Life Ain't Nothin' but a Funny, Funny Riddle
The Von Erich Bros Join the Lisbon Girls in Eternal Pop Culture Resonance
This week, we dive into the tender tear-jerker no one saw coming— A24’s The Iron Claw and how sibling relationships, no matter the levels of severity, help mold our adult lives. Additionally, our pop culture round-up is brimming with celebrity triviality not because we’re fascinated with being famous but, moreover, of the absurdity that is fame or the celeb-reality machine. Get into it below.
During the chaos of the Holiday season, I managed to sneak away from the overwhelmingness of familial Christmas time and visit my local theater to voyeuristically escape. My choice was immediate, and with the heaviness I’d been experiencing, it seemed on par to choose The Iron Claw.
Little did I anticipate such devastating yet dynamic performances with such fragility through the lens of the Von Erich brothers’ broken lives. However, I should have— given that The Iron Claw is in the same vein as Sofia Coppola’s pop cultural cornerstone, The Virgin Suicides— a film that grapples through American tragedy despite such unconditional love and ardent bond via siblings. Having been fortunate enough to have experienced Sofia Coppola’s breakthrough film in my adolescence during the noughties, so having seen The Iron Claw as a layered woman— it was like when I first watched the Lisbon Girls all those years ago.
Growing up in a proud American state like Texas, you’re sure to hear about many locals who became celebrities— I’d hear Carol Burnett, Earl Campbell, Howard Hughes, Sissy Spacek, and Tom Landry’s names a lot. Mostly through elder teachers and their fascinations— nothing will ever beat my high school speech teacher’s bizarre obsession with JFK that even seeped into the curriculum, but I digress.
Growing up in Texas during the ‘90s, nearly all the neighborhood boys were obsessed with football or wrestling, even both, including adults in my family, so somehow— brief sports trivia stayed with me. The Von Erich brothers were only a familiar name because of their local legend status; I knew nothing other than they were in wrestling— which, for me, is an automatic shutdown. A clear loss of interest as sports can be incredibly boring as a ritual. Though there are exceptions, and I don’t hate all sports— most are simply boring as a whole. However, the compelling surrounding behavior, no matter the level of fandom, can be riveting or even more captivating at times.
Cinematic wrestling briefly captured my fancy, now having seen The Iron Claw twice— I get why the boys were obsessed with the Texas brothers. Set with plenty of nostalgic pangs with a hazy seventies and eighties vignette, we see Von Erich’s life on the farmlands in Denton or city life in Dallas, Texas— despite being filmed in Baton Rouge. The Von Erich parents, Fitz (Holt McCallany) and Doris (Maura Tierney), immediately set the film’s tone as the overruling patriarch and matriarch that command authoritarian respect or devotion simply for their parenthood. The brothers silently battle, seeking unattainable levels of validation and approval.
Fitz’s acerbic version of tough love is something I’ve experienced through friends or my own in different variations, yet it will always be generationally bewildering. Akin is the mommy dearest, Doris or Dottie, a devoutly religious mother who’s entirely emotionally avoidant and dismissive of her kids’ needs— as they have each other for “that.”
Emotionally abusive parents who rob children of their childhood are a tragedy in and of itself. Emotional development is the fabric of our being, and apparent from the start is Kevin’s (Zac Efron) Older Brother Syndrome (or OBS) despite not being the eldest. He’s socially awkward, tentatively disassociates, and unknowingly carries anxiety from being overcorrected and spiritually broken down through the years. Not even realizing upon meeting Pam (Lily James). Groomed his entire life for a wrestling title— “he said if we were the toughest, the strongest, nothing could ever hurt us. I believed him. We all did.” A brutish Texas sports life via a broken dream is familiar growing up and realizing early on that pushy sports families are a way of life here.
The supposed Von Erich curse was by way of their emotionally unregulated parents, an angry father whose chipped shoulders somehow continued to zealously push his sons to their outer limits. Regardless of Fitz’s uneven rivalry, the siblings showed nothing but unconditional love, affection, and mutual support— none of that is more evident than when the brothers were just together, whether driving through the Texas backroads blasting Tom Petty’s Don’t Do Me Like That with the windows down, lazily floating downriver, or dancing to John Denver’s Thank God I’m a Country Boy— there’s nothing that can beat that secure and home-like feeling that siblings can bring when feeling adversely small.
That’s the lionheart center of The Iron Claw— a tender interlaced link that brothers Kevin, Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), David (Harris Dickinson), and Mike (Stanley Simons) share despite the added pressure from emotionally abusive parents. In spite of their parent’s emotional immaturity, the brothers were each other’s sanctuary and priority; they sincerely adored each other even throughout the toxic masculinity and emotionally detached idealogy that encircled them. The Von Erich brothers childlike and wholesome enthusiasm for being around each other is poignantly captured. Despite the instilled rivaled hierarchies or unjust comparisons, they cut through the layers of their arrested development— the profound bond between the brothers is a sincere moment of deserved bliss and true love.
