At Long Last, A Response to a Challenge
Some time ago, Skippy posed the following challenge:
Since Rocky's boxing record is, by my count, around 675-2-0, and since he did singlehandedly win the Cold War, can he really still be "the greatest underdog story of our time", as the trailer claims?
I apologize for the tardiness of this reply, but I feel that it will compensate in gravitas.
In short: Yes.
Despite Skippy's mockery, we in the history profession have increasingly lent credence to the "Balboan metanarrative," or the use of the "greatest underdog story of our time" as a framework for understanding the history of the United States. It's all there: immigrant history. Class. Race. Foreign policy. Economic ups and downs. After hardship, loves, hates, and countless challenges, Rocky (like an ascendant United States) discovers that the only challenge greater than reaching the top, is that of staying at the top.
Little seems to commend the young Balboa. An Italian-American of modest means, given to personal advancement through favors for a loan shark, scraping by day-to-day life, nothing separates Rocky from the other denizens of the Hobbesean state of nature. Nothing, that is, but a dream. (See Nancy Mitchell, The Danger of Dreams: German and American Imperialism in Latin America, 1999.)
Indeed, the young boxer claws his way upwards, using whatever means at his disposal. His boxing match against Spider Rico takes place in a parish hall, a testament to his Christian roots. He trains by boxing meat, transforming nature itself into the material of advancement, akin to the Midwest described in William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis (1991). The young Balboa holds his own against a stronger adversary, Apollo. (One will note that Apollo's name links him to the Greeks, the foundational culture of EUROPE.) After meeting Apollo in battle a second time, and trading blows (note: TRADING blows), Balboa emerges victorious, and the two ultimately find the path to friendship and goodwill.
At the pinnacle of his career (Rocky 3), Balboa discovers that, while triumph over individual adversaries is all too easy (see Michael Sherry, In the Shadow of War, 1995), the greatest challenge comes from within. "For the first time in my life," he explains to Adrian, "I'm scared." The loss of trainer Micky Goldmill (whose name clearly indicates the abandonment of the Gold standard) means a period of uncertainty for the future. (It is also worth noting that Adrian, played by Talia SHIRE, serves as a symbol of "home," just as Tolkien's Hobbits seek to return to the SHIRE, and just as an increasingly commercialized America pines for the Jeffersonian yeoman tradition). Still, Rocky trudges forth against uncertainty, and against an opponent, Clubber Lang, whose hometown of Chicago, the "heartland," indicates that the real threat is from within Rocky himself.
Rocky IV is rather straightforward. Rocky sees Apollo (remember, EUROPE) ravaged by an opponent who has been enhanced through command biology (the Soviet command economy). Still, after returning to a workout in a settling not unlike that of Valley Forge, Balboa trounces this enemy at some personal cost, a theme to be taken up shortly. But just as Drago has beaten Rocky into physical impediment, so Rocky has beaten Drago, indeed, democratic. "Everybody can change," utters Rocky into the microphone (perhaps a RADIO FREE EUROPE microphone?), and the viewer sees Drago pausing to listen.
But this episode leaves Rocky in the throes of physical degradation (deindustrialization), scraping by in a Philadephia that is undergoing a similar downturn. In this post-Cold War scenario, Balboa is left to contend with the demon he created in the form of Tommy Gun. (Forced to reckon with the proliferation of arms in third world countries.) He has ultimately to defeat this enemy in an unconventional battle, on the streets rather than in a designated field of battle.
Which brings us, finally, to the sixth film. In fighting Mason "The Line" Dixon, Balboa is forced once again to look within, and to face the challenge of racial division. While the internal battle is new, the problem of fighting one is not. Indeed, with each triumph, Balboa has seen a new challenge spring forth, in a perfect display of the Hegelian dialectic. It is this ongoing process of renewal and the perpetual need to surmount challenges, both within and without, that makes the life of Balboa, like the life of the world's greatest superpower, that of an underdog.
