The phrase still floats around the internet, a low-res meme from a time with fewer channels when black and white movies still made it onto Saturday afternoon basic cable. Uttered by college kids having a drunken laugh dressed the part in their retro-thrifty-norm-core outfits.
“I coulda been a contender.”
It comes from On the Waterfront, about a poor longshoreman, thug, and ex-boxer who was coerced into taking a dive during the fight that would have led to his title shot.
The movie still resonates despite being made during a more primitive era of film because deep down, it’s true for all of us.
We all could have been contenders in the arenas that matter were it not for outside forces.
Even though, in one sense, it’s never as clear-cut as, “just don’t pretend to get KO’d for your hoodlum brother in the next match*,” in another sense, it is.
Deep down, you have a sense of your limits, you can train yourself to improve and overcome them so that, when you really need to, you do what it takes to keep going. Instead, you’re far more likely to give up early. Save enough in the tank for Netflix, or extra fries, or some societal definition of sanity. The ‘practical’ choice that leaves you with that one thought.
We all could have made something of our lives.
But outside forces, from your career coach to your creature comforts, and consumerism in general, intervened.
Instead we made nothing.
Note that the line isn’t narcissistic delusion. Marlon Brando’s character does not say, “I coulda been champion.”
We all know on some level that “champion” and “not-champion” are largely beyond our control.
“Don’t leave it in the hands of the judges.”
Great advice, but sometimes you give it your all, and if it’s a true and worthy contest of wills in a civilized society, you don’t get to stand triumphant over a vanquished foe or come to with a sandal on your neck and a sword in your face. Greatness seeks an equal. Sometimes the best outcome is that it’s too close for either of you to call.
And sometimes, you get crushed.
But to Brando’s character, none of that matters. He never found his limit. Instead, he listened to his brother and made a quick buck. Only to spend his life tortured by the specter of what could have been.
Now for the good news: You aren’t Brando, and you don’t have to be.
Movies and myths are about all-or-nothing moments. The heightened tension creates emotional connection and memorability.
But for most of us, the “contender match” happens everyday over years. Miss one, and you can start over tomorrow.
Most of us aren’t gunning for title shots. We just have a book, album, movie, painting, or black belt in us that we keep putting off. And we live in an era with fewer gatekeepers than ever. So there’s no need to mope around the docks, whining to any girl who’ll listen.
One caveat though: you have more time, but not infinite time. Eventually, the tomorrows run out. It’s just that, if you’re reading this, you can still make it.
“Make what?”
So lost are we in the dreams and advice of hoodlums and hucksters that we don’t even know what we “coulda been a contender” in.
To all that I say this: Just make something.
An act of creation that seems insurmountable in the face of society’s injunction to consume, becomes easier with every outing.
A great place to start: remake something you love, or something you hate.
The fact that we feel strongly at all is a call to engage. Whoever created the piece you just consumed felt similarly, only they acted where you digested.
Don’t worry if it has no market, or audience beyond yourself.
As you engage, your tastes change, and you mature. Before Little Women, Louisa May Walcott wrote potboilers and dime novels. Before Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote advertising copy. Before birthing pop art, Andy Warhol drew commercial illustrations. Before becoming a comic book legend, Grant Morrison was a virgin in a punk rock band. The point is the old cliche: it doesn’t matter where you start, so long as you start.
Then, keep making things.
The reason why most people, Brando’s character included, don’t even attempt to contend is because they’ve been conditioned to only do things for money. The idea that something isn’t practical is tied to the idea that it isn’t conducive to your survival. But there’s a trick in the fact that mass consumption isn’t conducive to your survival either. You’re just encouraged to do that instead because it’s conducive to the survival of others.
What is kept from you is a blindingly simple secret. One so obvious that billions are spent to convince you to do something—anything—else instead. Once you finish, none of it matters.
Society has a far weaker hold on the creators.
Instead of waiting to pay for the next fad, you are free to create it for your own enjoyment.
And no matter what anybody tells you, you know you answered your hero’s call, you know you made it.
Epilogue
Years later, down-and-out odd-jobber Sylvester Stallone would write a movie while the rest of the city slept.
In it, a fading boxer is given the chance to put every fiber of his being into one unlikely title shot.
This time, he lets no forces stand in his way.
He meets the challenge with a focus so intensely pure that win or lose doesn’t matter.
Either way, he’d made it. And he wasn’t going to stop.
—
*Can you believe that I only ever saw this movie once over two decades ago and I still remember the plot? How many movies were made in the last decade for which you could say the same? That’s how good this is.
That Grant Morrison bit was something else 😂. But I concur, there's joy that comes from the effort of making thing and having had made things too
Great article! Excessive consumption, not only keeps us a prisoner of what you could be, but wrecks havoc on society, families and of course the environment.