‘The Scottish Warrior’ Drew McIntyre: celebrity-commodity, symbolic ethnicity and authenticity

Abstract

ABSTRACT While domestic articulations of Scottish identity represent a shifting and complex arena for political discourse, North American articulations of Scottishness often rely on stereotypes. Enter Drew McIntyre, The Scottish Warrior of WWE fame. The performance of McIntyre’s identity has (re)deployed symbolic ethnicity as a prominent marker of his Scottishness. Symbolic identities are commonly used in professional wrestling to define and articulate performed selves as special or unique. Yet, by voluntarily drawing upon, and amplifying, iconic elements of Scottish culture, such as Tartanry and Kailyard, McIntyre’s Scottishness has become simultaneously authentic and inauthentic in nature. This discursive effect mediates the wrestling celebrity over the recognition of the individuated self. In reducing McIntyre to a series of mediated ethnic symbols, WWE produces an objectified version of McIntyre, The Scottish Warrior, which functions as a celebrity-commodity that has converted McIntyre into a product for exchange. As such, and by means of a case study of the mediascape surrounding McIntyre’s recent WWE run, this article explores how WWE use symbolic ethnicity in the construction of The Scottish Warrior as an easily communicable celebrity-commodity, unpacking the intersection of ethnicity, symbolism and (in)authenticity in the commodification of Andrew Galloway.