Enter the MGM Grand, or Madison Square Garden, or any other famous arena you’ve heard vaguely mentioned while your brother watched ESPN. This is the home of primetime boxing, the realms of which Rocky, Creed, Cinderella Man, and every other mainstream boxing flick exists in. This is the home of raw masculinity, where a cracked skull and a broken nose serves as a badge of honor, so long as the next guy has an even more cracked skull and an even more broken nose. To be frank, this is the home of theater; featuring fists of fury, bravado, and brawn. It is the underdog versus the household name. Or the fledgling star versus the superstar in his twilight years. Or everybody’s favorite hero versus everybody’s favorite villain. Pick a trope, chances are it has been viewed, used, and abused by Hollywood. The theater of boxing is a vehicle which, if you look hard enough, tells stories as old as time. But, the theater of boxing is also a vehicle which, if you do not look at all, offers endings to those very stories.

With murder recognized as a universal crime, the next best thing is broadcasted to you live, for only $99.99. Or, if you happen to be a conscientious objecting pacifist that cannot stomach real boxing and all its brutality, Rocky is available at the local AMC for $14.50. This is your heart signed away, or your lungs, or your brain, simply for the entertainment of the masses. Or is it? One could imagine embedded in the soul of every boxer is the will to survive, the will to fight, the will to win – unless you were bribed to do otherwise. The raw emotion, and subsequent explosion of that emotion, makes boxing the perfect sport to be displayed on the silver screen time and time again. These boxing flicks harbor enough intimate moments to keep a female audience interested, but at the same time manages to keep its male base enthralled with enough haymakers from Sylvester Stallone, or Robert De Niro, or any other leading man with dark hair. The theater of boxing seeks to appease such a wide diaspora of viewers that, as Adorno says, “Something is provided for everyone,” (97). But perhaps the reason the tentacles of theatrical boxing can reach so many is due to its portrayal of the everyman attaining great heights. These accents of the American Dream tell the audience they too can achieve massive success if they are willing to work for it, and take a few concussion-inducing punches along the way.

Rocky, the magnum opus of all boxing flicks, introduced its audience to a storyline that perhaps was not as over exhausted then as it has come to be today. This rags-to-riches trope can be spotted from a mile away by even the most nonchalant eye, and serves as the basis for an abundance of sporting movies. But why does Hollywood keep doling out such movies if they all progress the same way? Simply, it is what people want to see. The entire global population is not made up of the 1%. There is indeed the 1% that already has the possessions that a new-to-fame Rocky Balboa has. But then there is also that 99% that fantasize about attaining Rocky’s wealth; these movies are for them. Even if money and material possessions are not the desires coursing through your veins, movies like Rocky evoke a certain me-against-the-world-overcoming-my-crucible atmosphere that it is somewhat relatable to the masses. As such, they will root for the underdog. They will root for Rocky when he squares up with Apollo Creed. They will root for Rocky when he disassembles the soviet Ivan Drago. They will root for Rocky when he faces the leaner and meaner Mason Dixon. Likewise, they will root for Rocky as he deals with the death of his trainer Mickey Goldmill, and they will root for Rocky while he comes to grips with the death of his wife, Adrian.

As most people should know, life does not go by without doling out its fair share of problems and crises. As such, it would take an unhealthy amount of romanticism to imagine a boxer to go from poor to pouring glasses of Chardonnay without battling a few demons. These demons may manifest themselves in the death of loved ones and the subsequent uncontrollable rage, as was the case in Rocky. Or they may come in the shape of drugs and alcohol as was the case with Billy in Southpaw.

If you have not seen Southpaw, chances are you have seen it already. Southpaw is Rocky, but for the Irish. Southpaw is Rocky without the first two movies divulging his origin and rise to fame, but encompassing the last four movies centering in on his fame, fall from grace, and resurgence. Southpaw is riches-to-rags-to-somewhat-riches-again. Southpaw is, as Rotten Tomatoes puts it, “a dispiriting drama that pummels viewers with genre clichés,” (Sutter). Protagonist Billy Hope, like Rocky Balboa, can take as many punches as his opponent is willing to deliver. In the stereotypical fighting nature of the Irish, Hope will absorb everything you have and then some, only to prescribe a world of hurt afterwards. Billy lacks the poise and finesse one might associate with Rocky Balboa, but this is only a feeble attempt to divert discerning eyes from noticing the repackaging of a similar story. Billy is, for all intents and purposes, a scrapper, a brawler, an everyday blue-collar worker unloading the burdens the world has so cruelly rested on his shoulders. Standing beside this raging bull is the calming but firm presence of one Maureen Hope, for as the movies tell us, every boxer has to have his levelheaded wife. And Maureen is to Billy what Adrian is to Rocky, therefore, Maureen dies. Or to better fit the repackaging, Maureen is murdered, shot by an accomplice of a prospective opponent for Billy Hope. As fate, and logic, would have it, shooting the wife of a hothead would only serve to spark the embers to his rage, and provide content for the remaining ninety minutes of the movie.

