Thinking a lot about how COBRA KAI and CREED 2 are both modern works of art aimed at deconstructing the glitzy, stylized, excessively upbeat tone of two eighties sports movies (THE KARATE KID and ROCKY IV, respectively) and wondering if there's some hidden meaning there
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Like both COBRA KAI and CREED 2 deal with—to some extent—the exchange of class identity between hero and villain Johnny Lawrence and Ivan Drago both being blonde, nominally upper-class champions who, in their movies, lose to scrappy, working-class underdogs
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COBRA KAI and CREED 2 reveal that the heroes of those movies (well, in the former's case, their issue) have been living pretty pampered lives as celebrities living high on the hog while the villains suffer for the rest of their lives as unwanted pariahs forsaken by their families
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Like that's the thing right, like it's complicated somewhat by Adonis being a bastard child who was rescued from the system but he's genuinely had a charmed life since then and Ivan/Viktor are miserable, spiteful people living lonely lives in squalor
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I think COBRA KAI kind of explores this a little more, the extent to which Daniel has genuinely grown up to be kind of a nouveau riche douchebag with his fancy car dealership but like it's kind of subtext with Adonis too, he grew up in a fucking mansion and is lowkey a douchebag
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That's not to say that either of them are the bad guys per se but it does kind of unpack what it means to be a "winner" in the eighties sports movie triumph-of-the-underdog sense You don't create a more just world, you just rearrange the people living at the bottom of it
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I mean ROCKY IV ended with this impassioned plea to the USSR to embrace humanity and justice and CREED II begins with Russia being a fascist hypercapitalist dystopia which we learn immediately proceeded to alienate and exile the very person Rocky defeated to make the point
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I mean the writers of the ROCKY franchise didn't orchestrate all of that obviously but, y'know, it shook out that way
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Are you going to remember this post when you somehow become a wealthy celebrity and Bari Weiss is living in squalor
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Replying to @arthur_affect
when that happens I'll build a cottage for Weiss to live in rent-free, living with the fact she's completely on the dole, just to crush her spirit utterly
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