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Some of those lists recommend you watch the whole series. Others recommend you watch a select, patriotic few, like that first quintessential movie that kick-started a franchise-turned-American institution. Or Rocky IV, the ridiculous one set to the rhythms and currents of the Cold War. Or Rocky Balboa, the most recent one, because that's the one where it's easiest to laugh at Sylvester Stallone as he descends into self-parody.But the Rocky Balboa of 1976, a man of ugly glory, was the man I wanted to become—for perhaps no other reason than that I felt, one day, I could become him. He was average; he could have been anybody. He was not terribly handsome. His breed of heroism was attainable. And the battles he won seemed like the ones I could win, too.When I was seven, I loved everything about Rocky's story. And my love for it made very little sense, because there I was: brown skin, the child of two immigrants, living in the suburbs, and, though I didn't know it yet, gay. Those were all things that Rocky wasn't. But I loved the way Adrian, his bespectacled lover, slowly became his fighting cause. I loved the non-spectacular way Rocky fought, not with the fluid gymnastics of a trained professional but instead with the fatiguing, dedicated effort of an amateur always telling himself to try harder. I loved his broken family dynamics, where dinners would dissolve into routine shouting matches that resembled my family's own.
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And most of all, I loved the justification he gave Adrian for fighting. "I just wanna prove somethin'," he mutters. "I ain't no bum. It don't matter if I lose. Don't matter if he opens my head. The only thing I wanna do is go the distance. That's all."This was the essence of what I thought becoming an American man was: exhausting, but worth it for the privilege of getting to spit in the face of every asshole who put you down. That was glory. That was what made a man in America: effort, followed by sweet cosmic justice.Rocky was an aspirational model for me, an underdog kid in a nation that fancied itself top dog from the Cold War onward. But what made him so easy to love, when he embodied every American ideal I would, with time and bitter experience, grow to hate?
Consider his appeal when the film first came out. America swallowed Rocky like a welcome drug in 1976, a break from the particularly harsh autumn of American movies that gave us Taxi Driver and Network and All the President's Men. Those three films, all nominated for Best Picture, spelled out for America the myriad ways it was fucked up.But Rocky won, because its story told us a sweeter myth: that with brute force and concerted effort, you could rise up against the privileges America did not give you. It was all, of course, bullshit. No matter: Rocky had finessed the art of jingoistic schmaltz, and I was hooked.Underdogs can turn into dicks once they win, and that's what Rocky did. He grew obnoxious once he knew America loved him.
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