The loss of his wife is perhaps the catalyst for everything else that goes awry in the life of Billy Hope. Being an ill-tempered brawling pugilist who has just experienced a traumatic event, as Hollywood would have it, it only makes sense that Billy would turn to drugs, alcohol, and the occasional suicide attempt. Except the occasional suicide attempt of Billy Hope coincided with the loss of his daughter, Leila, to Child Protective Services along with all his worldly possessions, as one could assume Billy was not fit to raise a child. Despite the many grievances one could take up with Southpaw, what it does bring to life is a scenario present on both the silver screen and real life. It emphasizes the reality that drugs and alcohol are consistently the go-to form of medication when we experience trauma. What’s more, is that the consumption of these vices contributes to the worsening of a problem, which in Billy’s case would be his suicide attempt, multiple attempts at murder, and the loss of his flesh and blood to Child Services. Thus, behind all the glamour and repackaging that Tinseltown represents, it is raising a valid concern by critiquing a noticeable problem in society: the reliance on debauchery to remedy grief.

Trauma is not the flu; a gulp of Advil, Pepto-Bismol, or grandma’s herb will not do the trick. Chances are you would, in fact, get addicted to grandma’s herb, overdose, and now you’re in the same boat as Billy Hope, which helps no one. As the American Psychological Association would have it, trauma is an “emotional response to a terrible event…Long term reactions include unpredictable emotions,” (“Trauma”). In short, trauma is not good for a relatively already unstable Billy Hope. His abuse of alcohol and drugs are the easy options. Why wouldn’t they be? A lost wife, daughter, and house, why not pick up the old hooch and do some lines? The pain and trauma Billy experienced is the same pain which injected itself into the lives of Mike Tyson, George Foreman, Sonny Liston, Evander Holyfield, and every other 20^th century boxer with twelve kids, three lions, and a cameo in a parody of a parody of a parody.

Pain and trauma are not simply words, they are feelings and experiences the entirety of the human race will face at one point or another, regardless of whether you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, or no spoon at all. It is something relatable to everyone, relatable to the everyman. This conflict of pain, trauma, and loss are key ingredients in the theater of boxing. But more than that, they are key ingredients in the pavilion of storytelling. As Simba had to deal with Scar, as Don Corleone had to deal with betrayal within his own mob family, as Rocky had to deal with the death of Adrian and the subsequent fallouts, Billy Hope has to deal with his own demons and reliance on drugs and alcohol. If one musters up the strength to look past the clichés throughout Southpaw, the critique of alcohol and drug abuse is not simply fodder for drawing room musings. With the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence Inc. (NCADD) reporting that 17.6 million Americans suffer from alcoholism, Billy being a member of that statistic is not ideal (Wilcox). Surely, there are a multitude of other ways to deal with grief and trauma, and because Hollywood refuses to leave its patrons with a bad taste in their mouth unless a sequel is already in the works, a solution is already handy. And right on cue, as the Rocky franchise provided closure for an aging Rocky Balboa, Southpaw musters up a non-depraved remedy for the seemingly hopeless Billy Hope.

Rocky threw himself into the mountains, and his admirable work ethic aided him in overcoming Ivan Drago. Harry Potter needed all of Hogwarts, and seven sequels, to defeat Lord Voldemort. In a similar fashion, Billy relied on close friends and regaining custody of his daughter to fuel his departure from the abyss of trauma and debauchery. In typical Rocky fashion, montages of Billy training, with an aged troubled trainer, precede his return to the ring where, you guessed it, he is victorious in the final minute of the final round. To cap it off, enter Leila Hope, who is now supposedly back in the custody of a resurgent, and clean, Billy Hope. Hence, when the dust settles and the final bell rings, it was not drugs and alcohol that pulled Billy up from the abyss, but his relationship with the people around him, hard work, and having a clear goal in mind.

Is this then to be Hollywood’s rallying message for those who experience trauma? Family, hard work, and being goal oriented is the best medicine? Perhaps not, but it is for boxers. From Rocky to Cinderella Man to Million Dollar Baby to Creed to Raging Bull, it was these criteria which lead to our heroes return to excellence. Southpaw is simply following a predetermined formula. Unless it is this year’s Oscar bait with a vision to change our social condition, the creators working the marionette that is Hollywood will not leave its faithful patrons with an unhappy ending. Endings may leave you unsatisfied, but they will never be unhappy – unless the sequel is in the works. Southpaw brings to you front and center the first-hand experience of trauma as well as indulging in vices, and then proceeds to tell you never mind, family and a distorted take on the American dream is a better route. While its effectiveness is disputable, its accuracy is not. Your story will never not have an ending, after all a Resolution is scripted into the very plot structure of most stories, or at least that is how they teach it: Beginning, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Dénouement – your Resolution. If you can bare to ignore the façade for a singular minute and look behind the curtain, you may find that Southpaw is the same movie, with the same story, just new gloves.

 

Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, edited by Gunzelin Schmidd Noerr, Stanford University Press, 2002, pp. 94-136.

 

Southpaw. Dir. Antoine Fuqua. The Weinstein Company, 2015. Film

 

Sutter, Kurt, and Richard Wenk. “Southpaw.”Southpaw (2015) – Rotten Tomatoes, Fandango Media, 10 Oct. 2017, www.rottentomatoes.com/m/southpaw_2015/. Accessed 14 October 2017.

 

“Trauma.” American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, www.apa.org/topics/trauma/. Accessed 14 October 2017.

 

Wilcox, Stephen. “Facts About Alcohol.” National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, NCAAD, 25 July 2015, www.ncadd.org/about-addiction/alcohol/facts-about-alcohol. Accessed 14 October 2017.