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Philadelphia Media: Swarthmore College Film and Media Studies Capstone Project

Philadelphia Race Movies

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6. Rocky: A Sign of Hope for White Men A video essay by Zarahy Rivas and Damion DeShield The Hollywood sports film genre’s connection to culture provides the ability to define. At the national level that means the creating or correcting of national identity and values. In Rocky, these qualities serve to promote traditional American ideals of manhood, but with a focus on the condition of white men. The film responds to the social and economic anxieties present in 1970s America, including the city Philadelphia, with a figure and story meant to increase a sense of confidence, pride, and power in white American men which by extension means the same for the Nation. An added layer of historical context focuses on the 1970s post-Civil rights backlash. Frank Rizzo, a policeman-turned-mayor is known as a white Italian (like Rocky) that played into the national hostility against the “threat of blackness” by opposing beneficial projects to African Americans and having a “tough on crime” policy that disproportionately affected Black communities
7. DC Comics' Shazam, a Philly Superhero?