Li Sumpter (Co-Host): Welcome back to Monument Lab, Future Memory. I am your co-host, Li Sumpter, and I'm here with my fabulous co-host, Paul Farber.

Paul Farber (Guest/Co-Host): Li, it's so great to be here.

Li: Welcome back.

Paul: On this side.

Li: Yes, and welcome to the other side of the Year. We're back now in 2023 and it's exciting to start this year off with a new episode of Monument Lab, Future Memory and also an official preview of The Statue. And for those of you who may not know, our amazing Paul Farber is the host of The Statue, a new podcast that is on WHYY and the NPR Podcast Network. And we are here to discuss a little bit about what Paul has been up to with this podcast. And just so you know, The Statue is none other than the Rocky Balboa statue, the iconic statue that is known to Philly and around the world. Before we dig into this conversation, we are going to hear a clip from episode one of The Statue available now anywhere you get your podcast. [Clip from The Statue promo]. And that's a clip from The Statue, the new podcast from WHYY, hosted by our own Paul Farber. And I have a few questions for you.

Paul: Okay, I'm ready. I'm looking forward.

Li: I have been lucky enough to get a preview, and I have to say that the first episode really did blow my mind. I’m a Philadelphian, born and raised, and it was amazing to hear all of the facts and stories about the statue that I never knew. I am a fan of films, so I do love the idea of giving fictional characters their props In the real world. So I definitely lean to that side of the debate because I know there probably is one that you have been digging deep into. But I want to hear from you what were maybe some of the things about the statue, its origins, its journey, and its connection to Philadelphia that might have surprised you, something you didn't know before.

Paul: Well thank you, Li, and really excited for you to hear us and for everyone to get this series. It's been a real labor of love. And before I begin, I want to just also just give immense appreciation to the production team, to Michael Alcott, Mikayla Winberg, Tom Grassler to all the folks behind it because it really was this major collaborative effort. And the idea for this project came first a few years ago. It was really at the onset right before the pandemic started, I thought, I want to write a biography of the Rocky statue. And I started researching and the deeper I went there was more there and realized of all the monuments that exist, there's something going on there that is profound, that people come from all over the world. They stand in line. There's this ritual, it's a pilgrimage. And after kind of thinking about it for a few years, it was actually a conversation with a dear friend, a Monument Lab collaborator, Salamishah Tillet, who had just finished a really remarkable podcast on the legacy of Anita Hill.

And she said, Paul, this could be a podcast. And so we started conversations with WHYY, who's just been remarkable partners to be able to bring this to life. And I think one of the things that I have taken out of this is that there's so much you can learn about a statue just by paying attention to the ways that it lives in the world. I would go about once a week for the last two years, and it didn't matter the weather, it didn't matter the time of day, you would just see this flood of people coming and then you start talking to them. And going on a given day, and I meet a group of friends from Kuwait and I'm like, what brought you here? And they said, Rocky. And brother and sister originally from Mexico City, the Garcias, and then they live in Denver and they came here because Rocky is part of their family story.

And when we're there, we're talking about Rocky, but we're also talking about all of the statues around us and what they do or do not tell us about our society today. And so there's this way that all of that is in the context of the statue to the most famous Philadelphian who never lived in a city of real life boxers. And so you just have this blurring of art and life. And so I just kept taking away, no matter where you are, whether you're at the art museum or you're at the sculptor studio or you're in Hollywood, the question is how do people relate to statues and what do they tell us about our lives today?

Li: You bring up a great point too. I mean, there's something so resonant about the Rocky statue. Like you said, there's a lot of statues out there, but what is it about the Rocky statue that brings people from far and wide to see it? As someone who grew up in Philadelphia, you take it for granted the impact. You take for granted that people really do think about this statue and want to make that pilgrimage, want to ritualize their experience at this site in ways that it was lost on me. I got to say until, a friend of mine who had never been to Philadelphia before was traveling from Mumbai, India. And he only had 24 hours in the city because he was passing through.

