And there was very little of a repressive element for them to feel a need to react to. So part of the shift towards the comedy of manners was due to the shift towards the home, which necessarily eliminated these fantastic--as in fantastical--torture devices.

THC: But it seems that now people are bringing very violent performances into their homes through the television.

AT: At the same time, however, the violence is staged in a public arena, and arenas tend to cross economic and even gender lines in a way that home performances don't. In some ways, WWF acts both ways: you watch it on TV but it's also in a public arena. And it even travels around so that it becomes a sort of court, a sort of "for the people" activity. If you remove it into a more private space--say, now it's going to be at the Kennedy Center--it's going to be quite different.

THC: So if you could predict the future of WWF based on your knowledge of trends of stage violence in the past, what would it be?

AT: These desires to watch something violent and to watch something that you know is fake but that pretends to be real at the same time, these desires seem to be natural.

But whether your society allows this to continue--not just legally but culturally--ebbs and flows naturally. There are times when its very popular and times when its completely unpopular, when we remove back to the comedy of manners. So stage violence in general is an ill-fated form of entertainment. It never just keeps going.