The readings this week plucked petals from the delicate little daisy that is the male ego. Steven Cohan’s piece “The Spy in the Grey Flannel Suit” discusses masculinity in crisis, as implicated by Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest. This is opposed by American masculinity at its most safe and secure - holstered up with John Wayne’s persona in 1950s Westerns, discussed by Garry Willis in “John Wayne’s America”.
In Postwar Hollywood - the class and the book - Professor Casper lends a full unit to the fragmented American male. This is the phenomenon in which the nation’s masculine identity splintered in the wake of uncontrollable social forces following World War II. From keeping up with the Joneses, to coping with psychological war scares; from the emasculating softness of a 9-5 desk job, to the burgeoning feminist movement: the postwar period saw American men (especially white men) deal with the prospect of not being assumed dominant over everything and everyone. Propositioned against a wall of societal pressure, men wanted to see their stars propose their way back into control. After all, “stars embody values that are under threat,”: in this case, the traditional definition of masculinity - men as responsible, dominant, independent breadwinners - was being challenged from within and without (Cohan 26).
Roger Thornhill exemplifies the challenges from within. With his cushy job, fear of commitment, and mommy issues, he’s a man-child at the beginning of the film. But by the end, as Cohan explains it, with Eva Marie Saint dangling from his one hand, and his other crushed beneath the unforgiving shoe of a Commie (a gay Commie, no less), Cary Grant proves himself an everyday American hero, rising to the occasion to contain “communism on the international front and female sexuality at home” (8). So though he initially exemplifies the disconnect between the 1950s upper middle-class man, and traditional masculinity, the film allows Thornhill to prove that beneath every advertising man’s tailored suit is a Real American Male, ready to answer the call to action for country - and sexual control over wayward blondes - alike. All heroes need not wear capes.
Or spurs and chaps, for that matter. Where Thornhill depicts the male in crisis, Americans also had a psychological need for males that were sound and whole. Enter John Wayne. Willis explains that John Wayne is a persona, carefully constructed by the actor and a slew of influencers - the greatest Western hero is a myth. But it’s a myth that has continued to resonate, particularly among demographics of people who feel the most threatened, the most like their ways of life and values are being desecrated and cast aside. John Wayne, his swagger and confidence and indestructibility, is the image many may conjure when they hear the phrase “make America great again”. He connotes freedom, an open frontier, male autonomy and self-determination - a time before America had ever lost a war. Wayne demonstrates an adherence to law and order, but never a succumbing to a government overstepping its boundaries into people's lives. To unpack the myth of John Wayne is to unpack the whole suitcase of myths that have been fed to blue collar, low socio-economic class white people in this country: everything from fear of large government to the absurd notion that Republican tax cuts are for them. It's a myth voiced through every ideologically operating apparatus our society has: media, the GOP party line, the evangelical church.
John Wayne represents an America that never was - but the power of his persona allows it to live in people’s imaginations as vividly as history. So long as John Wayne is remembered by vulnerable American whites, they will always feel that they have someone - not just someone, but the Duke himself - on their side. The same America that still believes in John Wayne finds solidarity in Clint Eastwood calling President Obama’s administration a “fraud” or “hoax”. There’s much detriment that fear and misplaced resentment can do to a national consciousness - especially when its bolstered by stars who never acknowledge that their personas are as much a fantasy as the film worlds they operate within.
No comments:
Post a Comment