And I was like, okay, well what do you want to do? There's so many things we could do. And there were two things. It was the Rocky statue and a cheese steak. I really had to appreciate, not only his love for Rocky, but his motivation, his inspiration really ran deep. I asked him, well, how do you know about Rocky? He's like, well, of course the films have made it to India and around the world, in his own home, he has the face off of Mr. T and Rocky. There's a poster that he has. So it goes even beyond just coming to see the statue, but it has a symbolic significance to folks in their lives in ways that we probably couldn't imagine.

Paul: Yeah, I mean I remember you sent me that picture. It was profound. And that's a story I keep hearing wherever I am, whether it's people who grew up in Lithuania or talking to people who weren't alive when the Rocky film came out, but their parents have used it. I think that what keeps coming up, and we talk about this in the series, The Statue, is that the statue is both extraordinary and ordinary. What's extraordinary about it is that it has at least four million visitors each year that's double that go to the Liberty Bell, that's numbers that put it in line with the Statue of Liberty. And people come across lines of difference, race, class, gender, sexuality, political lines, and they go and it's a pilgrimage and therefore there's something extraordinary happening there. And at the same time, we have a fictional white working class boxer in a city of real life black boxers, in a city that has not historically invested in and spotlighted spaces of black history.

And so this space then is ordinary in the relationship of the city. And one of the big focuses of the series is really looking at the legacy of Joe Frazier real life boxer, born in South Carolina, based in North Philly, who we'd take a look really at his legacy. He ran up the art museum steps and punched meat and is one of the... In real life and was one of the inspirations. In fact, he had a cameo in Rocky one and was supposed to play that role that Mr. T played of Clubber Lang in Rocky III, when the statue's dedicated. This is the deep cut for the Rocky fans, but he got in the ring during his audition with Sylvester Stallone and landed a hit and gave Stallone stitches. And then he didn't have the role. Joe Frazier's remembered in this city. There is right a street named in his honor. There is now a statue, but he doesn't get the same spotlight and here is a real person. And so-

Li: A real champion.

Paul: And so we spent time talking to people who run boxing gyms, including those who had been trained by Joe Frazier and talked to folks involved in historic preservation around Joe Fraser's gym on North Broad Street to really try to look at again, this extraordinary and ordinary, what is going on at the Rocky statue that is worth looking at and understanding, and what is the broader context, especially around erasure in this city.

Li: There's politics and controversy around almost all monuments today, and the Rocky statue is no different. And as you mentioned, the idea of who do we remember and who are we forgetting and mentioning the legacy of black athletes, black boxers here in the city of Philadelphia is something that needs to be highlighted, celebrated. It's interesting too, you mentioned these iconic things like the punching of the meat and the running up the steps, you feel like there was such a template for the Rocky movie in so many ways because I mean, how many montages do you see in films that you know were basically inspired by that Rocky montage?

Paul: Oh, let me tell you. I mean one of the things we did was in looking at the life of the statue, just tracked wherever we'd find it. I had this spreadsheet, I met with the Monument Lab team and the researchers, Laurie Allen and Sue Mobley, and a big shout-out to Debbie Kenny and Claire Fisher who are researchers for me on this. And I will tell you that there's not just one Rocky statue. There are three casts of the original. The first is the landmark one that we know of at the Philadelphia Art Museum. There's a second that used to be at the San Diego Sports Hall of Fame, but is now in the possession of Sylvester Stallone. And then there's a third that's for sale that is in the Rockies in the mountains that is available from the artist studio, A. Thomas Schomberg who appears on the podcast and is really a generous source. But then you also have other statues that were commissioned by Stallone, those that have been created at other tourist sites, Lego land or Candytopia, video games, all of that.

Then I looked at memes and TV shows, fresh Prince of Bel Air, Simpsons, they all have Rocky montages. Oprah brought a studio audience from Chicago to run up the steps. Spotlight is like, there are many versions of the Rocky statue. I have to just say one of the weirdest ones is coming across in a video game, Nintendo Game Cube has a Rocky game that you pick your fighter from the series and you can be Rocky Balboa. You could also be the Rocky statue. So in this video game, you can see it on YouTube, you can be the Rocky statue and you hear bronze being hit. It's really fascinating. So it's really like, this happens in very select cases, but it's like the Rocky statues come to life and people treat Rocky Balboa, a movie figure as a real life Philadelphian, and the statue kind of comes on and off the pedestal. We suspend our disbelief and let it happen. And I just find that fascinating.

