonstrate, not everyone was on board with the new cultural dispensation. While the grunge revolution received relatively muted opposition (as it was, after all, still guitar music), I remember during the 1990s it was still common for people to actively claim a dislike of rap music. In my own memories of the time, rap haters tended to be concentrated amongst people who were a bit older than myself; that is, people who had reached adolescence before the end of the 1980s, and thus before hip hop had established itself as a mainstream cultural force. Conversely, those white kids who fully embraced hip hop culture were largely my age but more often younger. Likewise, those most fully bought into the mainstreaming of 80s alternative rock after Nirvana’s breakthrough were those who reached adolescence at the time of or after the release of Nevermind.

In my view, the side on which you found yourself on as a result of this early 90s cultural breach continues to resonate loudly. As a late/young Gen Xer, my age cohort found itself almost exactly in the middle of this divide. Indeed, a scan of my social media suggests that those who graduated high school ahead of me—so, in the late 1980s and early 1990— are much more likely to support Trump (at least openly—itself a meaningful finding). Conversely, amongst those around my sister’s age, who graduated around the turn of the millenium and several years thereafter, there is virtually no (open) Trump support.

Of course, my impressions from maybe a couple hundred people who graduated high school in the Philadelphia area between 1988 and 2004 are only anecdotal. But there really is lots of quantitative data suggesting this split is real—whatever its cause.¹ Throughout the 2024 election, polling indicated that Generation X was indeed the Trumpiest generation, a tendency that seemed to be confirmed after the election when exit polling indicated that Trump owed his triumph exclusively to Generation X voters:

In response many social media commenters have tried their hand at explaining the phenomena, with varying degrees of insight—that Gen Xers were now older, settling down and having kids themselves, that they were latchkey kids and leaned into danger, that they were exposed to leaded gasoline, that they were bitter as part of a “forgotten generation”, that they particularly resented cultural wokeness. To varying degrees, none of these explanations strike me as particularly insightful.

However, I did see one explanation on Bluesky that I feel is worth presenting:

This corresponds to my memory of the time as well. This trope was embedded not just in obvious places (such as Stallone and Schwarzenegger action movies), but in standard 80s teen movies like License to Drive:

And, this, of course, was the cultural zeitgeist in which Ram was at the peek of his powers.

As we learn, in his heyday Ram was a “face” (a wrestling good guy) in the manner of Hulk Hogan (not unimportantly a big Trump supporter today). His nemesis was the “Ayatollah”, a “heel” (a wrestling bad guy), a radical, anti-American, non-Western other. In other words, Ram plays the all-American, macho good guy in Reagan’s America, fighting against a foreign (here Iranian—but implicitly also communist/Soviet) nemesis. And in this scripted sport, Ram always triumphs, just as the US was supposed to (and in important ways did) in 1980s America.

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The film’s final section represents Ram’s desperate attempt to re-enact and thus resurrect this 80s-era Reaganite morality play. Having suffered a heart attack and being told by doctors to retire, Ram at first reluctantly agrees and attempts to make his way as a civilian, working at a deli counter in a supermarket. The metaphor is almost too obvious. Ram rode his body to fame as a professional wrestler, a body that is now old and broken down. As Ram himself laments, he has been discarded like a “piece of meat” devoid of humanity (a “piece of meat” who now happens to be selling meat). More broadly, he is a man who once achieved fame and success through his physical prowess. But in the 21st world, such skills are no longer valued.

Ultimately, Ram cannot abide by the limits this new service economy has placed on him. He quits his deli job in a rage, making the risky decision to return to ring, informing promoters he will participate in a re-staging of his famous rivalry with the Ayatollah. While not equaling its heyday, the re-match between Ram and the Ayatollah attracts a decent-sized crowd, suggesting that perhaps a more faithful re-rendering of Ram’s Reagan-era morality play has continuing resonance in 21st century America. To drive home the moment’s nostalgia, Ram walks out to Guns ’N’ Roses’s “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, while fans chant “USA! USA! USA!” reminiscent of Cold War-era Olympic competition.

