![]() The steps that once represented how a street kid working odd jobs for the mob could transcend his status through sheer will and work are now the scene of a bitter confrontation over class and race. ![]() Rocky cannot allow this insult to stand he throws his body into the crowd, clawing to get a piece of Lang. T, in his breakout role, follows up this public lashing by openly propositioning Adrian, traces of terror and disbelief lighting her face as a burly, mohawked Black man emasculates her comparatively small, lithe white husband in front of her, the city of Philadelphia and God. They don’t want a man like me to have the title, because I’m not a puppet like that fool up there…I’m telling you and everybody here, I’ll fight him anywhere, anytime, for nothing! You got your shot, now give me mine… Why don’t you tell these nice folks why you’ve been ducking me? Politics, man. Getting out while you can-don’t give this sucker no statue. Yelling up at both Rocky and the Rocky statue looming larger behind him, Lang challenges Rocky to a fight with real existential stakes: T) emerges from the crowd just as Rocky announces his retirement. This is the face he wears when Clubber Lang (Mr. This is the face Stallone gives Rocky so often, that of a man dumbfounded, some light not so long ago punched out of eyes which will never quite cease twinkling, but aren’t as lustrous as they once were. ![]() Adorned by adoring crowds, a marching band transforming Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now” into diegetic fanfare, a bunch of dumbly grinning cops, Rocky’s trusty and crusty trainer Mickey (Burgess Meredith) and Rocky’s fur-donned wife Adrian (Talia Shire) finally beginning to feel comfortable in the finer things her husband’s vocation affords, Rocky stands sleek and triangular in flawless menswear at the top of the museum steps he made iconic in 1976’s Best Picture winner. In 1982’s Rocky III, city officials unveil the statue during a ceremony for Philadelphia’s own son, Robert “Rocky” Balboa, the Italian Stallion and current Heavyweight Champion of the World. ![]() As the Association of Public Art vaguely describes, “After prolonged dispute, the city formally accepted the gift.” Contained within that one gesture is the career-spanning gulf between Rocky Balboa’s humble background and Sylvester Stallone’s star-wielding influence-Stallone very sincerely giving the statue of himself to the city, as a token of the city’s generosity for all he’s arguably done for it, by just leaving it there. What Corzo likely wasn’t considering was the statue’s origin in Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky III, released Memorial Day weekend almost a quarter century earlier-nor did he likely consider the feelings of the film’s sensitive writer-director, who bequeathed the statue to the city following production by not taking it with him. Citing the Commission’s intended purpose to “raise the standards” of Philadelphia, Corzo unintentionally rehashed an old standard of taste that was once applied to the Rocky franchise-to most franchises that reach five or six sequels-by default: This stuff shouldn’t be on the property of an art museum because this stuff isn’t art. His complaint: Returning the Rocky statue to the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. ![]() In 2006, University of the Arts President Miguel Angel Corzo threatened to resign from the Philadelphia Art Commission. ![]()
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