"I am sure it is quite embarrassing to General Torrijos to be called a 'tinhorn' dictator, and I didn't feel that was your style. I hope they weren't your words. This is more the style of a liberal punk who doesn't have to answer for his words."
So advised John Wayne in an open letter to Ronald Reagan in response to his railings against Jimmy Carter's (previously Ford's) Panama Canal Treaty - "We bought it. We paid for it. We built it. And we are going to keep it." The restraining words of a gruff sergeant to his overzealous young officer, perhaps, or of an older, wiser cowhand to his inexperienced colleague.
Reagan and Wayne are inextricably linked in American history thanks to their shared Hollywood careers, their similar public personae, their celebrity conservatism or even the fact that each shed midwestern roots for those dreamy Californian heights. Its a link reinforced, if not originally defined, by the superb historian Garry Wills, who has written books on each. Reagan's America is long familiar to me, and I picked up John Wayne: The Politics of Celebrity yesterday for £2.50 in a crummy little shop that despite its complete lack of charm continues to reward me with useful finds. I also got Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home for the same price.
The purpose of Wills' book is to chart not the details and course of Wayne's life, but his image. It is an image that is familiar to us all and that is unique not just in it's singular applicability to one actor, but in its breadth of meaning as an emblem of national myth and identity. "There is no better demonstration of the power of movies than Wayne's impact on American life," Wills writes:
The idea of Wayne looms. See the mimicry of the near-children in Full Metal Jacket as they try to comprehend their war; see the struggling posture of "John Wayne" McCain. Joan Didion, apparently, was more familiar with the Duke's face than her own husband's. The question is, is there any equivalent encompassing icon in modern American culture? No, is the obvious answer, but you can see the efforts of some to present themselves as such as well as, perhaps, efforts to find one. Two superficial possibilities occur, each political - potentially in the above sense - and each aligned with the hero and the patriot and the manly. I mean of course Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis.
Gibson, whose early American work included the comically suicidal Vietnam vet Riggs of Lethal Weapon, as well as a leading role in the anti-CIA romp Air America, has since made up for these lapses of conformity. We all know what he's about, and each new product serves to reinforce Gibson's mythic status as Soldier, Protector, Patriot, Christian - even as his 'real life' antics don't. We Were Soldiers, in fact, bears strong resemblance to Wayne's polemic, Green Berets, except in quality - Gibson's effort is the far superior film. Each is about the honour of the American fighting man, and each includes a liberal journalist who saves himself by picking up a rifle. We Were Soldiers, however, carries the hindsight knowledge of defeat, while Green Berets - the only film to be made about Vietnam while the war still raged - carries an assumption of victory. Willis is of course back, dying hard again, as John McClane (John Wayne McClane?), the epitome of the manly individual with a gun. His own contributions to the political discourse have been somewhat flat-footed though. He's yet to pay the $1 million he offered for the capture or death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the rumours of a Green Berets-esque Iraq movie about the Battle of Fallujah appear to have been a non-starter. Wayne's impact, I believe, was peculiar to his time - to the industry and culture of 20th century film, to the America he inhabited, and, indeed, to his own style.
Reagan and Wayne are inextricably linked in American history thanks to their shared Hollywood careers, their similar public personae, their celebrity conservatism or even the fact that each shed midwestern roots for those dreamy Californian heights. Its a link reinforced, if not originally defined, by the superb historian Garry Wills, who has written books on each. Reagan's America is long familiar to me, and I picked up John Wayne: The Politics of Celebrity yesterday for £2.50 in a crummy little shop that despite its complete lack of charm continues to reward me with useful finds. I also got Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home for the same price.
The purpose of Wills' book is to chart not the details and course of Wayne's life, but his image. It is an image that is familiar to us all and that is unique not just in it's singular applicability to one actor, but in its breadth of meaning as an emblem of national myth and identity. "There is no better demonstration of the power of movies than Wayne's impact on American life," Wills writes:
"He was not like other actors, who simply hold political views. ...Wayne embodied a politics; or his screen image did. It was a politics of large meanings, not of little policies - a politics of gender (masculine), ideology (patriotism), character (self-reliance), and responsibility. It was a matter of basic orientation."
Gibson, whose early American work included the comically suicidal Vietnam vet Riggs of Lethal Weapon, as well as a leading role in the anti-CIA romp Air America, has since made up for these lapses of conformity. We all know what he's about, and each new product serves to reinforce Gibson's mythic status as Soldier, Protector, Patriot, Christian - even as his 'real life' antics don't. We Were Soldiers, in fact, bears strong resemblance to Wayne's polemic, Green Berets, except in quality - Gibson's effort is the far superior film. Each is about the honour of the American fighting man, and each includes a liberal journalist who saves himself by picking up a rifle. We Were Soldiers, however, carries the hindsight knowledge of defeat, while Green Berets - the only film to be made about Vietnam while the war still raged - carries an assumption of victory. Willis is of course back, dying hard again, as John McClane (John Wayne McClane?), the epitome of the manly individual with a gun. His own contributions to the political discourse have been somewhat flat-footed though. He's yet to pay the $1 million he offered for the capture or death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the rumours of a Green Berets-esque Iraq movie about the Battle of Fallujah appear to have been a non-starter. Wayne's impact, I believe, was peculiar to his time - to the industry and culture of 20th century film, to the America he inhabited, and, indeed, to his own style.
The wise ghost of John Wayne in Garth Ennis' & Steve Dillon's Preacher.
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