Before his match with the Ayatollah can begin, Ram takes the opportunity to give a brief speech, part of which is worth citing directly:

As time goes by…as time goes by they say ‘He’s washed up. He’s finished. He’s a loser. He’s all through.’ But you know what…the only ones who are gonna tell me when I’m through doing my thing is you people here. (Crowd cheers) You people here. You people here are the ones who are worth bringing it for. (Crowd begins to cheer again as Ram continues to speak) Because you are my family, I love all of you. Thank you so much.

For me, his speech is a well-encapsulated expression of the MAGA spirit avant la lettre. Just as Trump appeals to the “common sense” of his supporters’ feelings and denigrates all expert opinion that contradicts them, Ram listens to his crowd of fans rather than the opinions of his doctors when choosing to continue his career. Yet, although Ram is the one giving the speech here, his discourse suggests he is more potential Trump supporter rather than a proto-Trump himself. Trump’s speechifying is demagogic and machiavellian, whereas Ram’s is earnest and defiant. And it is precisely this spirit of earnest defiance that characterizes so much of Trump’s most ardent support. For his followers, supporting Trump represents first and foremost a “fuck you” to an establishment that has decided their cultural and social world is no longer relevant.

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In sum, Ram and Cassidy are avatars for an America that felt hopelessly dated when The Wrestler was first released in 2008. But as the young, college-educated millennials driving Barack Obama that year to the presidency at the time didn’t realize, there remained an awful lot of Rams and Cassidys in the country.

Indeed, I remember walking around Chicago O’Hare on a stopover during a trip from Seattle to Philadelphia in December 2008, a little over a month after Obama’s resounding victory. As I wondered around O’Hare’s terminal concourses, I was struck by the sheer amount of material celebrating Obama’s ascension to the Presidency. While I was personally very pleased he had won, I felt mildly uneasy about what the prevalence of the celebratory material suggested: a kind of elite cultural consensus that his election was an event all Americans should celebrate. I suspected this presumption assumed too much and knew too little about large parts of the country and that it could well provoke a backlash.

And that backlash would come quickly. As the fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis continued to make itself felt, Obama’s popularity steadily declined throughout 2009 and 2010. Simultaneously, the proto-Trumpian Tea Party movement emerged, ostensibly demanding an end to government bailouts of private industry and smaller government. Yet, in large measure, what the Tea Party really represented at base was a rejection of Obama’s optimistic, tech savvy, multi-cultural America. The Tea Party would help power the Republican Party to a smashing triumph in the 2010 midterm elections, gaining a remarkable 63 seats in the House of Representatives and 6 seats in the Senate from Democrats. Thereafter, Obama would gain a second wind allowing him to win a fairly convincing re-election in 2012. However, by the time the 2016 election rolled around, the Trumpian moment would finally arrive. Without the charismatic, politically-gifted President on the ballot, the coalition Obama had initially rallied was unable to stem the forces of reaction assembled behind Donald Trump.

As the recent 2024 election has demonstrated, Trump’s coalition has proven remarkably resilient, a resilience is rooted in the cohort of voters born between 1965 and 1980—Generation X. That is, those voters who came of age when the Cold War morality plays of WWE wrestling and uncomplicated rock music about partying and women dominated youth culture. Predicated on their youthful bodies, it was in this world that Ram and Cassidy reached their respective pinnacles. Thus, as their respective bodies aged and increasingly failed them, it was for this world that they remained painfully nostalgic. It is, in part, a similar nostalgia that powers the marked tendency for the generation who came of age during the 1980s to gravitate to MAGA. Shaped by the dominant cultural assumption of the Reagan-era Cold War, these Gen X voters see in Trump the hazy possibility of a return to a time when they were younger, better looking, and their world was governed by cultural assumptions they themselves helped shape.²

1. See: Ben Jacobs, “How Gen X Became the Trumpiest Generation”, Politico, May 5, 2002 (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/20/cherie-westrich-alt-rock-gen-x-maga-00033769); Susan Davis, “Gen X and President Biden: Reality bites”, NPR, December 27, 2023 (https://www.npr.org/2023/12/27/1217878506/gen-x-conservative-disapprove-biden)

2. Of course, Trump himself was at the height of his powers during the 1980s as well. Good-looking and quick-witted, he dominated New York’s real estate business and its tabloid media. However, when the 1990s arrived, Trump’s overstretched real estate empire collapsed in a series of devastating bankruptcies.