When watching pro wrestling, I used to feel anxious and uncomfortable when the Heel would gouge his opponent’s eyes to blind him.
This brutal tactic — to scratch out the eyes — was so incredibly mean, so dangerous and bitchy, it really got my attention. To risk destroying someone’s eyesight just to win a wrestling match was just plain evil, and therefore enticing and provocative to watch.
Following the attack to his eyes, the victim would reach around blindly as if asking “Who turned out the lights?!” He was a sitting duck — his loss of vision leaving him vulnerable to any kick to the gut or big elbow smash to the skull that often followed the Eye Gouge. It was so deliciously savage and nasty.
The Original Sheik, perhaps the most outrageously sadistic wrestler in history, would often attack his out-matched opponent’s eyes with his fingers or a weapon he smuggled into the ring. The victim soon learned that you can’t defend yourself if you can’t see.
Another tactic he enjoyed was to toss a fireball, or a handful of “Blinding Powder,” into the other man’s face to burn out his eyes. The innocent young viewer, who had been taught to fight fair and Do Unto Others, found these blatant, heartless violations of society’s rules and morals to be absolutely sickening and arousing at the same time.
Freud believed that blinding the eyes — which appears in many old stories from Oedipus Rex to King Lear — in fact represents castration. After all, the two eyes are about the same size as the two organs packed into a wrestler’s trunks.
Also, the sense of vision enables a man to gaze at, lust for, and crave sin. So to prevent temptation, the blinding of the eyes symbolically cuts off a man’s libido and ability to lust. Some people consider the eyes our most erogenous body part, and if given the choice between being blinded or being gelded, most men would be hard pressed to decide.
It may have been a primal understanding that blinding equates with castration that caused me to feel so outraged and excited when this tactic was employed.
Pro wrestling is a demonstration of the loss of male power and potency, the weakening of the ideal male body, the gradual submission of one man to another. Mutilating the eyeballs — whether by attacking with one’s fingernails, a sharp spike, or caustic chemicals — is considered just as emasculating as attacking his other balls.