Li: No, that this is. I mean just the fact that like you said, the statue comes to life, it's animated in a way through this video game. That's wild. One of the things that I didn't know about the Rocky statue was that Sylvester Stallone himself commissioned the artist to do it. And it was incorporated initially, of course, into the film. Was it Rocky III, I guess?

Paul: That's right.

Li: What I loved was that it was like the movie prop that got left behind. The story that surrounds the statue is almost as Philly as the Rocky Balboa story itself.

Paul: Yeah, I mean we're tracing that. And there is this some really powerful tensions. When you're at the art museum, there's powerful work inside the museum, but you got to go to the front steps. That's the ultimate people's pedestal. Just think about all the things that have happened there. So you have this space that is ready made for not just monuments, but for the challenge and the contest between how we as people live in our city. And it is something that continually was fascinating was this idea of not just how Philly that was, but I have to say it's very monument. The history of monuments is that if you have had the time, the money or the power, you build a monument that's important to you or you leave something behind. And I think that it actually really gives that insight. It's something that came out that in the reporting on this that I found just so fascinating, this story, that this was just a movie prop.

So one talking to the artist, A. Thomas Schomberg, he said, "I wasn't making a statue of Sylvester Stallone. I was making it of the story, the myth of Rocky Balboa. I just happened to base it on this individual." And he made it as a work of fine art. You could have made a Styrofoam version or some other prop, but they made it in bronze. And at the same time, as I think about that, we're standing on the parkway where the Rocky statue is, and you have a statue of George Washington across the street, the number of our guests spoke about. And George Washington is on horseback on high, surrounded by mythical creatures and indigenous statuary. And that's a prop too. And so I just thinking about when you're there and you're really taking in this whole scene, how do you feel what's official and unofficial about the way that we inscribe our memory there and we imprint our memory there.

Li: And you brought up a great point about myth. Rocky is a mythology, it's a mythos of Philadelphia. The Rocky statue is an embodiment of an archetype that really transcends race, class, creed. And actually to bring to mention creed… Did Creed come up? The kind of continuation of that legacy and through a new character, through new stories, but the same mythology?

Paul: Absolutely. In the first episode, we interview a historian, Laura Holzman, who has this really powerful book called The Contested Image. And she talks about in the Creed series, one of the first moments that the character played by Michael B. Jordan comes to Philadelphia, they go to the Rocky statue. So you have this moment of life imitating art, art imitating life. And I think in many ways... And I think about this in a big shout-out to my students. When I've taught Rocky, I teach alongside Creed, and they see that the stories, especially of Creed is an important pivot and correction to the focus on just Rocky and the update and what it means to both onscreen and offscreen have the role in Philadelphia, if not elsewhere, of recognizing black boxers. Creed III is coming out in March. It's not only the first directed by Michael B. Jordan, but it's the first that Sylvester Stallone is not officially a part of. And it would be really interesting to see how they deal with the story of Rocky and that's... Get your popcorn ready. It would be really fascinating because the story continues to manifest and move forward.

Li: It is always about who the opponent is. We gotta love the fact that Michael B. Jordan is facing off with Jonathan Majors.

Paul: But there's always a subtext. It seems like from previews, one of the subtexts is the US prison system.

Li: Yes. Because when we think about the systems that create fighters and how we also rise as resilient against these systems. So it's going to be interesting. I only saw the trailer, so I don't know all the details, but I am looking forward to seeing this story unfold. I think that there's something to be said about Star Wars and certain series that go on and on, there's fan fiction, there's spinoffs upon spinoffs, but I wonder where the mythology of Rocky will go. We have Creed now. Do you have any inkling based on what you've experienced through this podcast and the research, what the future trajectory of this story might be?

Paul: I think about it in a slightly different way, which is that the Rocky story, the Rocky statue, Creed is not the first time that boxing makes its way into art. This is something we look back, the Boxer at Rest is one of the most famous bronze sculptures from antiquity. And you think about moving forward to Basquiat and Warhol and Keith Haring, there's a way that boxing, as practice, as metaphor enters into art. And I think the fact that Sylvester Stallone was a trained artist, and we get into this deep into the podcast to really look at the way that Rocky and the story being the underdog is channeled through art. So I think in many ways when you ask about the future, I also think about the continuities, which is that the story of the boxer is meant to be kind of boiled down the trials and tribulations that we face as humans.

