The Undertaker, Explained | Explained | partsFUNknown - video Dailymotion

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Let us know your favourite Undertaker moment of all time in the comments! Is Vince McMahon Actually Good?: https://youtu.be/ZlRkn49WxgI  For exclusive Early Access to the next episode check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wrestletalk  Subscribe: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q | Make sure to enable ALL push notifications! Watch More PartFUNknown: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLvCO_flsEnKylfKTab7Q92RDBN-fOz0m  SUPPORT US ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/wrestletalk SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/  The Undertaker has been digging holes and claiming souls for 30 years in WWE. With his final farewell at Survivor Series looming, Laurie takes a look at the character, the inspirations, the symbology and why Undertaker may be the premiere example of a wrestling god.  #wwe #partsfunknown #wrestlingdocumentary #thankyoutaker #30daysofthedeadman  QuizzleMania: A Wrestling Comedy Quiz Show! On Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/quizzlemania-a-wrestling-comedy-quiz-show/id1482419385  City British Wrestling: The Official Podcast Feed on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6RfWW29m4sk070YC03Kx5y  About PartsFunknown How Adam Would Book, No Rolls Barred, Explained. PFK makes wrestling EXTRA FUN. For brand partnerships, contact: dominic@playbookmedia.co.uk

Transcript

00:00 The tolling bell in wrestling is an ill omen, for surely for all who hear it, death and

00:09 destruction await. This grim herald signals the arrival of a creature of myth, legend,

00:16 infamy, shuffling to the stage draped in black, creeping fog billowing behind and flanked

00:23 by crackling bolts of lightning. Whoever is in the ring looks into the face of death himself.

00:33 The Undertaker has been digging holes and claiming souls for 30 years now after debuting

00:38 at Survivor Series in 1990. In that time he's gone through many metamorphoses, from wrestler

00:44 and mortician with first day at big school tie vibes, to resurrected revenant out for

00:49 revenge, a dark preacher who swayed soothsayers, acolytes and bound blood-sucking vampires

00:55 to his cause. Bit of a wobble after that, get you some stabilisers on that bike taker,

00:59 and then back to the big hat's dark coats and air of mystery as he became a living legend

01:05 in the business.

01:06 But what is it about this dark lord that has seen his influence spread throughout all of

01:10 wrestling? How did the character endure an era in which gimmicks were dying out left,

01:15 right and centre? And why is Mark Callaway's eye-rolling, bell-tolling, soul-owning alter-ego

01:23 one of wrestling's gods? I'm Laurie hailing from partsFUNknown and this is the Undertaker

01:29 Explained.

01:41 Before we crack on with this episode please do consider giving us a subscribe so you never

01:45 miss content like this or support us on Patreon.com/partsfunknown for awesome rewards and early access to all

01:53 future videos.

02:03 As befitting a creature that has risen from the grave, the Undertaker has gone through

02:07 many reincarnations during his 30 years in WWE. After a two year stint at WCW where he

02:13 went by the name Mean Mark Callous he made his ominous debut at Survivor Series in 1990

02:20 as the final member of Ted DiBiase's Million Dollar Team and made an instant impression

02:25 with his pale face, methodical movement and towering size.

02:34 The character was an idea Vince McMahon had suggested but they hadn't found the right

02:38 person to portray it until they found Mark. He was originally known as Kane the Undertaker

02:44 but in classic WWE fashion that first name was dropped. Apparently they were saving it

02:49 for somebody else. Mysterious.

02:52 Decked out in a black Stetson with a grey band around it, leather gloves and spats,

02:57 draped in a long black overcoat and his face a grim mask that concealed a barely restrained

03:03 rage, he was a movie monster brought to life. A fact that Taker himself has recently talked

03:09 about with Steve Austin on Broken Skull Sessions.

03:12 "As I thought more about the character and what I could do athletically, my presentation

03:16 became, 'I want to lull people in. I want to stalk somebody when I get them hurt. I

03:22 want people to feel like the boogeyman is going to come down the hallway and grab you,

03:25 right?' That's what I was trying to do. And honestly, I don't know why, but it clicked.