THANK YOU
Since Rocky's boxing record is, by my count, around 675-2-0, and since he did singlehandedly win the Cold War, can he really still be "the greatest underdog story of our time", as the trailer claims?
I apologize for the tardiness of this reply, but I feel that it will compensate in gravitas.
In short: Yes.
Despite Skippy's mockery, we in the history profession have increasingly lent credence to the "Balboan metanarrative," or the use of the "greatest underdog story of our time" as a framework for understanding the history of the United States. It's all there: immigrant history. Class. Race. Foreign policy. Economic ups and downs. After hardship, loves, hates, and countless challenges, Rocky (like an ascendant United States) discovers that the only challenge greater than reaching the top, is that of staying at the top.
Little seems to commend the young Balboa. An Italian-American of modest means, given to personal advancement through favors for a loan shark, scraping by day-to-day life, nothing separates Rocky from the other denizens of the Hobbesean state of nature. Nothing, that is, but a dream. (See Nancy Mitchell, The Danger of Dreams: German and American Imperialism in Latin America, 1999.)
Indeed, the young boxer claws his way upwards, using whatever means at his disposal. His boxing match against Spider Rico takes place in a parish hall, a testament to his Christian roots. He trains by boxing meat, transforming nature itself into the material of advancement, akin to the Midwest described in William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis (1991). The young Balboa holds his own against a stronger adversary, Apollo. (One will note that Apollo's name links him to the Greeks, the foundational culture of EUROPE.) After meeting Apollo in battle a second time, and trading blows (note: TRADING blows), Balboa emerges victorious, and the two ultimately find the path to friendship and goodwill.
At the pinnacle of his career (Rocky 3), Balboa discovers that, while triumph over individual adversaries is all too easy (see Michael Sherry, In the Shadow of War, 1995), the greatest challenge comes from within. "For the first time in my life," he explains to Adrian, "I'm scared." The loss of trainer Micky Goldmill (whose name clearly indicates the abandonment of the Gold standard) means a period of uncertainty for the future. (It is also worth noting that Adrian, played by Talia SHIRE, serves as a symbol of "home," just as Tolkien's Hobbits seek to return to the SHIRE, and just as an increasingly commercialized America pines for the Jeffersonian yeoman tradition). Still, Rocky trudges forth against uncertainty, and against an opponent, Clubber Lang, whose hometown of Chicago, the "heartland," indicates that the real threat is from within Rocky himself.
Rocky IV is rather straightforward. Rocky sees Apollo (remember, EUROPE) ravaged by an opponent who has been enhanced through command biology (the Soviet command economy). Still, after returning to a workout in a settling not unlike that of Valley Forge, Balboa trounces this enemy at some personal cost, a theme to be taken up shortly. But just as Drago has beaten Rocky into physical impediment, so Rocky has beaten Drago, indeed, democratic. "Everybody can change," utters Rocky into the microphone (perhaps a RADIO FREE EUROPE microphone?), and the viewer sees Drago pausing to listen.
But this episode leaves Rocky in the throes of physical degradation (deindustrialization), scraping by in a Philadephia that is undergoing a similar downturn. In this post-Cold War scenario, Balboa is left to contend with the demon he created in the form of Tommy Gun. (Forced to reckon with the proliferation of arms in third world countries.) He has ultimately to defeat this enemy in an unconventional battle, on the streets rather than in a designated field of battle.
Which brings us, finally, to the sixth film. In fighting Mason "The Line" Dixon, Balboa is forced once again to look within, and to face the challenge of racial division. While the internal battle is new, the problem of fighting one is not. Indeed, with each triumph, Balboa has seen a new challenge spring forth, in a perfect display of the Hegelian dialectic. It is this ongoing process of renewal and the perpetual need to surmount challenges, both within and without, that makes the life of Balboa, like the life of the world's greatest superpower, that of an underdog.
THANK YOU
posted by The Marmoset | 2:05 PM
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