Gonna fly now...

Rocky did not lose.

Well, yeah, if you're talking about the fight, he lost that.  But the movie isn't about the fight as a boxing match with a winner and loser.  By the time the fight starts, we've been prepared to accept it as inevitable.  Apollo Creed will win.  But that kind of winning, and losing, are also by then not the point.

In fact, I was surprised a few months back when I watched Rocky again for the first time in years by how anti-climatic the fight is.  Rocky's story is resolved by the time he climbs into the ring.  The point of the movie is that he is there and he's earned the right to be there.  He's not a joke.  He's not just a prop in the ongoing Apollo Creed Show.  It's just that nobody knows this yet except us, and Adrian, not even Rocky, and we know it because we've been the ones watching him turn himself from a joke into a real boxer---turning himself from a likable lug into a responsible adult, turning himself from a nobody into the somebody Mickey used to think he had it in him to be.  The only thing left is for Rocky to prove it to himself, not by winning the fight, but by meeting the goal he set for himself, to go the distance.

In real life that fight would have been stopped well before the final round.  By the end Rocky is nearly dead on his feet.  He can't see.  He can hardly get his gloves up.  He's stumbling almost blindly around the ring.  He needs Creed to hold him up.  Sure, Creed has taken a beating, but mostly he's just exhausted and frustrated.  He can't put Rocky away because he's figured out that the only way to do that is to kill him.

Creed's crying "No rematch" at the end might sound like an admission of defeat but really Creed's talking to the audience, the movie's audience, not the fans at the fight, letting those of us who haven't quite gotten it yet that the story's over.  He's telling us that there will be no sequels---if only Sylvester Stallone had paid attention to his own movie---everything that needed to be resolved has been resolved.

Rocky isn't about winning and losing.  It's not even about going the distance.  It's about being somebody, and not in the sense of being a celebrity.  That side of it almost makes Rocky give up before he's begun.  Being somebody means not letting other people define you to yourself.  It's about not giving up on yourself, about not thinking of yourself as a bum or a joke or a prop in somebody else's personal drama.  And it's about how, when you have nothing, no inherited advantages, no connections, no entourage, no inborn luck, you do that, by working hard at what matters, by persevering, and by taking responsibility, for yourself and who you are and for those you love.  Love, by the way, is a matter of seeing others as themselves and not as props in someone else's, or your own, personal drama.  Paulie does not love his sister.  Rocky saves Adrian the same way he saves himself, by helping her to see herself as something more than a joke or a prop.

I have to admit that when I first heard that Hillary Clinton was comparing herself to Rocky my first thought was, But Rocky lost!

My second thought was, Oh no, is she calling herself a great white hope?

But both thoughts were reflexive and have more to do with my own upper middle class white liberal intellectual prejudices than with the movie itself.

Rocky, I had to remind myself, isn't about winning and losing a simple, single contest.  It isn't about race.  It's about an individual surviving with his integrity and his dignity intact when the whole of society, including himself, is set up to think of him as a joke and a tool and doesn't really care about what or who he is except to the degree he is useful.

It's about class, as Susie Madrak points out in her post The Tao of Rocky, but maybe you have to live in Philadelphia to get that:

To Philadelphians (and the thousands of “Rocky” fans who flock here every year), this movie isn’t about winning - it’s about class.

It’s about invisible people, living in forgotten, decaying neighborhoods. It’s about the search for dignity.

It’s about making people see your life...

Some of the bloggers even said “Rocky 2″ was racist because it showed a white guy beating a black champion. You know what? I’d say “Rocky” is one of the few things in Philadelphia that cross color lines. Everyone loves Rocky.

Maybe I should rephrase that. The unhip people in Philadelphia love Rocky. To them, he’s the living, breathing embodiment of the city’s spirit. He’s a nobody who became a somebody, and maybe we can, too!

Those are the people Clinton's talking to, says Susie, the unhip.  A lot of people don't understand Hillary's strong support among the working class.  Susie explains:

She sees them.