03:29 Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees and Friday the 13th, I wanted to be like those guys.

03:34 Those guys never moved fast at all. They always seemed to be in the right place when it was

03:37 time to cut somebody's throat. The character lent itself to being the boogeyman. The boogeyman

03:42 just shows up so I would lull people into a false sense and all of a sudden, bang, quit

03:47 something fast, boom, and then I'd throttle it back down."

03:51 The stalk and slay of Halloween and Friday the 13th is something that has inspired quite

03:54 a few wrestling characters over the years. Bray Wyatt's Fiend has teefed a few tropes

03:59 for his demonic passenger, which you can find out about in an episode of Explained that's

04:03 up there now.

04:04 And a fascination with the macabre was pretty popular in the US at the time, as the Addams

04:09 family were rising to prominence again with Hollywood movies in 1991 and 1993. When brother

04:14 Love handed Taker over to the care of new manager Paul Bearer, he got his own Uncle

04:19 Festus, Taker being the lumbering Lurch in this case. In Taker's case, the slower pace

04:28 of a Jason, Michael Myers or even Lurch didn't exactly wow the crowds in the early part of

04:34 his career, but it was his presence, his way of doing nothing, that made him a must-see

04:40 wrestler.

04:41 Announced by a tolling bell and an organ playing the funeral march, one look at the sallow

04:47 eyes peeking out from beneath the brim of his Stetson was enough to cast a chill over

04:52 a crowd.

04:53 And this unstoppable monster angle was something that management wanted to play up, so just

04:57 a year after his debut, Taker beat Hulk Hogan for the WWF title at Survivor Series, with

05:04 a little help from Ric Flair.

05:05 But what I think was most fascinating about this first incarnation was that he was actually

05:13 an Undertaker by trade.

05:20 So

05:48 this era of Taker has come to be known as the Western Mortician, because he's an old

05:54 West Undertaker, which is a role that rose to prominence in the 1800s as American towns

05:59 in the West were being settled and the relatively new technology of preserving bodies so that

06:04 loved ones could come and say their last goodbyes became commonplace.

06:07 It was also a vital role as the average life expectancy was just 37 years of age, and as

06:13 Roger McGrath, the author of Gunfighters, Highwaymen and Vigilantes said, it was a harsh

06:18 environment with scorching deserts and dehydration.

06:22 But perhaps the most lovely twist about this inspiration is that most wrestling gimmicks

06:25 involved being a job and a wrestler, Mark Calloway was an Undertaker and a wrestler,

06:31 but Western Morticians were often Undertakers and furniture salesmen.

06:36 Why?

06:37 Because they were the ones with all the tools and skills needed to make coffins, which is

06:43 something that Taker would then bring into his gimmick.

06:46 He would also revisit the old West for inspiration later in his career, taking on the roles of

06:54 the Last Outlaw and the Gunslinger.

07:17 From 2008 to WrestleMania 33 in 2017, Taker's character took on a Clint Eastwood glint,

07:24 which began as people started referring to him as the Last Outlaw as he went about putting

07:28 old enemies like Triple H and Shawn Michaels to bed.

07:31 But this then shifted into this roaming Gunslinger character who would appear on the horizon

07:36 as WrestleMania season rolled in, cloaked in a poncho I imagine, like the man with no

07:40 name from Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of spaghetti westerns.

07:44 Or Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which inspired Leone, becoming this ronin, a masterless samurai

07:51 who doles out his own form of unorthodox justice, adhering to a mystifying moral code.

07:56 I kind of prefer the western comparison, not only because Taker was the toughest guy in

08:01 town, helping others to grow their legend through intense standoffs, but he was also

08:06 underneath all the eyeliner and pleather, a slice of Americana.

08:11 You've got to look at the badass character, which was obviously an attempt to hew closer

08:15 to the real Mr Calloway, but came out as this semi-authentic American man from Texas that

08:22 had been passed through a pop culture prison.

08:25 But the Gunslinger?

08:26 That's all about American myth making.

08:29 Robert Thompson, the director of the Syracuse University's Blair Center for Television

08:33 and Popular Culture said that the western has always been the American epic.