What systems support us? Which ones keep us down and what do we need to defeat? I think what I find really fascinating, and the question I have is that no matter how many more spinoffs there are or clothing brands or video games, we're now almost 50 years past the first Rocky. And you can hum the song anywhere in the city and people will sing it. I can be in Germany and tell my cab driver, I'm from Philadelphia, and they ask me about Rocky and about the Fresh Prince. And I think that's really fascinating and that one of the ways to think about its future is to just ask a question we should be asking of all monuments, which is not just how did we inherit them, but what's their future going to be? And I think it should really in part boil down to the fact that monuments are always changing and we're changing them. And what better place to see that than right there with the Rocky statue.

Li: I feel you on that. It's a powerful thing to think about how these moments, not just the statue, but the song, it's the run up the steps, the Eye of the Tiger, everyone knows what that's shorthand for, right? There's something about how it gets deep within you. Because me as a black woman, I don't identify with where Rocky came from, him as a white man growing up South Philly. But for me it is about his fight. Like you said, it's about his fight. It's about someone believing in you too. It's also about that supporting cast. It was such a beautiful tribute too, to love. I mean, the love story that was at the heart of the Rocky epic is really special because I've seen T-shirts and there's so many with the "Yo, Adrian!" that is almost as iconic as him holding his hands high above his head.

Paul: You want to hear something about that?

Li: Yes, I do.

Paul: So in this city, there's one of the most famous cemeteries, Laurel Hill Cemetery. There's a gravestone to Adrian Balboa there, and that's another kind of statue. It's not Styrofoam, it's stone. And it was made for... Sorry for the spoiler, for the film series. And it's there and people leave offerings there. And it's profound to me. It's strange, but I see the offerings that people put there. And this is in a cemetery that has political dignitaries and major figures.

Li: It's one of Philly's most well-known cemeteries for sure. Yeah.

Paul: So I think there's a way in which, whether we're talking about the film or the statue or the culture around us, that art in life are always blurring. And I think that's the case with monuments. We know that monuments are not facts on a pedestal. We know that people are not frozen above us, and yet we suspend our disbelief. And so I think that this is an insight into how memory gets made. And in the case of a Hollywood production, there's part of this that you know can be cynical about that and you could see it as promotional, but you can also just talk to people in this city and far away and understand how it's impact for them. And so I think in some ways the opportunity and the challenge of this project was how to have critical distance, but also appreciate something that is really sprawling and as really, again, a window to decoding the relationship to monuments.

Li: One of my questions is about the folks that are on the other side of that love who maybe push back on the statue, push back on the Rocky story, push back on elevating him to this place of honor and recognition for some of the reasons you mentioned because of maybe those other boxers or Philly champions that were not recognized, that are real life people, not fictional characters that never lived. And wondering if through this kind of education that Monument Lab is doing, that you might be able to sway them. Or even if that's something that should or should not be done.

Paul: I want to hear them. And I believe that. I think about our Monument Lab audit when we looked at, one of our findings was that the monument landscape was overwhelmingly white and male. And it's not lost on me that the icon that gets elevated that is synonymous with the city itself is a fictional character. And something that we explore in this podcast is the idea that as a society we seek heroes and especially white heroes and even when they're not real. And that actually is in relationship to lots of statues of historic figures in places that they never set foot places that mythologize them. And so I want to make sure whether it's this podcast or in the work more broadly, that the voices of those who are skeptical can really be heard. I think it's really inspiring to know how in any way people channel their grief or pain or challenge and they're finding something in the Rocky statue.

And at the same time, there's really important chorus of voices who ask why this, right? And this some, we interview a biographer of Joe Frazier, Mark Kram Jr. in the show and talking about the long pursuit of the great white hope in boxing. And so those are all important to take up. And I think that rather than having a, is it good or bad or wrong, actually making space for those who are impacted by the erasures and the eclipsing and the lack of resources. We tried to, in this podcast devote episodes and time to hear about people who... Not just that they were skeptical, but that they had something substantive to share.