Historically, love will always be a battleground with testing limits or tribulations, a sensing perceptive breaking point from the intergenerational trauma interwoven in the Von Erich dynasty that accumulated into normalcy. The mental anguish of competing for affection and, worse, denial by the people meant to keep them safe in such an ugly and cruel world is unfathomable. Each brother shows the other kindness and support that their parents, but specifically their father, plainly refuses them— they were each other’s biggest cheerleaders yet also main competitors— except it never detracted from supporting nor believing in the other as they were the love each craved and deserved from their emotionally negligent parents.
Whereas parents may fall short, a sibling bond can be otherworldly or baffling— just as I recently shared with my dear friend, Levi, I’m fortunate enough to know exactly what it is to have siblings be your platonic soul-mates in life. The connection I share with my three sisters is evident to those who know us well, as our bond through a whimsically blessed yet challenging childhood has cemented us together. Sincerely, I’m not sure where I’d be without my sisters. They’re my built-in best friends with the bonus of sisterly affection and alliance. Through endless emotional setbacks or personal devastations and messy imperfections, they’ve been there in ways I’ve least expected and blown away each time, truly showing me unconditional love during my lifetime. Not to say that we didn’t argue or fight growing up— the full-on brawls I’ve had with my older sisters have been some gnarly experiences over the dumbest things. We’d argue about it all as sisters do but always boomerang back to laughing and silently forgiving the other in ways that our grudge-holding-loving mother never understood. As adults who are currently trying their best, with the help of therapy and life’s slices of humble pie, we try to acknowledge our issues and apologize— something our parents still don’t understand or execute.
Yet, impossible pressure will always react. Sometimes, unexpectedly, such is life. You learn to accept through life’s harshness that your parents are still just kids who try their best and don’t know know to break the pattern to better themselves. This is all they’ve known, and the structured status quo they prefer to the scary eruption that change often brings. Letting go of anger and accepting resolution is realizing that we most likely won’t get what we respectively need from our parents. Accepting this was evolutionary, and while, personally, my parents’ love wasn’t always shown or expressed, it is felt in ways I overlooked previously as a kid. Perhaps it wasn’t always present during our parents’ unstable marriage; nevertheless, my sisters are infallibly my divinely sent Sailor Scouts to help guard, be a guiding light, and help protect in this arduous world. Through the thick of Von Erich’s patriarch, Fitz, constant compatibility and competitiveness with unreasonably manipulative guilt toward unattainability overlayed each brother with a hidden shell of unseen pain and shame. Whereas the mother, Dottie, was emotionally checked out or simply unavailable— the brothers came devotedly together to be each other’s heroes they deserved.
Through sibling fights, arguments, and triggers, even still, my sisters and I are there for each other’s struggles— how we can, no matter what— no one gets left behind or fades away. Love will always experience conflict as life’s duality of good or bad with all of the grey in-between. Still, the Mejia girl’s way has always been to break down and then rebuild— giving each other the personal space to calm down, process, and then later discuss our ways through the skirmishes. Experiencing the opposite of soft parenting, I wanted to be what I didn’t have growing up and extend that grace toward my younger family members— or kids in general since kids always seem to gravitate towards me no matter what I veer from. Akin to my sisters— the brothers’ helplessness enriched and unified as they became the support system and love they didn’t experience. The Von Erich brothers broke free of intense scrutiny, assumed ideals of masculinity, and unprocessed generational trauma in the kind patience of softness within their brotherhood since their parents never expressed nor showed it.
The precarious road of trauma-breaking is that of dedication and perseverance, with countless imperfections along the way. There’ll be numerous paths and untold decisions of right and wrong, days where we want to give up or truly don’t see our emotional development as we should— but that’s the learning and growing we experience as mere mortals. Choosing softness through life’s distress isn’t ever simple, as resilience is a heavy armor to bear— yet that mystifying journey toward growth is the most majestic of all. Even with setbacks or missteps, the peace of mind and emotional odyssey is always more worthwhile than what was previously. Major hindsight that I’ve learned through my healing inner child journey is that kids improve when given patience, external love, and support.
