The 81st Academy Awards show was on television last month. During the broadcast there was cheerful reference to Sylvester Stallone and/or his "auteur masterpiece" Rocky. I was reminded of my summer blog post on Happy Catholic attacking that farce of a movie, and subsequent attacks on me by fans of the movie.
I continue to be stunned by the large and continuing place Rocky has in American (world?!?) cinema history and pop culture. It is a horrible movie. Let me rephrase that:
Rocky is perhaps the most overrated film in the history of the movies; a fraud, a waste of the film stock used to record it, a waste of time for everyone who watches it (over and over apparently) on TNT or Spike TV. It is toxic in a way that pornography is toxic to the body politic, curdling even those who have never seen the movie. I hate what the film has done to American sports culture, American film culture, and American self-image.
I think that gets my point across. Why the hate on Rocky and Stallone you may ask? Here are my specific points from my original July 2008 blog: The uncritical adoration of the movie Rocky is one of my pet peeves with the fans of popular culture. I am a fan of pop culture myself. However, unfortunately now average people feel that life is so harsh that they adopt patently bogus heroes and products that they would never accept in other parts of their life. This is especially true in sports movies. To wit: Rocky is a horrible movie, that is loved by people starving for "uplifting underdog stories," but the same people would never accept such treacle in the lives, books, non-sports movies, or non-fiction. This is the legacy of Stallone's dreck.
Rocky is horrible because it is so fake. Most true film fans have hated the movie for this artifice from the first day of its release, and not just in hindsight of better boxing movies (Fat City released two years before Rocky is a much better dramatic and authentic movie) for tangible reasons:
The boxing choreography is so fake, World Wrestling Federation workers think it could use some work. The gloves clearly do not hit bodies, the exaggerated reactions and head flailing, the lack of jabs or even a typical first round of "feeling-out" and circling by the fighters... it is all stomach turning inauthentic. Philly boxer as underdog, why not use the story of Joe Frazier? Stallone cast himself in the title role purely out of vanity and career advancement. He is a horrible cinema boxer, and is way too short to have been cast as a heavyweight. It really shows in the fight scenes against Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), a real professional athlete/heavyweight boxer size. In real life, Apollo Creed would have literally killed Rocky Balboa on this size differential alone. When people pointed this out to Stallone for the sequels, he artificially enhanced his body type with steroids and human growth hormone. Again, Rocky is worse than WWF. But Stallone was still way too short to be cast as a heavyweight fighter. In subsequent years he resorted to steroids and Human Growth Hormone to create the illusion of a heavyweight fighter. Was Barry Bonds (and other real athletes) rewarded with similar praise for sacrificing their health for their art? The screenplay, which earned Stallone an Oscar, is amateurish. Very amateurish. The first 70 minutes is way to slow and talky... and talky in a way that was not convincing. The words coming out of Rocky Balboa's mouth in the scenes with Adrian are artificially profound/erudite for a character that in the exposition of the movie is clearly established as being a brutish mob collector, a loser, showing signs of being punch-drunk. You should not believe a word coming out of "Rocky" or "Mickey the Trainer" mouths. The music is a joke. Movie music is supposed to support the action on screen, not overwhelm or be better than the images. Obvious, overblown, too loud, unsubtle music is not good movie score.
Overall, the movie industry has spent the past thirty years trying to obliterate the inexplicable popularity of Rocky. Every boxing movie since Rocky is superior, and a couple are heights of cinema art. Scorsese made Raging Bull to show the true brutality of boxing, boxers and boxing culture (with much better music and much better cinematography and tremendous boxing choreography). Downbeat at times, yes; great movie art, absolutely. Ron Howard made the great Cinderella Man to correct Rocky and Raging Bull (authentic details of life pre-Depression and in the middle of the Depression, brutality of boxing, music that supports the story, the underdog story of a decent Christian man unerringly doing decent things throughout the film staying in character, tremendous boxing choreography, correct body types for the era). This "Cult of Rocky" has corrupted actual sports culture: movie and sports fans now only relate to underdogs, and not excellence or decency. Even if the underdog is visibly inauthentic. My objections to Rocky could have been better or more completely stated; and are absolutely misunderstood by the host of Happy Catholic (see her comments below mine). I am not a fetishist about "boxing reality," only in so much that the reality of boxing and the life of boxing and the way of boxers is the story of Rocky and it has to be realistically brought to the screen for the viewer to legitimately care about any of the two hours and twenty three minutes of that treacle, and not the shorthand "human drama" that so many people find lovable about Rocky. Worse, it is a mortal insult to the real men and women who have fought and died in the ring.
Now why am I bringing all of this up now, during the holy season of Lent. It is the link between the motives of Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone. Last night I watched Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Gibson made The Passion, in the way he made it, to correct impressions from generations of Christological movies and the general "Cecil DeMillesque" bloodless final days of Jesus. Even Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ" does not make the sacrifice vivid or large enough to represent the humanity, the enormity of the mission, and life of the Redeemer. Can you imagine a movie about the Lord's Passion now without the obsessive realism Gibson brought to his movie? (money is not the object; remember, Gibson's movie was a self-financed, outside studios production; in other words it had less secure budgets and backing that Stallone's so called "underdog" film...) The ancient language/subtitles, the display of the implements prior to the Scourging at the Post, the dust, Caviezel's separated shoulder? The human drama of Christ's agony in the Garden without him sweating blood? What is more dramatic cinematic moment, Adrian hugging Balboa in the ring at the end of Rocky, or Mary face smeared with the blood of her son in wordless agony holding Jesus' body in the classic Pieta tableaux? The bloody, lacerated body of Christ makes that image in our minds eye. And those realistic touches of how Christ's limp body is lowered from the cross in different-in-kind swaddling clothes is what makes it a powerful shot, a powerful movie, and a movie experience worth returning to every year or so.
Can you imagine Gibson's movie without the "realistic" bloodletting? Can you imagine "Happy Catholic" and others who are happy with Rocky, similarly accepting a lazy and fraudulent version of The Passion of the Christ? I don't think so.
As a vanity project, and career maker, Rocky is everything for Sylvester Stallone. But for the rest of us it is putrid, and should be an unimportant joke footnote to American culture; kind of like Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate or Ishtar. That Stallone has gone through almost all the money his Rocky empire created (and thus the need for the sixth-- SIXTH?!!-- Rocky film released a couple years ago) is a fine irony.
Before Lent is over, I will write about the merits of Million Dollar Baby, Cinderella Man and Raging Bull in similar detail as the de-merits of Rocky discussed here. But just think of Jim Caviezel (separated shoulder and all) hanging on the cross for several days the next time you settle for for mindless time "feel good" underdog worship watching a Rocky marathon on TNT or AMC some Saturday afternoon. |
