Core Post #3 (Week 5 Reading)

This week, I found the essay on John Wayne particularly interesting, especially after screening Stagecoach in class last week. Never having seen a John Wayne movie before, I was looking forward to watching the star in his quintessential genre and form. I admit I was a bit surprised that he took on a more love oriented role in the film rather than the overly strong and competent male lead. While he did employ his talents with a gun and his walk and voice were typical Wayne (according to Wills' essay), I was intrigued by the softer side of him shown in the film. Wills’ essay was interesting to read because it opened my eyes to the phenomenon of John Wayne’s celebrity and the effects his star has had on millions of Americans. Although Wills discusses Wayne’s masculinity and gestures to a fair extent in relation to other male movie stars, I was hoping that Wills would explore who the real Wayne was and how his star persona positively or negatively affected his personal life (which is intereseting because it goes back to the idea of why we even care about their personal lives?).

I thought Wills made a lot of interesting points about Wayne and his masculinity and his effect on his audience, for example, the fact that Wayne never had typical cult attention. All of Wills’ points revolve around the fact that Wayne is the prototypical American man. He was authoritative with a strong presence while also being incredibly graceful. He seems to have adopted all of the characteristics, whether opposing or not, of the ideal man. I think a lot of Wayne’s stardom may have to do with the fact that among all of the rebellious stars or sex symbols in Hollywood, the audience needed a archetypical star to admire, one that people actually aspired to be. Interestingly, maybe he was just different enough and constant enough in his film portrayals that the audience began to believe that he was real. I was surprised when Wills discussed how people did not believe that the real Wayne died because they believed him to be so invincible. In order to establish oneself as someone who everyone believes cannot be harmed is an incredible feat. I am not too familiar with Wayne’s movies, but I can get the sense that his characters may be so similar that to his fans, his characters became who he was in real life.

I am often interested in men’s desire and need to be considered manly or extremely masculine in all ways. Today, as it probably was back when Wayne ruled the screen, it is hard to pinpoint the quintessential male in Hollywood. Because many male actors today may take on roles that are more feminine or sexually ambiguous, their masculinity may be challenged whether that character’s traits hold any truth to the real person or not. It appears that Wayne constantly embodied the “man” role and rarely slipped out of it. Since he portrayed few feminine traits, perhaps male audiences believed that he was their hero because he never faltered and he was always strong and was therefore what a man is supposed to be.

Also, I did not realize how many people still love John Wayne today. In the beginning of Wills’ essay, I was surprised to see that Wayne still topped the favorite movie star list despite being dead for decades. I was aware of many places or statues that are dedicated to John Wayne, including the John Wayne airport in Santa Ana, a place I used to frequently fly growing up to visit my grandparents. As a kid, I automatically assumed John Wayne was someone important since he had a whole airport named after him. It is even the little things that you hear or see about him in today’s culture that makes him seem like the definition of an American. If a child hears the name John Wayne constantly, that child is bound to believe that he must be of some importance and he may therefore become embedded in one's head from an early age. That is one reason why I think so many Americans still embrace Wayne as a star. Either they hear about his great screen days from older family members, or see parts of our own culture dedicated to him. They become interested in him, and soon become a fan after being encouraged to do so by the culture they live in. On another note, I think another reason why he is still so famous is because he was working up until the day he died. Whether he was at the peak of his career or not, he was still incredibly famous at the time of his death. Therefore, I think his death may have had a greater impact on the public and thus a more lasting effect. This is similar with stars such as James Dean who died young at the peak of his career and still carries a loyal fan base today. More recently, Heath Ledger’s passing has already increased his star because he was still working when he died; people are talking about him and suddenly becoming interested in him as a star and as a person because of his untimely death. I was also astonished that people believed that John Wayne led to the Vietnam War. I suppose that when a belief or a certain kind of belief or person is implemented on American society and on television screens that that belief becomes reality and in turn causes people to take action based on that perceived reality.

Finally, I thought it was funny how Wills discussed shirtless men with huge guns (Stallone, Schwarzenegger) in relation to Wayne and deducted that Wayne’s characters are fairly mild in comparison. I think that today, the ideal of masculinity may be taken to an extreme and in turn shows, quite blatantly, the overly muscular body, the deep voice, or vocal oppositions to homosexuality to reinforce the star’s own manliness. I suppose Wayne’s characters are therefore comforting in the way that he does not overdo his masculinity; he is as he is and does not force his masculine traits upon his audience. There are few to no stars today that live up to the completeness of Wayne's own image (some possibilities may be Harrison Ford or Will Smith). An image without any ambiguity that people could always count on to be the same. In the end, while Wayne’s continuing influence on Americans is overwhelming and astonishing, there is something that he stood for and represented that has made Americans stay loyal to him as a star. Thus, I wonder, if John Wayne were still alive today, would he be as successful? I realize that people still love him, but they love him as a star of the past, not of the present. Currently, the Western is said to be a "dead" genre, perhaps coming back with 3:10 to Yuma. Are there some stars that would only be successful at a certain historical period depending on the state of the country or current culture? Were Western films and John Wayne more popular 50 years ago because Americans were more patriotic? Are there any stars today that you think would have been more successful fifty years ago rather than today? What stars would never have been famous fifty years ago that are incredibly successful today and why?