While studying for a film final (fingers crossed for this evening), I noticed something very odd about Ebert’s 1976 review of the movie “Rocky”. If you’re familiar with the movie, you’ll know what I mean. I tried to find clips to illustrate my point, but no luck. It opens:
She sits, tearful and crumpled, in a corner of her little bedroom. Her brother has torn apart the living room with a baseball bat. Rocky, the guy she has fallen in love with, comes into the room.
“Do you want a roommate?” she asks shyly, almost whispering.
“Absolutely,” says Rocky.
Which is exactly what he should say, and how he should say it, and why “Rocky” is such an immensely involving movie.
Um, that’s not how that scene went at all. I’ll get into that right after a couple of other exerpts:
He is awkwardly in love with a painfully shy girl (Talia Shire) who works in the corner pet shop.
And then there’s Talia Shire, as the girl (she was the hapless sister of the Corleone boys in “The Godfather“). When she hesitates before kissing Rocky for the first time, it’s a moment so poignant it’s like no other.
What, she doesn’t get a name? At the end of the movie, Rocky screams Adrian, Adrian, Adrian, over and over– don’t tell me you forgot, Ebert. She’s not just “the girl,” and the scene where she (is kissed) by Rocky for the first time is called sexual assault. He used manipulative tactics to coerce her into his apartment, started taking off his clothes, invaded her personal space, and despite her numerous protestations that she didn’t belong there and should leave or call her brother to let him know where she was, Rocky backed her into a corner, blocked her escape, and presumably raped her.
So then they’re girlfriend and boyfriend, right? Right. And the tearful and crumpled? This is right after she screams in the face of her abusive and alcoholic brother that she’s been the one taking care of him, and that he’s holding her back, not the other way around (all true). With wrath, she storms into her bedroom and slams the door after having properly intimidated the creep. When Rocky follows her (after standing up for her point of view, thank goodness) she is not in any state of womanly distress. Her emotions are understandably high– she is flushed, full of verve at finding her own voice, and sits with ram-rod straight posture. “Tearful and crumpled” my ASS. While she does ask if Rocky wants a roommate in a quiet tone, this is far more a re-assertion of her rational control over those exhilarating emotions of savagery and anger than out of bashfulness.
Ebert, is “Rocky” a good movie because you interpret it to conform to patriarchal standards of rape-based romance?
My teacher argued that “Rocky” could be seen as a story of two trapped people who escape from their situations. Rocky, a fighter on skid row, gets a one-in-a-million chance at glory and respect through the opportunity to fight Apollo Creed. He becomes a hero for the every-day man, and wins in the sense that he holds his own against all odds. Adrian escapes from her brother’s keeping and from her shyness by getting Rocky.
Fuck you, teacher. That’s not growth, that’s not liberation. That’s trading one prison for another, except now instead of getting yelled at every once in a while she gets fucked (or raped) and lives in Rocky’s smelly bachelor pad, forever dwarfed by his fame.
Let’s not even get into the interpretation of “Rocky” as diatribe against black people. I’m so angry I need to go increase the size of my biceps before this final.
