Rocky Movies and the Truth about Leading Self

In a Twitter poll, I said, “True or False…People spend a lot of time in the mirror because they like the way they look.” Guess how many people called b.s.? Seventy one percent said, “FALSE!” The sample size was small but maybe a moral to that conclusion is that  people spend more time trying to fix themselves preparing to live out purpose. By the way, that’s called theme.

There’s multiple themes to life and they show up constantly in movies leaving an aftertaste for contemplation. You agree? Themes are the universal truths about life that we often see, process and maybe forget if it’s too overwhelming. You know the archetypes of the noble heroines and heroes who fight the right battles but fall to cowardly cheaters. It messes with us, challenges, discourages us and all in two hours. Pay your money, sit in the dark with mostly strangers and watch, laugh, cry, judge, resonate or all of the above. Movies move. Am I lying? And they’re good at presenting to us a mirror.

Enter Rocky Balboa, a character who, though mythical, has a statue in Philly. Damn! I mean there’s a statue of Magic Johnson, Wayne Gretzky, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and even Oscar De La Hoya outside of the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Not sure if the last guy is in the same echelon as the others but this they have in common; they’re real human beings.

But back to this Rocky Balboa. The latest in the series of these movies is Creed which focuses on the “illegitimate” son of the late Apollo Creed, nemesis turned best friend of Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) who died in the ring in 1984 fighting a steroid-using Russian. While Apollo was losing his life and a battle with his own pride, refusing to accept that he was beaten, his mistress was pregnant with Adonis Creed. Us Rocky fans had no idea of this subplot in 1984. I was nine and didn’t have the savoir faire to consider the possibility that Apollo had the Eye of the Tiger in more ways than one. Kudos to screenwriters who can spot a cinematic opportunity.

But to the themes. Adonis Creed is an orphan, despite being the son of a boxing “god.” He fights everyday in the juvenile detention center where he lives until finding refuge in the unlikely care of his father’s widow, Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad). She raises him like a son and gives him the normative life he would never have had otherwise. Who knows why she did it.

Thematic pause for thematic station identification. The beauty of themes lie in the universality. They apply to all in one shape or form. Themes unite us unmistakably. Consider these themes:

1. Forgiveness of others often allows one to fulfill a higher sense of service to humanity  – Mary Anne Creed raises the extramarital son of her deceased husband.
2. Unintentional or intentional duplicity is a common affliction – Apollo Creed was publicly heralded as a hero but was privately unfaithful to his wife. Adonis Creed meets his love interest Bianca (Tessa Thompson) but fails to reveal that he is the son of one of the greatest fighters of all time and she has a cow about it.
3. Self-Denial and/or Self Hatred Threatens even the most confident of us– Adonis Johnson [Creed] goes by his mother’s last name until a fight promoter insists he use his paternal surname to trump up ticket sales and interest. It’s a fundamental struggle for Adonis who, as far as he’s concerned, never had a father.
4. Even our closest friend(s) don’t know us as well as they think they do – Upon surfacing in Philadelphia to pursue training with “Unc” [Uncle Rocky], Balboa is utterly surprised that Adonis even exists. Apollo Creed was the loud braggart who somehow also possessed the genuine ability to draw our courage and resilience when necessary. Nevertheless, perhaps due to circumstances following Apollo’s death, Rocky was never privy to knowledge of this particular Creed heir.
5. Hubris (Egocentric Pride) is somehow related to fear and WILL cripple even the strongest of us –  Apollo expressed this more than 30 years earlier just before his death (Rocky IV) at the hands of Ivan Drago, the human experiment engineered to establish Russian athletic superiority. The elder Creed refused to accept his limitations and feared humiliation so much that it cost him his life. Far less severe, Adonis is knocked out one day after mouthing off to a champion in a practice gym. To bring the universal application all the way into focus, In the movie Creed, Rocky Balboa himself initially resigns to not fight a cancer diagnosis despite having fought odds his whole life. Cancer reminds him of his late wife Adrian who died of the disease. Everywhere you look, it seems, there’s the smell of “macho” attempting to disguise the stench of fear.
6. Longing for a Father’s approval…enough said. But I’ll say it anyway. Ain’t gonna lie. I cried over this one in the theater…the dark theater. Adonis didn’t want to fight under the name “Creed” for fear of disgracing the boxing lore of a legendary father he never met. Even in his orphaned reality, Adonis strove to find his own identity while attempting to preserve the Creed name. It was as if he sought his dad’s approval from the grave.

The thing about themes, the truths presented in life and literature, is that we can only deny their validity. We can’t disprove it. Themes are only validated if they happen to lots of people or if lots of people say, “Uhhhh….that right there? That’s totally me.” When I saw Creed, the list of themes above started flowing. I wiped tears, trying not to get my “ugly cry” on and thought this is unbelievable. Themes scream at us and allow us to select one, some or all but certainly not none. Pretending that themes don’t apply to us personally is a death certificate. It is DEATH a la Apollo Creed to exclaim that “That was then and this is now. I’m good.” That’s the trickery of the thematic right? It’s the thing you see happening to everybody while you swear (based on your faith, convictions, pedigree, intellect or whatever) that the s*#! can’t happen to you. Ah but “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18).

But good and bad themes co-exist. I just happened to list the most striking negative ones from the movie and its context. Don’t you think of your own duplicity, failure to be the same all the time, and spiral into shame? Or do you ever consider how your pride in your strongest traits builds a soap box from which to judge others? It’s a tough thing, maybe the toughest thing in life to evaluate ourselves.

But for each of the “Balboan” themes I referenced there is a transcendent redemption, triumph that could not be realized without the fire of vulnerability. Apollo died before he could combat his greatest demons. On the contrary, Adonis recognized (late) at about age 31 that boxing was something he ought to seriously pursue. He went and found uncle Rocky and gave his dream some space to breathe.

Mrs. Creed gave life to someone she owed nothing and Rocky conquered a fear of death and fought cancer (Of course we don’t find out how severe the disease is.) Adonis wants to be significant, which is a theme all by itself. He achieves it in a loss to a ranking champion whom he bloodily battles in the movie’s climax.

In ancient Greek, Caananite and Hebrew culture, the name Adonis means Lord with implicit connotations of beauty and all surpassing value. As I watched his development, Adonis Creed possessed incredible power. He was unsure of his identity and yet powerful because of it. He was birthed from an unsanctioned relationship but reclaimed into the most unlikely but genuine relationships of mother-to-son a person could desire. Those who loved him most throughout his early life shielded him and deterred him from following in the family trade and yet purpose and tenacity found residence in him to propel him toward a redeemed life.

Rocky movies man…if they ain’t the truth…