Philly’s sports triumphs are thawing our cultural divide

Placed at the top of the Art Museum steps during the filming of Rocky III in 1981, the statue was later moved to the bottom. This led to an extended argument over whether the statue should be considered “art” and whether it belonged on the grounds of the Art Museum at all. The statue was moved to the Sports Complex, near the Spectrum arena, in 1982.

While it was moved around a bit after that, especially on various occasions when it came time to film a new Rocky movie, the statue remained near the Spectrum into the new century. Around when Rocky Balboa was filmed in 2005, another push began to move Rocky back to the Art Museum.

And there was resistance.

“If a film about Donald Duck in Philadelphia comes out, do we put a Donald Duck statue in our park system?” city park commissioner E. Harris Baum asked at the time. “Rocky is fine. But other films have relevance too. Where do we stop?”

Bitter arguments

That battle was long-running, and that’s to say nothing of the bitter arguments about how Philadelphia built a statue of its fictional, white heavyweight champion, Rocky Balboa, years before doing so for its real-life Black champion, Joe Frazier. All these questions and many more were covered in 2023 by The Statue, a WHYY podcast hosted by the Monument Lab’s Paul Farber.

In the fall of 2006, the Philadelphia Art Commission agreed to put Rocky back next to the Art Museum steps, where he has remained, mostly without incident, to this day, even making appearances in the first two Creed movies. When there’s controversy involving the Rocky statue these days, it usually involves fans of an opposing sports team congregating near it or adorning Rocky in their team’s colors, which is the type of thing that happens at least once during every NFL playoff run.

A new attitude

But as an outsider who arrived in Philadelphia about 20 years ago, I’ve noticed that the sort of high-brow/low-brow divide that marked the Rocky Statue Wars has begun to collapse over time. Yes, there are still major inequalities between the rich and the poor in our city and region, and that’s not something that’s shown any signs of going away.

The attitude, though, is different. And a big reason for the change, I think, is that Philadelphia teams have won. The Phillies won a World Series, and the Eagles won two Super Bowls. It’s especially the latter that matters: A massive part of the long-held, well-earned reputation of angry and disreputable Philadelphia sports fans was tied up in that 25-year championship drought that ended in 2008, and in the general malaise and bitterness that came from the Eagles not ever winning a Super Bowl. Now, that’s all gone. And the city’s more rarefied institutions are taking notice.

Championship street celebrations and parades have taken place on Broad Street, which includes the Avenue of the Arts, with Philadelphians of all races, ages, and backgrounds taking part, as well as our arts institutions.

For several Octobers in a row, Phillies playoff runs have taken place at the same time as the Philadelphia Film Festival, leading filmgoers to duck out of foreign films to check the score. The Philadelphia Orchestra, during recent Eagles and Phillies postseason runs, has posted videos of Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the orchestra in renditions of “Fly Eagles Fly” and “Dancing on My Own,” clad each time in the team’s jersey.

Let’s meet at the Mann

And that’s led up to this Thursday night (July 24), when the Mann Center will host an event called A Championship Season with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The orchestra, conducted this time by Anthony Parnther, will play over highlights from the Eagles’ Super Bowl-winning run last year, featuring footage from another Philadelphia-area institution, South Jersey-based NFL Films, and music from NFL Films’ library. The Eagles’ cheerleaders, and mascot Swoop—not typically collaborators with the orchestra—will be there, with the whole event narrated by veteran Eagles radio voice Merrill Reese.

It’s the sort of event that would have been hard to imagine a couple of decades ago, and not only because it marks a once-unthinkable Eagles Super Bowl championship.

Will attendees of this event be orchestra fans and season-ticket holders, approaching the Eagles’ event the way they would Stravinsky, Mahler, or Mozart? Or will it be Eagles fans who have never been to a live symphony performance?

Quite possibly, it will be a combination of both—and they might just be equally likely to cheer Saquon Barkley leaping backwards over opposing defenders.