08:38 It's exciting and violent and huge.

08:41 We don't have a single text like the Iliad or the Odyssey, but the western is our story.

08:48 And maybe wrestling is that story too for Americans.

08:51 It's exciting, it's violent, it's huge.

08:55 Richard Akela, the author of Wanted, Dead or Alive?

08:57 The American West in Popular Culture said "The western is flexible, and that's why

09:02 it's still alive."

09:03 And he said the classic westerns celebrated American exceptionalism.

09:08 So the Undertaker story is a western.

09:10 Here's this mysterious old timer who just refuses to die and rides into town on his

09:16 hog to put the upstart youth in their place before disappearing off into the desert again.

09:20 And what could be more American exceptional than a 6ft 10in tall man who defies all of

09:26 the pundits by putting on some of the best matches of his career at an age when others

09:31 would be retired from the game.

09:32 But then still doing matches, even when the returns were diminishing to say the least.

09:37 You can't win all the comparisons.

09:40 But the myth of the old west isn't the only one that Taker drew on throughout his career.

09:44 You all know that, I'm obviously going to talk about all the supernatural stuff.

09:48 Because he died, didn't he?

09:50 He dies.

09:51 All the way back at 1994's Royal Rumble, Yokozuna sealed him inside a casket and that

10:00 was the end of the Undertaker.

10:03 He disappeared from the WWF for 7 months in reality to cover from a back injury, but in

10:07 the K-Fabe to claw his way out of his own coffin.

10:11 Bloody hands grasping for purchase in the mud of his gravesite as he coughs up wads

10:16 of dirt, desperately gulping in air, lungs heaving, suddenly that the realisation that

10:22 you can't feel the cool rasp of the air on the back of your throat, you can't feel your

10:26 lungs full to bursting, you can't feel anything.

10:33 I've read too much into that, he was a dead man.

10:37 The Deadman Taker swapped grey for purple on his gear, but that was really only the

10:41 first step on a staircase that went straight down.

10:45 Because soon it was out with the purple and in with the black and the buckles like he'd

10:49 just discovered the music of him.

10:51 1996 marked the true turns of the dark side for Taker, who donned druidic gear, employed

10:56 malign magics and developed a true flair for the theatrical, often shocking his opponents

11:01 with supernatural trickery like summoning lightning or casting fireballs by pointing

11:07 his finger.

11:08 You know, magic.

11:09 And this was when WWE really doubled down on the pseudo-satanic religious imagery, it's

11:16 all of the dark rituals and pentagrams, it's crucifying Steve Austin, sacrifices, marriages,

11:23 what looked like sacrifices, it's forming the Ministry of Darkness and proclaiming himself

11:28 to be the Lord of Darkness.

11:30 It is all pretty standard Beelzebubbins if you ask me, but it was a load of fun throughout

11:34 the Attitude Era and had the true highs of a feud with a certain long lost half-brother

11:39 we all know who it is, we set it up earlier in this video.

11:43 Come on then, say it with me, 1, 2, 3, Kanye.

11:46 I've read that right, it's Kane.

11:51 This feud was dripping in religious significance and foreshadowing too as a certain other Kane

11:55 had had jealousy issues when it came to his brother and we all know how that went.

12:02 Personally, though I love this stuff and 10 year old me absolutely lapped it up, it wears

12:13 its influences so plainly that you don't massively need me to explain anything about

12:19 it.

12:20 What I think is much more interesting though is when these magical and mystical parts of

12:23 the character meet the dead man character with this kind of old west swagger and a splash

12:28 of the badass sprinkled in there too so we could get to know the man beneath the hat.

12:33 And Taker's been this version of the character since 2004, flitting in and out, cherry picking

12:38 the best bits of everything that came before to become one amalgamation of Undertaker,

12:43 he became the embodiment of the myth of the Undertaker.

12:49 A wrestling god who can inhabit different aspects, much like the Morrigan of Irish mythology

12:56 who is either a phantom queen or a trio of sisters depending on who you ask.

13:01 The unholy trinity he brought up in the feud with AJ Styles ahead of the Boneyard match

13:04 makes this triple deity kind of thing explicit.

