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?

Reading Response #3 - Week 5

The representation of masculinity in films has always been something that I’ve taken notice of.  Ever since freshman year when I wrote a paper on John Wayne’s The Searchers, its been something I’ve consciously recognized.  When I saw the titles for this week’s readings, I knew I would be interested.  I started with Wills’ essay on John Wayne, because I’ve studied his presence and characters in films in depth and was curious to see what kind of status he held in star or celebrity terms.  I have to admit, even after studying many of films, I had no idea of the magnitude of his celebrity status.  I agreed with many of the points Wills made about how pop icons are generally “young, rebellious, or deviant,” and how many idols die young, like Valentino and Monroe.  To learn that John Wayne was people’s favorite star in a year as recent as 1995 was a complete surprise.  I could have imagined this to be true back in the day when Wayne was all over the screen, but it seems he is one of the few that has made a lasting impact on cinema audiences.

Wayne’s influence on Americans was and still is incredible.  He played a part in movies, usually the hero, and because of that people saw his real life self as a hero.  Even though he never even served in the military, he was thought of as the model of an American soldier.  He received medals and awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Marines.  Because the majority of his films were Westerns, a particularly masculine genre, he was usually hyper-masculinized in these roles.  Even though I can think of a number of modern actors, such as Clint Eastwood, who is similarly portrayed and cast as John Wayne was in such masculine roles, he still is not as strong an image as Wayne was.  Was there something more powerful about an actor’s presence back then? Are we so “used” to movies now that they aren’t as fascinating and captivating as they used to be?  People said that Wayne was their war hero, but he never even went to war.  I feel like now we are so accustomed to films that we don’t think they are real, whereas in the earlier days people believed what they saw on screen to be a real event. 

Core Response #1

Wills’ article states that “John Ford invented John Wayne,” but I cannot agree with this totally. Perhaps Ford helped to shape Wayne into the rugged Western star that he became, but the presence and persona that attracted audiences to that cowboy was all courtesy to Wayne himself and it was present before he was a star.

John Wayne (or rather Marion Morrison) went to my high school. He is by far the most famous person to ever attend Glendale High School, and the school has not forgotten it. Not to say that the school makes a super big deal about it—after all the school now has about 4,000 students and it is awfully hard to get that many teenagers to care about anything—but everyone knew that he went there. And the life size cut out of him that still resides in the yearbook room would not let you forget it.

During GHS’s 100^th anniversary my freshman year, a reel of Morrison giving a speech during his time as senior class president was shown and let me tell you, he was as much of a star to the class of 1925 as he was during his film career. First off, you could see girls in the audience fawning over him. And why shouldn’t they? After all he was senior class president, editor-in-chief of the newspaper, and a star on the football team that had won the championship the year before. For a school that’s sports program has had a very consistent record of being the laughing stock in comparison to our rivals that is a big accomplishment (we literally have about 10 football championships out of 107 years).

Morrison already was the epitome of the all American boy. Tall, clean-cut, handsome, patriotic. He’d already been nicknamed “The Duke” early in life and went by that name in high school. (On a side note, that nickname is after his childhood dog… very similar to a certain Harrison Ford role.) He already was everything that men wanted to be and what women wanted to be with. He followed this pattern when he gained a football scholarship to USC, where he also was a Trojan Knight and a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.

Thus, Ford may be able to take credit for the name John Wayne and developing his career, but he had an ample amount of material to work with. Ford just knew how to mold Wayne so to reach his full potential. To use Britton’s words, Wayne’s presence in Westerns was a “concrete case of the complementary relation between star personae and between the genre and vehicle.” Wayne’s star persona was so suited to Westerns because the producers were basically taking Morrison, putting him in a costume, telling him what to say, and let his natural temperament do the rest. Wayne’s films were such valuable commodities because the three elements (persona, genre, and vehicle) fit so well together.

Week 5 Reading Response - Where Have All the Heros Gone?