There's a whole episode about neighborhoods in Philadelphia, one of them that Rocky's associated with, South Philly and one that was actually shot on scene, Kensington. And we talked to artist and activists in those episodes, Michelle Angela-Ortiz, a longtime Monument Lab collaborator about her project, Our Market. And she talks about the Ninth Street market and thinking about this as a space for many different immigrant groups over time. And so I just think about, again, that was part of the goal here too. It's a both/and approach.

Li: Right. Both/And…I think it's really important to note that the people brought the statue back from... Was it at the Spectrum or it was somewhere?

Paul: It was at the Spectrum then it was in storage, yeah.

Li: And then it brought it back to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I remembered it being moved around because I remember in my youth, wait a second, it's here. It's not here. And then it was back again and thinking about how this all happened, not knowing the backstory, but then learning that it was really the people who decided that it was missed. Right?

Paul: There are some really great writing on this and I think about, I'm thinking about Laura Holzman, who I mentioned. I'm thinking about Tom Devaney, the poet in Philadelphia and writer who has really done amazing work on this as well. It's an insight into how statues get made, get moved, get advocated for, and yes, if you have the time, the money and the power, you can get a monument made to something that's important to you. If you don't have the time and money or the official power, but you have power nonetheless, you use it. You make your own monument or you gather around those that exist. I have a feeling that the story of Rocky's, a little bit of both of those things, there is both a kind of people's champ. It's unlikely hero makes its way to a beloved space. And also there is the power of Hollywood underwriting, all of it.

There is something really meaningful about the fact that the statue was at the top of the Art Museum steps for the filming of Rocky III. It was brought back for the filming of later subsequent Rockys and kind of moved around a bit, but people go there and act out the statue all the time. I had this moment this summer where I went for screening of the Rocky film that the city put on the parkway, and it was just amazing. You had all of these people running up the steps, watching the film, going to see the statue, not even knowing all of that programming was going on. They were just feeling the energy of that space. I think at the same time, it's hard to separate the steps and Rocky, but I think it's worth thinking through. The visioning of those steps was seen as grand. It's the way that people over time before Rocky and after Rocky have made it their own.

Li: As you were talking, I was thinking about my own first time making the Rocky pilgrimage, getting up those steps because it's hard with little feet. And as a Philadelphia, you do it so many times. Also, you kind of make that journey with friends. And when you play host and like I mentioned, bringing my friend to see it for himself. You're either taking photos or you're running right alongside them. So my most recent trip up the steps was probably about a month or so ago. And it's different every time, but there's something about getting to the apex and it's such a great view of the city though from that vantage point, from that POV, you look out on the city and I think there's something about, like you said, we keep coming back to this art imitating life.

Paul: And life imitating art.

Li: And life imitating art. That relationship, I think the connecting element, that connecting force that brings those two worlds together, the real and the imaginary are these symbols. And I think that's why there's so much energy in that Rocky statue. If there was a way to me measure it would be off the Richter scale. How many people have made that trip to see it and to really kind of pay respects. Pay respects.

Paul: You said so much there, and I'm thinking about a few things. I'm thinking about the stories of the people who take small artist versions of the statue around the world to prominent places and take photos of them. There's a group of people who take a Rocky statue to the Great Wall of China and they communicate with the artists, so they bring Rocky with them.

Li: Really?

Paul: Yes. It keeps going deeper. The people who, I think of a really special person we speak to in the podcast series, The Statue, Mike Kunda, who his life is becoming Rocky and there's a film called The Pretender that you can see, and he really has devoted his life to becoming Rocky. He also leads film tours in the city and in the documentary, people who are struggling with their jobs or going through medical treatment, they go to him. They see him as a healing figure as well, because we need places to let go of our pain.

Li: I'm sorry. I'm trying to understand. So is he an impersonator of Rocky?

Paul: You could say he's an impersonator. It's bigger than that.

