Last night I had the chance to watch Rocky V for the first time in a long time. The movie, which seems to have been designed to send off the Rocky series (which since has either two or three future entries, depending on whether one counts Grudge Match as part of the series), shows Rocky at a pivotal moment in his career–facing the end. After suffering brain damage as a result of years of being pummeled in the boxing ring, Balboa finds himself also bankrupt, and returning back to the old neighborhood, which has fallen on hard times. Attempting to remake himself as a boxing trainer and manager, since he is unable to be cleared to fight anywhere, he takes on as a protege a young boxer named Tommy Gunn with a troubled past who sees Rocky as a model. What results is in one way a typical Rocky movie, with its tragicomic U shaped plot–start off high with the adoration following the victory that closed Rocky IV, immediately open up the disastrous bankruptcy to bring Rocky down, then continue the downbeat move with Rocky’s disintegrating family situation (especially with his son), and a professional reverse that results in one last fight, this one on the streets of Philadelphia, to prove beyond dispute that Rocky is still the man, even outside of the ring.

In another way, though, this particular movie, written by Sylvester Stallone himself [1], is particularly heavy-handed when it comes to father issues. Part of this seems due to the film’s choice to capture real-life boxer Tommy Morrison in a prominent role as Rocky’s young protege. Tommy Morrison is no actor, but he is able to at least deliver somewhat convincing lines because his character not only has the same name as he does, but also has the same kind of father issues [2] that Tommy Morrison had in his life, namely an abusive father who spurred an interest in boxing, giving him a way out of the life of crime that ensnared most of his relatives in some fashion. In one of the more tragic ironies of the movie, Tommy Morrison’s career would be derailed by health woes that prevented him from being approved to appear on any card, and that is a diagnosis of HIV in 1996, which likely felled him because of the same kind of womanizing as the movie shows him engaging in, womanizing that led Morrison to have fathered two children by the age of 19, and be married at one point to two women at the same time. Like his character in Rocky V, Tommy Morrison appears to have been a man too ensnared by the accoutrements of fame to have the sort of heart that allows one to live a decent and honorable life, and that is a shame. Like many people, his own personal demons and the difficulties of his background held him back and led him down an ultimately disastrous course.

But the failed attempts of Rocky Balboa to serve as a father figure to Tommy Gunn is not by any means the only father figure aspect to this movie. Rocky Balboa himself openly expresses the absence of his own father, and how his own deceased trainer served as a father figure for him, helping turn him into a skilled boxer and eventual world champion. Then there is the matter of Rocky neglecting his own son, with his own bullying issues and young love, in order to train Tommy. In one case, Rocky uses the absence of his own father as a way of identifying with the younger boxer, and in the other case, Rocky’s abandonment of his own son leads him to perpetuate the cycle of his own neglect to the next generation, which is then dealt with in a somewhat heavy-handed way in the closing, where Rocky appears to have gotten the point. And even this does not exhaust the father figure theme in Rocky V, as after the last fight, a random priest gives Rocky a blessing after his victory, adding the implication of divine favor from our Father in heaven through a religious ‘father’ to the Italian-American boxing champion. Here again the concern of fathers is a major aspect of Rocky V, from beginning to end.

What does this mean? Why does Sylvester Stallone place several layers of father issues into Rocky V, especially when the very overall thematic flow of the movie, where Rocky feels like he is failing to provide for his family through his boxing as a result of his bankruptcy? In this particular case, there appear to be several related matters that make the theme of fatherhood so prominent. For one, there is the matter of the tragicomic plot in the movie to begin with, and then there is the matter of Stallone borrowing from the real-life father drama of his co-star. The combination of chance plot events (like the priest blessing Rocky at the end), with the overall plot and background to Rocky’s character with the attempt to make a non-actor’s performance more convincing is layers upon layers of father issues. And it is this combination that makes Rocky V such an eloquent document about the collapse of fatherhood in several ways–absent fathers, abusive fathers, distracted fathers, and fathers who for one reason or another are unable to provide for their families. Given that this is a common problem in life, it is little surprise that we should see this theme in a film, but it is more surprising that it appears so often and so pervasively, even if Rocky V was not a particularly popular film to begin with.

Yet Rocky V has a lot to tell us about the effects of the absence of fathers in our own lives. Whether one is dealing with the absence of a father, and seeking to grow up with that void in life, trying to solve it as best as possible with substitute and surrogate fathers, or one is dealing with the father as a negative figure in one’s life because of a history of abuse, or one is dealing with an absent father who has time for others but not time for his own children, the end result is that often in our contemporary culture fatherhood is something that is known because it is dysfunctional. Yet there is plenty of room in our culture for fatherhood to be a positive presence rather than being recognized through absence, or seen in corrupted and malign forms. There are a great many situations in life that fall short of the ideal, but if we are to improve our society and our communities, we will need positive examples to look to, and not merely negative ones to mourn and decry. Ultimately, for all his flaws, Rocky Balboa was a decent man and a worthy father, but the happy ending does not immediately wipe away the fact that poor examples of fathers are dealt with in such a blatantly open way. Nor are the difficulties our society has with the respect and honor of fathers, or with successfully handling the responsibility that fatherhood entails going to go away quickly. What we need from our culture is not merely a reflection of what we have experienced, or judgment against what is wrong, but a target to aim at, and a model to follow.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100507/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Morrison