Rocky IV Is Some Sort of Pop Art Masterpiece

posted by Jett Loe

What a gloriously misunderstood film.

Released in 1985, reviewers, then and now, judged it against a template taken from faux realistic cinema, (as in the original Rocky), rather than seeing it for what it is:

A joyous, Warholian Pop Art treasure.

Look at the image above, from the opening titles of the film, has there ever been a more Jeff Koons moment in cinema than those exploding fists?

The film in an unending delight of such moments – moments of pure pop flatness, the absence of psychology celebrated. The film might as well be titled ‘Living in the 80′s, or ‘Life in America’, (or Living in America); this dream world is presented as the fullest expression of joyous capitalism in which, as Andy Warhol once said, (paraphrasing here), “everyone can consume the same products, the Queen of England and the man in the street drink the same bottle of Coca-Cola).

Scene after scene presents beautifully composed shots of available, glittering toys and goods made possible by living in the U.S.A.

This is no accident. The photographer of Rocky IV, Bill Butler, shot Jaws. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. And Demon Seed for goodness sake.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

Look at Carl Weathers, (Apollo Creed – named by NASA?), playing with his dogs, in his pool. You wouldn’t be surprised to hear that David Hockney took the photo.

Look at our hero, Rocky, below.  We see him through the viewfinder of a video camera.

The image above is captured by Rocky’s child, who throughout the film obsessively videotapes those around him.  He is using this new consumer technology to do what?  Just observe?  Or is it that he’s so used to seeing his father on television, this flat screen, that he can only really understand him while in the act of recording, transmuting the life around him into art?

Of course one can’t help but think of the man below – with his endless hours of filming – in his factory, his own make-believe home.

Andy’s spirit floods this picture.

Andy, the shy ugly boy with parents from the East, (did they ever learn to speak English?).

And here we come to it.  Rocky IV as Andy’s dream.  For who is Ivan Drago – but the idealised Andy; tall, strong, impossibly beautiful?

Ivan is the super Andy.  Coming to America, dazzled by its riches – enhanced by technology.

His image replicated over and over.

In Rocky IV the joy of pop art, of reproduction, of the toys made available by Capitalism, (and subverted by the East – technology with the joy removed), can be found in its most outrageous conceit:  The Robot.

While the East uses technology to give Ivan super strength, here in America the Robot Man is used to watch protectively over the children, while Dad washes his beautiful, sleek sports car with a personalised license plate, (asserting himself as an individual even though the goods around him are reproducible, even his child’s playmate).

The Pop Art flatness of the visual compositions, is mirrored and amplified by every other aspect of the film.

The performances are without depth.  This is not so say the characters, (or the actor’s portrayal), are shallow.  Rather the performances are what one would expect from a cartoon come to life.

The use of flashbacks, freeze frames and content from other sources, (much of the film is made up of material from the other Rocky films), resembles not a conventional movie, but an populist art installation.

Look at the the two images below. They could be a framegrabs from every Turner Prize winner I’ve ever seen.

The imagery, characters and plot, (there is no sense that anyone in the production had ever been to the Soviet Union, or even read about the Soviet Union before the making of this product – the sources for this movie are other movies, other product), all serve the same purpose: the creation of a borderless, globalised product; an advertisement for itself.

This is intentional – Rocky IV was designed to be an international money maker, an advertisement for the U.S. and itself; simultaneously the product and the commercial for the product.  It was not aiming for ‘realism’.  It was aiming for profit.  And it succeeded.  Rocky IV is still, twenty five years later, the most successful sports film of all time.

If you don’t have access to Pop Art in a museum or gallery – rent/stream/download Rocky IV – it’s an education in the form and a joy to watch.

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(Jeff Koons installation photo at top by Librado Romero/The New York Times, Andy Warhol’s Hammer and Sickle by RedKen)

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 12:02 am. It is filed under Blockbusters, Blog, Drama, Favorite Posts, Jett Loe, Jett Loe Reviews, Reviews and tagged with andy warhol, basquiat, boxing, koons, pop, pop art, rocky. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.