1. Rocky Balboa and America’s Mid-1970s Identity Crisis Ted McAllister reflects on Rocky as a film having more meaning than we might otherwise attribute to it. Here’s a part of McAllister’s conclusion: Audiences could identify with the film as it at once gave expression to the frustrations and the ideals of many Americans—it pointed to what had gone wrong with the nation even as it pointed toward the ideals Americans invested in their nation. In 1976 many people yearned for a renewed sense of pride in the United States even as they had come to distrust their government and the Read more