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<h3><a href="/go=news.detail&gid=376639" target="_blank">
New York Times-Caged is youth culture Anthropology
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<a href="/go=news.detail&gid=376639" ><img class="photo" src="http://img.mixedmartialarts.com/method=get&rs=100&q=75&x=77&y=78&w=310&h=165&ro=0&s=caged-01-09-12-14-34-55-132.jpg" /></a>
<strong class="ArticleSource">[nytimes.com]</strong>
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<p>The New York Times - among the very first national media to cover MMA without reference to "human cockfighting" - looks at the MMA themed 'Caged' on MTv.</p>
Every town has a scene, a subculture, a place where young people go to escape. In Minden, La., a city of about 13,000 some 30 miles east of Shreveport, it’s mixed martial arts, a sport that attracts young men with hopes of punching and kicking and wrestling their way through their opponents, and hopefully their problems.
Their fights, and their struggles, are captured on “Caged,” which begins on Monday night on MTV and is the latest entry in that channel’s effort to document the lives of young people, often digging and seeking them out in places others don’t.
“I’m an average dude, I’m not super smart, I don’t have talents,” says Matt, the most natural fighter of those featured on “Caged.” Lean and sinewy and with a direct, semi-warm affect, he focuses on fighting as an escape from mediocrity and from a difficult home situation. His father abandoned the family, his mother drinks, and his sister is a stripper.
He’s fighting for redemption of a sort, as is Wes, who insists: “I love to punch people. I love to get hit.” He juxtaposes his hard upbringing with that of the pretty boy Daniel, who comes from the family that founded Minden and is blessed with money, local respect and good hair. “I’m from the sticks,” Wes says, part complaint and part boast. When he needs to lose weight quickly before a fight, he buys a sauna suit from Walmart and sits in a car in sunlight. He has a baby with Red, his on-and-off girlfriend, whom he either wants to marry or abandon altogether, depending on the day.
In its early episodes “Caged” emphasizes the fights, the brief bursts of machismo and fury inside the cage that these men hope to dominate. But the show spends as much time on the personal lives of its protagonists, an acknowledgment that viewers will relate to the characters for how they behave and interact, not for what they do. The cage is just the milieu.
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