Paul: And he's not the only one. When you see a picture of him pose next to the Ben Franklin impersonator, it's really like your mind explodes really. It's a very Philly thing. But in this film, like I said, he is a person who then brings people close to him in the spirit of Rocky to be able to help them release pain and find a way through. That stands out to me, I think to our dear friend and collaborator, ursula rucker…

We worked together on the overtime app at the Art Museum steps and just thinking about before there were steps that was a hill in this Lenape land and a high point that you could see out in the region. And then it became a colonial outpost and the city's waterworks and eventually it became the Art Museum. And that's where, as a city we go celebrate for parades. We do vigils there. We mourn. That's where the PMA union protested. It's where the uprisings in 2020 really kicked off. That is, as we say, the people's pedestal and Rocky's a part of that, Rocky's tapping that. And I want to also understand how people keep making it and remaking it separately and together.

Li: I love that. And you talked about the Rocky spirit, and that for me is such a key word. There's something about that Rocky spirit that translates into all languages, it seems.

Paul: We were talking about this before we were recording, but in the most recent World Cup, a lot of us were rooting for the underdog team Morocco and the coach at Morocco said they were the Rocky of the World Cup. So there's something synonymous with the idea of underdog. It's really interesting. In one of the episodes we talked to several monument scholars who talk about the idea of the underdog and both the appreciation and celebration of underdog as a way through for many of us, and also kind of obscuring structural forces.

If you just work hard enough, you can overcome things and seeing that the allure of the underdogs story has underbelly to it as well, which is like what are the structural forces that keep us down, that challenge us that we have to fight with every day that don't always come across as a direct opponent. So it's so deep. I think what I'm drawn to here is that there are few other statues in the world that have this kind of life and afterlife. You have the statue of David in Florence, you have the Statue of Liberty in New York, maybe the Redeemer in Rio, and then you have Rocky in Philly. And just think about who those figures are. But that's the kind of level of attachment and personification. It's as if you fully blurred art and life because whether it's in statue form or story form, it's as if this figure is a citizen of the city.

Li: You’re exactly right. Because as you were saying that, I was thinking my next question you is going to be, what other statues, monuments do you think have this effect, that Rocky effect? My "theory" is that there's something to Rocky being a fictional character that allows folks to embrace him in this unbridled way that is transcendent. You know what I mean? Because you don't have to be of a certain religion, race, or creed to even appreciate, but it goes way beyond appreciation.

It goes to this point where folks are literally using this icon as a torch, as a light to follow, to give themselves hope and to bring them out of the darkness. Cause like you said, the underdog is ultimately a champion. I mean, that's part of the story that they ultimately overcome. But there's so many dark forces, like you said, working against them. They don't just have to beat the champion. There's so many things pulling them down, systemic things, and maybe I forgot or never knew, that Rocky was also collecting money for the mob, again, that's kind of a typical story where you could go left and do the wrong thing on the wrong side of the tracks, or you could do right, become a champion of the people and do it the clean way, so to speak.

Paul: This is a statue where it gets meme'd by people supporting Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. It is a place that when you go, I've seen people hold up the black power fists of solidarity. I've seen Puerto Rican Day Festival. I've seen people go and hold up the white power sign. It is a cross-section of American politics and global politics at that. Something that you said that is really important is the fictional part, and again, I will put it out there, that our monuments as we've inherited them, are not some kind of pure history. I think as you were saying that, Li, I was thinking that a lot of the allure of many of our monuments are actually that they're fictionalized accounts. And so again, it's a window into that and I think it is easier to tell a fictional or idealized story about our history and my hope, and I think the hope of many people we spoke to in the production is actually the real way to bring history to life is to embrace how people utilize monuments. There's a way that we can learn from this and also keep making room for a more complex, more full history.

Li: I love that, how this fictional monument is helping us all to really more deeply consider the facts of history and how we're all impacted by that. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Thank you again, Paul, for sharing the inside scoop with us on this amazing new podcast, The Statue produced by WHYY and NPR networks. I would love if you could give us a little preview of what we can expect. I know the episodes are going to drop weekly, what can we expect to hear?

Paul: Yeah, this is a six-part series. We'll be hearing from public artists, from neighborhood advocates, from people in Philly, Hollywood, and other geographic spaces. And we really wanted to hear a chorus of people and really get at the ideas of how do we remember as a society and really explore and learn in this. So I thank you, Li. This has been a treat. I'm looking forward to sharing the rest of the series with you. Thank you.

Li: Thank you for listening. This is Future Memory, another one for the archives.