Reading Response #3: Week 5

Up until last Thursday, my only knowledge of John Wayne was that there’s an airport named after him, and that my Texas-raised father always got to “be him” when playing ‘cowboys and indians’ as a kid. I always understood him to be a man pigeon-holed in the Western genre, unable (or even incapable) of escaping into another role in another type of film. And yet, after watching Stagecoach and reading Willis’ and Britton’s articles, I came to see that his status as a Western star was so much more, and so complex.

In reading Willis’ article, I couldn’t help but return to Dyer’s argument that stars are constructed and manipulated, shaped to be more than the human being behind them. The story of Wayne’s discovery, that he was a worker on set whom was thrust in front of the camera simply because he “looked like a man” serves as the foundation for the legend of John Wayne. Willis notes that history indicates Wayne’s preference for suits over jeans, his need to remember to say “ain’t,” and yet this man does not seem to be John Wayne, but rather the person behind the star. The more I read about him, the more it seemed to me that the two were separate entities. Even recollections of Wayne perpetuate the legend, as people’s accounts actually sound as if they were part of the story in a western, with their claims of hands as big as hams, and his ability to swing a rifle around like a pistol, and a girl even easier. The star persona is so closely tied to the genre that even discussion of him is described with the voice, tone, and theme of the genre he was associated with; this further solidifies him as a star, and makes it more difficult to distinguish this star persona from the man behind it.

I think that perhaps the legend of John Wayne is so powerful, so much greater than the biography of Marion Morrison, because the persona of John Wayne provides such comfort in his unwavering masculinity, a masculinity so powerful that it could not be possessed by any everyday mortal. As Willis points out, he has an air of invincibility, and yet he does not have elements of contempt or desire for revenge. As such, he presents the image of what people want America to be in his representation of manly men: He is a figure of authority, defined by his size and strength, masculinity, patriotism, self-reliance and responsibility, as Willis notes. Essentially, he was what every man wanted to be, what every woman wanted, and, on a greater scale, what every person wanted their country to be. It is important to note the star power of this persona in that Wayne never served in the army, and yet is recognized as an army hero and one of the reasons our country fought a war in Vietnam.

I found Cohan’s article about Cary Grant to provide a nice juxtaposition against the masculine implication of John Wayne; both were the object of female desire, and yet Wayne represented an unfaltering air of masculinity (so much so that, as Willis notes, he is rarely considered in gender studies because his masculinity is undeniable), whereas in North by Northwest, Grant represented a conflicted masculinity, a fear of emasculation that was served by the undertones of the Cold War. In each of these actors’ cases, we see the power of the star persona behind each characters’ masculine perceptions: Wayne was known for his masculine swagger, his action scenes and power and strength, whereas Cohan’s account of Grant drew more parallels to our study of Valentino than it did to John Wayne. For Grant, we see the crisis of masculinity, exemplified in the glamorous build-ups of his entrances and close-ups, which are often reserved for female stars. Willis discusses Wayne’s masculinity in terms of his physical power, whereas Cohan discusses Grant in the more feminine terms of his clothing – specifically, the debonair gray suit. It is important to note that for the latter, any feminine elements are countered by the political, spy-driven masculinity that is represented by the gray suit, making it okay and still masculine.

Finally, I’d like to consider the political implications of star masculinity, as it was such a prominent subject in both Willis’ and Cohan’s articles. Aside from Wayne’s absolute masculinity carrying weight in the Vietnam war, and the masculinity crisis Grant suffers exemplifying the crisis at home in the Cold War regarding the masculinity of men, both demonstrate masculine stars to be deeply integral to the politics of the moment. What implication, then, will this theory carry in the upcoming election, with a female at the forefront of the presidential race? Where will masculinity be factored in, and linked to political decisions and current events, if it is not a man in office, but a woman?