The Fighter: "The Pride Of Lowell"

The Fighter is a true story about boxing brothers Mickey Ward (played by Mark Wahlberg) and Dicky Eklund (Oscar-winning performance by Christian Bale) in the 1990s. At the beginning of the film both are going in opposite directions. Mickey is an up-and-comer training to become the next champion, while Dickey is addicted to crack and living off of his past fights. Both men pride themselves on their masculinity due to the physically demanding nature of their sport. Boxing takes a backseat, however, throughout much of the story as most of the actual conflict in the movie deals with Mickey and his family problems.

The interesting aspect of the story is that two female characters have more masculine traits than Mickey and Dicky do. Their mother Alice (Oscar winning performance by Melissa Leo) and Mickey’s girlfriend Charlene are both strong capable women that add balance to the brutality of boxing. “Leo presents a freaky embodiment of parental control” and a performance really certifies who the masculine figure in the household is. The movie differs from other sports movies in that the women in it have just as big of an impact on the story as the men do. Most sports movies are about a man or group of men overcoming obstacles alone but in The Fighter, Mickey wins the championship because of his mother and girlfriend.

A smaller, more subtle, aspect of the story is how men in sports classify their success by the amount of physical damage they do to someone else. This is especially evident in violent sports like football, MMA fighting, and boxing. The greatest achievement in Dickey’s life was knocking down “Sugar” Ray Leonard and walking over him. It’s an action that he recreates in the film and talks about multiple times. His masculinity hinges on that and when people in the film say that he didn’t actually knock him down and that Leonard just slipped Dicky feels like his manliness has been stripped from him. For Dickey knocking "Sugar" Ray down is everything; it’s his fame, his history, and above all, his manhood.