Family + Trauma in "The Iron Claw"

I cried three times!

I gathered with my good friends and frequent collaborators Josh Gilbert and Kristen Tideman to utilize the 2023 film The Iron Claw for some on-air amateur self-therapy — what could possibly go wrong?! The film tells the tragic story of the Von Erich wrestling family and the toll of professional wrestling in the territorial wrestling era of the 1980s.

This was a heavy movie full of psychological themes to discuss, so we adapted Jenny Hamilton’s therapeutic method to guide our conversation (discussed on episode #265). Fritz Von Erich, the patriarch who projects his unrealized wrestling ambitions onto his sons, parents with conditional love, rigid expectations, and emotional suppression — most notably in a scene where he forbids his sons from crying at their brother's funeral, using religious justification to enforce emotional stoicism (anyone call for some spiritual abuse?). 

The brothers form intense bonds as they support each other through their shared pursuit of wrestling excellence and their collective adherence to their father's vision for the family legacy. They prioritize family obligations over personal aspirations and well-being. The film highlights grueling training sequences, the constant pressure to maintain specific body images, and how professional wrestling demands almost equal parts athletic prowess and entertainment skills. 

We discussed our personal reactions to the film (Kristen declines to watch it again) and our own “nope” watching preferences (Josh refuses to watch scenes of human torture).

In the latter half of our conversation, available to Patrons, the discussion takes a pretty personal turn as we explore the film's haunting afterlife scene and its implications for faith and mortality. I share about the emotional breakdown I had watching it alone — crying three separate times as I grappled with my own loss of religious certainty — while both Josh and Kristen opened up about their experiences with family tragedy and existential questions about legacy and remembrance. 

This film portrays a family trapped in a cycle of ambition, loyalty, and tragedy. The pursuit of wrestling glory becomes both their binding force and their potential undoing. As all good films do, it opened up avenues of conversation we might not have reached otherwise.

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