She sees them, and not like a particularly distasteful bug under a microscope, or as a bunch of bigots (as convenient as that might be for some to think).

This woman who has spent her entire life in public service connects with working people. Well, why wouldn’t she? They know life is hard and courage means to get up every day and keep trying.

Sometimes showing up is the only victory they’ll ever know.

They know college graduates look down on them. They know there’s a whole world out there they’ll never touch. They see those well-to-do people sometimes, in the expensive seats at the ballpark or on TV, but their lives don’t intersect much.

Hillary Clinton talks to them as if they matter, when they haven’t mattered for a very long time.

Of course, Obama's been talking to a whole lot of people who haven't felt as if they've mattered either.  But then, like Hillary, he's a Democrat.  The difference between them is, as I've been saying, emphasis.  Obama's not had to emphasize the point with black Americans.   Unfortunately, he seems to have felt that he's had to de-emphasize it in order not to excite and make nervous the Washington Insider crowd and the Republican-leaning Independent voters he's been courting with his post-partisan vision.

I think he's been changing his tone somewhat.  Shifting the emphasis.  And look what's happening.  He bowls and the Washington Insiders make fun of his manliness.  He has a beer and Maureen Dowd sneers that he's not man enough to drink a beer like a man, he sips it, like a lady. 

This is the great Democratic mistake in the eyes of the establishmentarian pundit class, speaking up for Rocky and meaning it.  It's ok to make a play for their votes but only if your emphasis is on the surface similarities.  Only if you drink your beer the right way, order the right cheese on your sandwich, play the right sport well.  If your emphasis is on Rocky as a person and not on Rocky as a stereotype---as a prop in the Insiders' personal dramas---if you see all the Rockys and listen to them and work to make their lives better, you are dangerous and must be stopped, by being turned into a joke and a stereotype and a prop in the Insiders' personal dramas.

Of course, the Maverick and Commander's been turned into a stereotype and a prop in their personal dramas too, but it's been done to his great good fortune.  Allowing himself to be defined by others has meant that he is not really being seen either, which is what he needs, because it's only by not really being seen that a man who wants to continue to give away the country's future and fortune to the already rich, whose "health care plan" pretty much amounts to telling the poor and the working and middle class to go suff, who wants to leave our troops---who are mostly the sons and daughters of the poor and the working class---bleeding and dying in Iraq for a hundred years, who is as much a maverick and a rebel as Tim Russert is a factory worker, can pass as a Man of the People.

If Hillary's the one who speaks for Rocky, it's not Obama who's speaking for the Apollo Creeds of the world, the rich and powerful and golden who see the rest of us as jokes and props in their own personal success stories.

It's McCain.

Comments

[daveminnj]

hmmm...hadn't checked in in a while...
good one, lance.

[Susie from Philly]

Wow. That was beautiful, Lance.

[Susie from Philly]

Wow. That was beautiful, Lance.

[Apostate]

Really terrific post. Thou art a writer.

[actor212]

Rocky won a moral victory.

So did Al Gore.

That kind of winning we don't need.

[Bill Altreuter]

I think it is a bit of an exaggeration to say that HRC "has spent her entire life in public service". There's a pretty big stretch at The Rose Firm in there, and while I'm sure she was active in a number of fine causes while she was lawyering away, that's a bit different from devoting one's life to help others. As I have said before, I like the idea of Hillary Clinton-- I just wish the reality could be different. The reality is that She Voted For the War. There are other points of principle that one might raise, but that's a big one.

[isaac]

barack obama on how he would have voted had he been in the senate:

"I dont know"

hillary was also getting health care to kids, setting up micro loans, helping to improve education as first lady of the state of arkansas when she was working at the rose law firm. that's a cheap shot and you know it

[Susie from Philly]

I have to wonder if there isn't an age divide here. Maybe voters under 30 aren't aware of all the good things Clinton did.

[alwsdad]

A thoughtful post, beautifully written (as usual). It's a pleasure to read a defense of Senator Clinton that doesn't find it necessary to denigrate Senator Obama (and his supporters) in the process.
Perhaps if we focused on what a tragedy a McCain presidency would be, we could get past the acrimony of the past couple months.

