In 1976, Sylvester Stallone teamed with director John G. Avildsen to introduce to the world Rocky Balboa, a mumbling, rumbling Philly underdog. Rocky was and arguably still is the greatest rags-to-riches sports film ever shot, but today, Rocky Balboa’s underdog story seems too familiar, too often imitated by studios with clunky vision and overindulgently melodramatic undertones. The original production spawned a series of critically hammered sequels, which were decidedly referential to their original material.
Rocky, the underdog movie, written by an underdog actor and produced on an underdog budget, has defined sports cinema, and in doing so, has become a heavy favourite. Rocky has been having an identity crisis.
In 2015, Ryan Coogler, who previously impressed with 2013’s Fruitvale Station, has joined with Stallone and Michael B. Jordan not to reintroduce everyone’s favourite pugilist to the world, but to redefine underdog culture through methods normally unused, if not unavailable, in the 1970s. Coogler has spun the original film on its head while remaining referential to it. Where Coogler succeeds is in his approach to reference, at once acknowledging the obvious connection to the original while maintaining his distance, a clever, calculated means to a satisfying and symbolic end: the cultivation of our era’s self-inflicted underdog, a product of our institutional ignorance.
Jordan, who plays original Rocky competitor Apollo Creed’s son Adonis, is the mirror opposite of Balboa: rich, educated, black. Very early on in the film, Jordan is seen wearing a shirt and tie at his workplace, a finance firm. He has gotten a promotion. He lives in a mansion after spending the better part of his childhood in group homes. He has already found his storybook ending. He has already “made it.” He doesn’t need to hustle. He can sit back. But he can’t, and he doesn’t. Adonis wants to be a fighter, later telling Rocky that he had no other choice.
This admission from Creed, who would rather be referred to as Donnie Johnson, so as to build his own legacy, brings to mind Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer for The Atlantic, a 2015 National Book Award winner for “Between The World and Me”, and as of October, a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant. Coates’ work has been lauded, vilified and consumed. He is fast-becoming an increasingly important cultural voice, a critic unafraid to criticize harshly. But if you have managed to read either Coates’ work in The Atlantic or his latest book, it’s clear that he acknowledges a systemic issue in America: being a minority is frightening, and to many people, encountering hatred leaves them but one option. They must be prepared for a seemingly inevitable fight, though not necessarily with their fists. Coogler’s Creed sees no other choice. So he puts on his gloves, he breathes achingly—whit whit whit, whoo whoo whoo— and he jabs.
When the boxer packs up and moves from his Los Angeles mansion to a small, old Philadelphia apartment, Coogler manipulates, perhaps unintentionally, Creed’s re-entry into the life he felt he should have had. Poor is what he thought he was, and fighting is what he was conditioned to believe was required of him. When Creed enters Balboa’s neighbourhood, the contrast between the two becomes ever evident. Balboa had to fight because it was his way out, Donnie Johnson fought because it was his way back in.
As Rocky, Stallone punched dead meat. He ran through the streets of Philadelphia with the wind in his hair and the children of his neighbourhood following behind, cheering. White kids. Stallone wore a red headband, a nondescript grey sweatsuit and a look of determination on his face. In the background, American flags fluttered in the cool breeze. Glorious.
After Rocky reluctantly agrees to train Creed in the latest film, he sends him running through those same streets. Creed wears a grey sweatsuit, emblazoned with the Nike swoosh, along with very expensive runners. He runs across a bridge, with Sly looking down on him, both alone, both plugging along.
Later, after the pair become closer and the elder statesman is diagnosed with non-Hodgkin Lymphoma— “He’s too macho to do chemo,” the grasshopper says angrily— Jordan has his moment of running through the streets with the kids, but not before Stallone gives him some wisdom, telling him that his only enemy in the ring, and in life, is the man in the mirror.
Now, Creed wears an Air Jordan sweater, Nike shorts and even more expensive runners. He sports a moustache and a goatee, a black toque, and most importantly, a hood. In Fruitvale Station, the film that signalled the arrival of both Coogler and Jordan as future Hollywood forces, Jordan’s character Oscar Grant wears a black hoodie and a black toque as well.
In that film, based on real life events, Jordan’s character is shot dead. Grant was killed on New Year’s Day 2009, and deaths like his, at the hands of armed officers, are all too common in the U.S. Trayvon Martin famously was shot by George Zimmerman, a man who let his panic end an innocent person’s life. Martin wore a hoodie.
As Creed, Jordan catches elusive poultry. He runs through the streets of Philadelphia with his hood affixed to his head and the children of the neighbourhood following behind, riding motorcycles, speed bikes and pimped out ATVs. Black kids. Jordan wears expensive clothes and a look of possession on his face. In the background, no American flags fly. Only leafless trees line the streets, and all that hangs from the telephone wires are sneakers tied together, which generally signal activity related to drugs, violence or gangs. There is no glory on the surface of Coogler’s Philadelphia.
Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for The New Yorker, published David and Goliath, a collection of essays and insights into underdog culture, on October 1st, 2013, roughly three months after Fruitvale Station’s release. Gladwell’s book takes its theme from the biblical battle between his eponymous characters.
“Now why do we call David an underdog? Well, we call him an underdog because he’s a kid, a little kid, and Goliath is this big, strong giant,” Gladwell says in a Ted Talk. “We also call him an underdog because Goliath is an experienced warrior, and David is just a shepherd.”
Looking at Creed with this ethos in mind, the young black boxer, a representative of visible minorities, is doing battle with the big, strong giant of the institution of racism and the constricting macrostructure of race itself.
When Creed is given his inevitable Rocky-esque challenge from a champ, he confronts this giant head on, or rather, Hood On.
At a London press conference before his fight with British boxer and world champ “Pretty” Ricky Conlan, Creed is constantly interrupted by that looming giant. Whenever he opens his mouth to give humble, thoughtful responses to a gaggle of media members, Conlan pipes in and reminds his opponent that he is nothing. Creed, clad in a shirt and tie once again and sitting next to a fading Balboa, is egged on and when he finally responds to Conlan, fists become involved. This is the inevitable fight of Creed. Not the battle in the ring, but the one he has always had to worry about. Encounters like these are the reason he “has no choice.”
Conlan arrives to their final bout to cheers, behind a fire-breathing display, later emerging from behind a smoke machine’s dense product. In this corner, the giant stands. In the other, David waits, sling in pocket.
Coogler’s orchestrated fight lasts the full 12 rounds, and Creed finishes bloodied and woozy, with his left eye swollen so badly that it looks less like an eye than a kneecap. When the bell rings, Creed put in his fight, his obligatory battle, but loses to Conlan, who only after proving his superiority shows a morsel of respect to his foe.
“You’re the future,” he tells him, which is as much literal as it is metaphoric. If Creed’s David is the future, then Conlan’s Goliath is the past.
It is a hopeful statement, but it begs the question of when. When will the politics of a country change so as to not make fighting a predisposition? When will police brutality get an appropriate punishment? When will kids be able to run through the street, wearing whatever they want without worry?
Coogler doesn’t know when, he certainly cannot say how, but he never set out to answer those questions. He only wanted to show the world what we’re always fighting against: Ourselves.
WALDMANISM 