I found myself very surprised by Wills’ article; when I read the title “John Wayne’s America,” I had no idea that a main focus, several pages worth, would be analysis about the way John Wayne moved. Maybe this is because Stagecoach is the extent of my familiarity with the star. One thing that this ‘movement’ must have contributed to that I did notice just from Stagecoach is John Wayne’s aura, the way his body and demeanor drew my eyes and filled the screen. I believe this aura is typical of many stars and that is why they are stars at all – people are fascinated to watch them. Think of the other stars on the ‘favorite stars list’ on page 11 of the article – Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood – can you take your eyes off them when they are on the screen? It is not just the way they look but even more importantly a combination of the rhythm they speak in, they way they stand, breath, look at another person, etc. With the right combination of these things you have a great aura and even someone who isn’t gorgeous can be quite sexy. So even people who weren’t initially attracted to Wayne (or even would never be because they are attracted to women) are drawn to him. As in his case (evidenced by his description of his family’s ‘secret walk’), and I believe most others, it was a natural gift. He was aware of its effect and was able to use it to bring his characters to life.
With that in mind, I was very pleased that the article separated Marion Morrison (the person who played “John Wayne”) from John Wayne. As noted, Marion was not John – he hated horses and preferred suits, etc – and he was a compilation of the ideas of filmmakers. Like the myth he stood for, John Wayne was fiction. I think that is a big reason why “John Wayne” has lived on as a favorite actor long after his death – it is not Marion Morrison who has lived on but the ideal to which he lent his aura – sure all actors are tied to their characters in some way – I just think that Marion was tied to the quintessential American character and that is why he is so loved. I know a slew of people that hated Sean Bean after he played the betraying Boromir in Lord of the Rings...the characters actors play have a big effect on how we remember them.

P.S. YES for the reference to James Fennimore Cooper’s Hawkeye – there is actually a facebook group referencing girls’ missing when men used to be manly men – are there any “Hawkeye”s or “John Wayne”s around still today? Were there ever really? *tear*

Core Response #3

Funny, I remember being about six years old and sitting in the passenger side of my dad’s old Chevy Nova, driving down Wilshire Blvd and seeing this enormous statue of a man on a horse. I asked my dad who he was. My dad responded, “Es el ‘duc.’ Yon Wein.” I still had no idea who he was. That weekend, my dad called me to come to the T.V. since he wanted me to see something important. As I sat down, I saw the name John…Ford, and asked who that was. My dad told me to keep watching. Another name appeared, this time it was John…Wayne. It was the first time that I had seen The Searchers. At the time, I was captivated by the story of one man’s search for his niece as evil Indians kidnap her after murdering her family. Some twenty-four years later, my feelings for the film have changed. I now see it as a racist, sexist product of the 1950s mythmaking machine known as Hollywood. Granted, the film addresses the issue of racism against Native Americans, but in the end, the “Injuns” still get eliminated. Sure The Searchers is art, but so is Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.

I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship with John Wayne. Having attended Glendale High School, I was aware that The Duke had been there, back when he was Marion Morrison. It was weird because he was a person with whom males were supposed to identify. He embodied that eternal cowboy which many of us men emulated as little boys on the playground. But it’s funny how things work. As a Latino, I carry in my Indian blood, which was readily handy for the spilling in many a John Wayne film. Moreover, my brown skinned represented precisely the type of person The Duke was more than willing to dispatch. It is quite ironic that the real-life john Wayne/Marion Morrison enjoyed the company of Latina wives.

Yet there is something about the man…something dangerously seductive. Seductive in the sense that as you are watching his films, as the viewer, you want him to succeed, to win. Last week, when we sat watching Stagecoach, the Ringo Kid was the type of hero/anti-hero one could root for. I wanted him to get to Lordsburg, kill the Plummers, rescue the girl from a life of prostitution, and live happily ever after. Of course, a second after feeling like this I realized he would have to kill a heapload of Indians to get to the “happy ending.” I realized that Wayne could have been the poster boy for Manifest Destiny.

weird

I had a weird experience the other day. I went to the Grove in an unsuccessful attempt to get some jeans. I was feeling lazy and casual so I wore some yoga pants and a sweater, and I hadn’t showered so I wore a hat with a ponytail out the back. The last accessory was the key, because I had gotten lasik a few days before my eyes were extra sensitive to sun and so I also wore sunglasses. I noticed a couple, clearly tourists, staring at me while I was contemplating my next store move. Then it hit me, for a second they thought they might have spotted a celeb incognito. I was then conscious of it and saw a few more hoping I was more interesting than I was, all tourists (I think most LA natives know celebrities don’t shop at the Grove, although I have seen a couple at the theaters there.) It was bizarre that anyone could have momentarily thought I was famous.

This, of course, made me think our class. It brought to mind the ideas of stars and fashion from last weeks readings I thought it interesting that movies stars were historically the glamorous, but now it’s the opposite. If I had looked glamorous nobody would have looked twice, stars are now known for their fashionable casual. Anybody that knew anything about fashion would have spotted that my pants were on sale from the gap and my sweater was a hand-me-down from my sister, but to the untrained eyes of some tourists who knows. The art of looking perfectly shabby chic is now the most copied Hollywood look. You see this all over, with $50 tee shirts and second hand stores that costs three times as much as new. Because our star chasing culture has made every aspect of celebs lives public, they set the fashion from PJs to ball gowns. This means more money to be made from stars and people everywhere are buying it all.

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?