13:08 A character who, like in myths, works in cycles.

13:11 Is it Zeus or Jupiter who is the king of your pantheon?

13:14 Is it Kane or Randy Orton lighting the casket on fire this time?

13:18 Taker even turns up once a freaking year for wrestling Christmas, couldn't be more religious.

13:23 French literary theorist Roland Barthes in his essay 'The World of Wrestling' said

13:27 that American wrestling represents a sort of mythological fight between good and evil.

13:32 Barthes studied semiotics, or the interpretation of signs, kind of anything that communicates

13:37 a meaning and he said that the objects that are these signs become myths.

13:43 For wrestling he said "Each sign in wrestling is endowed with an absolute clarity, since

13:48 one must always understand everything on the spot.

13:52 As soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is overwhelmed with the obviousness

13:58 of the roles."

13:59 It's signs like Ric Flair's lavish but effeminate robe, suggesting that he's rich,

14:05 probably stuck up and sadly in the case of effeminate items in wrestling, probably also

14:09 the bad guy.

14:10 Or the way the Undertaker looms and leers from beneath the rim of a black hat, which

14:15 tells you he's dangerous, mysterious and connected to some dark power.

14:20 Barthes even compared wrestlers to gods, saying "When the hero or villain of the drama,

14:26 the man who was seen a few minutes earlier possessed by moral rage, magnified into a

14:31 sort of metaphysical sign, leaves the wrestling hall, impassive, anonymous, carrying a small

14:37 suitcase and arm-in-arm with his wife, no one can doubt that wrestling holds that power

14:43 of transmutation which is common to the spectacle and to religious worship.

14:48 In the ring, and even in the depths of their ignominy, wrestlers remain gods because they

14:53 are, for a few moments, the key which opens nature, the pure gesture which separates good

14:59 from evil, unveils a form of justice which is at last intelligible."

15:05 And sure there's a bit more of a grey area around the Undertaker, who now seems neither

15:12 good nor evil and is instead this force of nature inflicting his own form of justice

15:18 on the WWE roster.

15:20 The Undertaker works in mysterious ways.

15:23 And perhaps even more than Barthes expected a performer to, Taker throughout his career

15:28 has embodied that wrestling god.

15:32 Because until recently there was no him carrying a small suitcase arm-in-arm with his wife,

15:37 he slept in a grave as far as we all knew because he lived and breathed the gimmick.

15:42 Like he told Stone Cold, "I lived it because I knew I couldn't be different than what

15:46 they saw on TV.

15:48 I never stopped working.

15:50 I never tried to put myself in situations where I had to be anything other than what

15:54 people saw on TV.

15:56 They got a slight variation because I was in street clothes, but they never got much

16:00 more than that.

16:02 I think it worked."

16:03 I mean it more than bloody worked.

16:05 For years The Undertaker was a creation that belonged purely to wrestling, this kind of

16:10 perfect bundle of signs, a phenom, a legend, something we could understand but never fully

16:18 comprehend.

16:19 And it's not just about not knowing that he really likes tigers, it's not knowing

16:23 anything that could have made him human, something mundane that would have taken the shine off

16:28 this wrestling god.

16:29 Barthes said, "The function of a wrestler is not to win.

16:33 It is to go exactly through the motions which are expected of him."

16:37 I doubt there are many people in the history of wrestling who we expected more from and

16:41 who rose from the grave time and time again to meet them.

16:46 Thanks so much for watching this video, if you liked it please give it a thumbs up or

17:07 share it around on social media and reddit as that would really help us out.

17:12 Also leave a comment down below letting us know your favourite Undertaker moment of all

17:15 time and let us keep this conversation going.

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18:06 And if I've butchered your name, I am so, so sorry.

18:09 So like I said, thank you for watching.

18:11 If you're new to Explained, why not consider watching one of our earlier videos in the

18:15 series like the one about the Fiend's ties to horror films that I mentioned earlier in

18:18 this video or the last video that I did which was on blading in wrestling.

18:24 Until next time, Jam That Jam.

The Undertaker, Explained | Explained | partsFUNknown

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