The Wrestler

There might be some spoiling here:

I attended the film with my friend New York underground film actor Renia.
I enjoyed the movie. It is a bit of a lurid melodrama. I kind of go for that downbeat sort of thing.
Renia and I were talking about it this morning. She didn't like that he couldn't be a deli guy at least for awhile and wondered, "What was wrong with being a deli guy? Nothing wrong with that."
I suggested he was a "Death or Glory" sort of boy. And that the movie wasn't saying "Death or Glory" was good necessarily, but in fact yet again presenting that type as the anti-hero, which ultimately makes it a pretty conventional type of movie for the culture we are living in. The message is, rather often, if you can't be something big, big success, a star, well you might as well be dead. And of course one out of a million or less actually is a star, so it becomes a pretty negative message, doesn't it?
He did have a hint of real connection with people, with the stripper and his daughter, but that was too complicated, too hard. Actually be messes up the connection with his daughter while indulging in the cheep rewards of being The Ram when he goes off and parties with the floozy who has a fireman fetish.
Perhaps our intimate connections, or families, friends, should be our buffer, our shelter from the marketplace which is only too happy to grind us up and turn us into a buck. If one doesn't have that, the type of family that will protect rather than push one further into the mill, you are left with naked vulnerability like The Ram was in that last speech. something like, "You people out there will tell me when it's time to quit." Well, the crowd, the mass will always want more. If they see you on the ledge or the top rope, they will shout "JUMP!"