[Chinaberry Turtle]

um ... Rocky didn't lose the fight (in Rocky I). He fought to a draw and the "rules" of boxing are that a draw goes to the belt-holder (Rocky was the challenger). Obama is not a belt-holder in this fight. A draw goes to the super-delegates. Hillary's Rocky analogy is therefore perfectly apt.

[Chinaberry Turtle]

eh - my bad. The draw was w/ Hulk Hogan. It was a split decision w/ Apollo Creed.

[Jennifer]

That, in so many ways, was a wonderful post.

[Dave G.]

Lance:

A few points not mentioned about Rocky.

I believe the fight is significant, and going the distance is significant to Rocky. Because while he may not know (as we do) that he isn't a joke, the last conversation before he goes home to Adrian reinforces that the world sees him as a joke.

He gently corrects the promoter, Jurgens (the late, great Thayer David), about the color shorts he'll be wearing, and Jurgens says, "It really doesn't matter. We know you're going to give us a great show." And Stallone flinches at that -- damn, he's never been better in a movie, ever -- and you know that's the moment he gets it. That the world sees him as a clown. And that's why he has to go on, and prove what he has to prove, just to, as he puts it in the underrated last film, "stand toe-to-toe with someone and say, 'I am.'"

He has earlier tried to move on from these petty indignities -- Creed saying that "if he can't fight, I bet he can cook" and the spectacle of him beating on a side of beef (again, there is someone else who knows he isn't a joke - Duke, Apollo's trainer).

Great post.

[Brautigan]

The idea that Hillary Clinton, supporter of the Bankruptcy Bill, formerly of the Rose Law Firm, Wal-Mart BOD, College Republican, and I could go on and on and on and on, is some kind of warrior for the working class is just patently asinine.

[Susie from Philly]

Brautigan, do you really not know that Obama helped strip us of the right to take class-action suits to state courts, where they're more likely to win? Or that he opposed a 30% cap on credit-card interest rates? Real friend of the people, there.

Do you suppose those Wall St. firms gave him all that money because they fell in love with his starry-eyed idealism?

[Susie from Philly]

Brautigan, do you really not know that Obama helped strip us of the right to take class-action suits to state courts, where they're more likely to win? Or that he opposed a 30% cap on credit-card interest rates? Real friend of the people, there.

Do you suppose those Wall St. firms gave him all that money because they fell in love with his starry-eyed idealism?

[SV]

Dave, that early scene you mentioned sets up one of my favorite lines in the whole movie - after a few rounds and it's clear that Rocky isn't the clown they were counting on, and that if he is careful, Apollo will be the one coming out of it the clown:

"HE doesn't think it's a damn show - he thinks it's a damn FIGHT!"

[actor212]

The idea that Hillary Clinton, supporter of the Bankruptcy Bill, formerly of the Rose Law Firm, Wal-Mart BOD, College Republican, and I could go on and on and on and on, is some kind of warrior for the working class is just patently asinine.

The fact that ANY politician who stands a chance in winning the Presidency is viewed as a "warrior for the working class" seems asinine.

And yet, behold Bill Clinton who managed to somehow reverse decades of income inequality and provide jobs and prosperity up and down the line.

And Obama ain't half the man the Big Dog is.

[Bill Altreuter]

HRC's position on access to health care is also horrible-- and also difficult to excuse. It seems likely to me that she is the candidate that is the best informed on the fundamental, structural problem with the American health care system. Notwithstanding this, she is proposing a plan that fails to address the problem.

Knowing what she knows, her failure to come out and say that universal single-payer is the only answer that makes sense is utterly disingenuous. We could universalize access to health care and restore our global economic competitiveness (which ain't coming back any other way), or we can talk about insurance. She knows it, but she won't say it, and I think that's disgraceful.

[LondonLee]

Obama should start smoking again, that would put the "effete" nonsense to rest.

[Randolph Fritz]

I think this is the best article on class and the Presidential election I've seen. Thank you.