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the Duke

What is it about John Wayne? Big, craggy, always the same character, and most films are pretty mediocre (if not worse) from a film critics perspective. Politically the guy was just to the right of Attilla the Hun.....but you know, I LOVE John Wayne movies! I don't know why....there's something about his character portrayal that resonates.

Maybe it's because I come from a southern family and upbringing. Some of the attitudes and behaviors from great Wayne films were observed in houses in which I was raised. Maybe it's the larger than life story telling, another staple of my upbringing. My folks could tell stories about events in their lives and stretch them for hours, eliciting comments like "yes....I knew Aunt Mabel was an official Ninja...I saw the paper that says so...." or "you know uncle Waldo once kicked Patton's ass in a bar fight, right? Not only that, but when Omar Bradley started to stick his nose into it, he got a taste of the Florsheims too..." (everybody knew that NOBODY in my extended family could afford Florsheims!!!)

Coming from an upbringing like this, I guess itt's easy to understand why I would find pleasure in seeing Wayne's portrayals of the larger than life Tom, Chance, or John who's done it all and is a man not to be trifled with. A guy who can knock you down with his ham sized fist one minute and be pouring whiskey down your throat and clapping you on the back the next. It's all about the character and the characters we all grew up with and know.

Wayne, for his immense presence and 'larger than life' bluster is, in fact, an everyman....he's your dad (remember the arguments with playmates at 8 years old..."my dad can beat up your dad...."), your grandad....he's uncle Sam.

I can't fully explain it....all I know is that when I see that replay of Wayne actually shooting Liberty Valance (not Jimmy Stewart), or Chance Buckman putting out those oil rig fires while being shot at by Communist freedom fighters, or John Chance showing his buddy Dean Martin 'tough love' and helping him get off the alcohol and get back to being a bloodthirsty deputy, or John T. McCandles staring down his grandson's kidnapper Richard Boone, and finally Rooster Cogburn facing several bandits across an empty field (led by Robert Duval) yelling "Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!" after Duvall taunts him, I feel like I'm back in the Saturday theater of my youth thinking about how the Duke reminds me of someone.....and how, when the movie's over and I'm at the office the next day or grocery shopping, that everyman seems to no longer exist.

Comments

wayn3w said…
To me, Wayne's characters were the guys who knew how everything worked in the frontier: where the cabins were, how to treat a snakebite, and what unsavory characters to trust when a shootout was soon coming. They knew it because they were THERE -- they learned from the land.

More importantly, they also knew when to do the do the right thing because nobody else, including the law, would do it. In these two ways he was Everyman's dad.

But I think the element of the frontier is important to the telling of his character's stories. The hazardous, lawless terrain shaped them into survivors -- men of action with stories to tell.

These characters were also individualists; they could never be corporate drones working on discrete tasks to fit their boss's schedule. Could you imagine a John Wayne character working for Merck, AT&T or Google? Can you hear me now, Pardner?

We don't have a frontier anymore. We don't a Wild West to test and shape people.

The most recent "modern" Everyman I can picture is Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan, with Patriot Games as the best example (Clear and Present Danger jumps the shark, in my opinion). But his modern man is not an individual, but a man in a large machine -- the CIA. He is not shaped by a frontier, but good schooling nd on the job training. He didn't choose to be tested by the Frontier, but it was thrown upon him.

I wish there was a still a Wild West today to give us back our sense of adventure. The space program help for about a decade, but nothing since has filled that untamed wilderness that can test us; that place where if we beat it, can build a new future.

Our medical insurance wouldn't cover it, though.
October 2, 2007 at 9:04 AM
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