The Iron Claw
This filmic treatment of the lives of the Von Erich family uses wrestling as a moving metaphor for both Reaganomics and toxic masculinity.
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This post is part of the ‘One Take’ weekly series analysing the politics of a film currently showing at the cinemas.
Content warnings: Child death; Bereavement.
Note: Given that, at time of writing, The Iron Claw is still showing in UK cinemas, this analysis only lays out as much of the film’s scenario as is necessary so as to avoid spoilers. It is therefore suitable to be read either before or after watching the film, while hopefully still enriching the viewer’s appreciation of it either way.
The Iron Claw is a fictionalised retelling of the story of the Von Erich family, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Kevin Von Erich (Zac Efron) is a young up-and-coming wrestler, living in Texas with his demanding father Fritz (Holt McCallany), a retired wrestler turned owner of the World Class Championship Wrestling franchise; devout Christian mother Doris (Maura Tierney); and younger brothers David (Harris Dickinson), another aspiring wrestler; and budding musician Mike (Stanley Simons). The family is said to be cursed, Fritz having previously been denied his shot at the Worlds Heavyweight Championship, and his and Doris’s eldest son, Jack, having died tragically as a child.
Desperate for his sons to get an opportunity to win the title he did not, Fritz pairs Kevin and David together as a tag-team wrestling outfit. They are subsequently joined by another of their brothers, Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), who has returned to the family home after his dream of competing in the Olympics is dashed by the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games. The trio are a growing sensation and Fritz is hopeful that one of them might get a title shot. Away from the ring, Kevin catches the eye of young veterinarian Pam (Lily James), and the two begin dating. Yet just as professional success as well as personal contentment seem on the horizon, Fritz’s ruthless ambition and competitive streak hold tragic ramifications for his sons.
Wrestling and the long 1980s
The period between the late 1970s and early 1990s was one of rapid transformation for both wrestling and America, and the former offers an apt metaphor for the latter. This was when the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush embraced deregulation and encouraged America’s imbrication in rapidly expanding global capital flows.1 Likewise, in The Iron Claw, the Von Erich saga unfolds against the backdrop of wrestling’s shift from a highly localised, fragmentedly organised cultural form, watched mostly live in arenas by loyal home fans, to an increasingly national and then transnational phenomenon, broadcast on cable channels like ESPN. Texas, which began in 1980 an as-yet unbroken run of favouring Republican candidates in presidential elections, is an appropriate location to view these developments from.
As Kevin recalls it, his father had always said that ‘If we were the toughest, the strongest, nothing could ever hurt us’. This is, in many ways, a mantra for Reaganomics: that in a tough, unforgiving world, it is resilience and self-reliance that wins through. Kevin initially internalises this view. When Pam queries whether wrestling is is not, after all, fixed, he defends it and his aspirations within it. It is, he counters, like other professions, whereby the leading performers reach its pinnacle. Its blending of sport with entertainment does not mean that it deviates from the meritocratic ideal of competition upon which sport is typically based.
Yet The Iron Claw also exposes the lie in this. We certainly see the skill involved in its combination of brute physicality and improvised choreography, in its requirement that wrestlers are both athletes and thespians. Yet we are also shown the apparent arbitrariness by which careers stall and hopes are frustrated. We realise the lack of transparency in the decision-making around wrestling, as to who gets the title shot, who gets to win major matches. As misfortune in the ring intersperses with tragedy beyond it, talk of a curse offers a tantalisingly persuasive explanation for why promised good times elude the Von Erichs.
Patriarchy and toxic masculinity
Fritz epitomises the combination of masculinity and commerce at the heart of wrestling. He foists his own ambitions upon his children and then plays his own part, through the decisions he makes on their behalf, in shattering them. Feeling himself to have been cheated out of the belt he was entitled to, he is determined to ensure it ends up in the hands of one of his sons, but family to him is a means of vicariously grasping the object he desires, not something he values for its own sake. As such, he seeks to foster a perpetually fluid hierarchy of his sons, anathema as that is to them. Yet again, the seeming meritocracy of this contest to be the number one wrestler in the household, and in the world, is a mirage; for it is he, as their manager, who negotiates the abstracted, mystified forces of the market, and in part decides the fate ostensibly in their hands.
He is enabled in this regard by his wife, Doris. ‘Mom tried to protect us with God; Dad tried to protect us with wrestling,’ Kevin explains in a voiceover. The two function in tandem in the Von Erich household, because of the particular quietism of Doris’s faith. In fastidiously entrusting to God the protection of her sons from the hardships of the world, she recuses herself from protecting them from their father, refusing to intercede on their behalf even when begged by Kevin to do so. We might read this as signifying the role of evangelical Christianity in morally buttressing neoliberalism and patriarchy in contemporary America.
Toxic masculinity takes its toll on the Von Erich brothers through wrestling itself. It does so in the requirement that they experience often severe pain and carry on through it, ignoring or medicating themselves through the signs of wear and tear on the body. This physical harm is matched psychologically, through the mental strains of having one’s hopes raised and dashed, the hedonism of a life consistently on the road, and the trauma of watching these things hurt your loved ones as well. Wrestling’s sport-entertainment narratives, its dramatisation of violence and veneration of endurance, are superimposed upon their real lives.
Fraternity and redemptive masculinity
Patriarchy, as depicted in The Iron Claw, is toxic to men because of its top-down nature and its fomenting of relentless competition. Brotherhood, by contrast, offers a version of masculinity in which bonds are horizontal and reciprocal, in which protection comes not through strength or piety, but through caring for one another. Fraternity transforms the nature of male physicality, with bodily play and contact as gestures of love and affection. It even partly redeems wrestling itself, through the sense of togetherness the brothers share when they accompany each other into the ring.
Whereas Doris serves as passive accomplice to Fritz’s patriarchalism, Pam actively encourages Kevin to embrace this different model of masculinity. It is her initiative that propels their relationship forward, and she also makes it clear that she will not put aside her vocational ambitions for domestic ones. This makes for a notable contrast with Doris, a talented painter who has neglected this pastime to focus on homemaking.
The journey Kevin goes through, supported by Pam, is one of breaking harmful cycles. He rejects the example set by Fritz as a model for fatherhood, developing instead a relationship with his young sons much more akin to that which he has with his brothers, allowing them to see his own vulnerabilities. He also comes to see through the so-called Von Erich curse, moving from a paranoid fear of some malignant force of nature preying on his family, to the outcome of harmful actions in systemic patterns of behaviour. In fully reckoning with the agency his father in particular has exercised, Kevin manages to purposefully restore his own.
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See Giovanni Arrighi, ‘The World Economy and the Cold War, 1970–1990’, in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Cold War: Volume III: Endings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 23–44.