The Von Erich brothers’ story will resonate for years— even with the understood creative liberties, the compassionate centrality remained throughout the core storytelling via Kevin as the narrator in an Oscar-worthy performance. Sadly, Zac and Kevin were overlooked for their craft despite their commitment to artistry in a dramatic He-Man metamorphosis of incredible and bulging physicality— A24 should’ve waited for a 2024 release and fully campaigned Efron as he deserved, but I digress. An equally matching striking performance may have been an Academy Award longshot and sheer underdog— yet it was much deserved as Efron’s ability to shine in drama roles is obvious to many. The legend of the Texas wrestling family will live on in a beautifully expressed platonic love story as The Iron Claw is a modern-day Greek tragedy by way of an American sports epic and is sure to join the likes of The Basketball Diaries, Rocky, Raging Bull, and The Wrestler.
Catch up on the theatre of the absurd with a round-up of pop culture shenanigans.
Celebrities are reporting for duty and cashing in on the latest promotion blitz, with game commercial apps being the new crypto adverts— Drew Barrymore, Sarah Jessica Parker, John Goodman, and Jason Alexander have all been sighted. The cringe was looked over as they must have been lucratively paid by Playtika, an Israel-based gaming company owned by Caesars Entertainment, operated by a Chinese consortium. Bleak times, beloveds, but Hollywood is still mostly conglomerate-owned, and America runs on a Military-Industrial complex.
Justin Timberlake in his ‘unapologetic’ villain era— in other news, water is wet.
America Ferrera’s Academy Award nomination was a surprise— lovely given the talented caliber, yet underwhelming for the source material. Barbie is a wonderful feminist introduction to the unfamiliar or its target audience of younger viewers. Ryan Gosling’s Best Actor nomination was met with polarized opinions but pushed further into absurdity as white feminists continued their embarrassing ways with claims of Margot Robbie’s Barbie snub and patriarchy. Margot Robbie’s nomination as a producer of a Billion-dollar movie further solidifies her career legacy in Hollywood. It secures her as a current movie star— similar to yesteryear’s Golden Era— there are plenty of actors but not many movie STARS. Greta Gerwig still snagged an adapted screenplay nom. Still, it’s coincidentally ironic at best that Gosling’s Ken hilariously overshadowed Barbie as a scene-stealer— it’s like people have forgotten what that is and want to be outraged by misdirected anger. While I adore the childhood doll, the Barbie film is still corporately influenced— regardless of the feminist introductory takes, so those bitter petitions or that LA Times article are trivial and mortifying compared to current global events.
Larry David is currently promoting the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm and, while on the Today Show, attacked poor Elmo. Poor Elmo already had a challenging week of trauma dumping on the app formerly known as Twitter; he’s definitely not having a VH1-worthy week, à la Best Week Ever— RIP to the pop cultural cornerstone akin to E!’s The Soup that influenced our Pop Culture Round-Up.
⌛ Pop Culture Moment in Time
Even before the Lisbon Girls, there was the Australian mystery thriller Picnic at Hanging Rock & 1977’s 3 Women with Shelly Duvall and Sissy Spacek. Also, 2004’s Innocence with Marion Cotillard— get into it.
December and January forever reinstate a hidden survival flight mode with my brother-in-law’s birthday, Christmas, New Year, and then my brother-in-law’s anniversary of death. I tend to disassociate and disengage slightly from life as many do and let the haziness of brain fog settle in before dusting myself off to rejoin life again. In my fogginess and slow work period, I first watched many films like The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (otherwise known as High School Musical: Panem Edition), The Holdovers (an intergenerational Breakfast Club), Always at the Carlyle, and The Crown. I also consumed so much history with many history documentaries you’d think I was a socially awkward home-schooled kid needing extra credit. Beginning with the House of Plantagenet but focusing on Tudor history as I remembered my sixth-grade history fascination. I’m currently finishing the Stuart dynasty, yet I know I’ll get lost in the Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian eras— which sets up nicely with finally watching The Crown mostly for Diana Spencer; apologies to my dear friend and Youthquake reader Poppy for belatedly joining the party but I’ve always loved a nonchalant fashionably late moment.
It’s funny to think how time progresses forward with healthier attachments even on my most off or imperfect days, which seem like numerous to me, while others may see a different perspective. Through it all, I’m relieved to be seemingly more free of the buried trauma in my physiology. That constant resilient trauma kept my teens and twenties going with mental health decline and emotional mishandling— the same was true for my sisters in their paths in life. We were fortunate enough to each pull ourselves from our inner labyrinthian depths and then help each other move forward, only to create an improved cycle. Re-evaluating our sisterhood with added sageness over the years as we’ve grown further closer together, which I didn’t know was possible. A love among siblings helps shape our lives, no matter the level of severity— as it’s one deeply embedded in our emotional growth. The fortune of having three siblings who are my soul sisters is humbly treasured, as I know many with different stories. Pushing through our angst to our now egalitarian-leveled sisterhood will change the fabric of our future lives by doing the emotional groundwork and adapting to soft parenting ourselves— and my nieces and nephews and so on— in life’s adversity.
Con Amor,
Naomi x