Tom sent me a link to the cover of the Hollywood Foreign Policy Review (courtesy of Flashbunny):
Many famous actors in Hollywood have been speaking rather foolishly on matters of foreign policy. I haven't much followed what they said or even who has been saying it. No one really takes Hollywood actors seriously. Not even Phil Ochs.
As an aside, I am probably the only person with viewpoints similar to mine who likes Phil Ochs' music, but what the heck. Much of what he said was true back when he said it and I can pretend that he would be an idealistic republican if he were alive today. The truth is that he probably would still rail against society, but I've only really listened to his Live in Vancouver CD and I can at least pretend that all of what he says is more from a viewpoint like mine than a viewpoint like, say, his. Anyhow, let me quote what brought this up:
One of the most exciting things about the twentieth century, and one of the most lyrical forms you find now, is movies. In varying stages. I was always a John Wayne fan when I was very young. It's one of the dilemmas we have; one of the dilemmas that America presents: that many of America's greatest, truly greatest artists are very right wing and reactionary and not particularly intelligent. But they're still great, truly great in their own medium. I think John Wayne is one of the greatest men to ever step in front of a screen.
I may disagree with the real Phil Ochs' political views, but I agree with the Phil Ochs who lives inside of my imagination. Some actors are genuinely brilliant people, though those are disappointingly rare. More common are actors of surprisingly limited intelligence. It doesn't matter, though, their intelligence is not why they are celebrated. They are celebrated for being beautiful, they are celebrated for, when all is said and done, helping to keep our dreams alive.
As I was looking for that quote (I eventually just typed it out from the song) I came across the following:
Thinking about his politics is a way out of really looking at John Wayne. His brute Republicanism gives us an excuse for flinching from the awful contradictions he represents, without even stopping to name them. It's a forgivable instinct. What other American icon comes so overloaded with reflections of our national disasters of racism, sexual repression, violence and authority? Who else thrusts the difficult question of what it means to be a man in America so forcefully in our faces, daring us to meet his gaze? Thank heaven he's also a laughable political ignoramus, a warmongering hypocrite who never served in the armed forces. Thank heaven he's associated with the western, an easily dismissible film genre. All this gives us the chance to avert our eyes, to giggle or scoff. And we do.
I think that most writing in this world is directed at those who agree with the author and so it is generally unfair to accuse a man of writing with broad assumptions. I will thus not question Mr Lethem's assumption that Wayne was a laughable political ignoramus and while it is true that Wayne did not serve in World War II, he was ashamed of it for the rest of his life. However, calling the Western an easily dismissible film genre is either to show a complete intellectual disregard for Americans and American culture or a complete misunderstanding of both. The Western is not central to cinema in general, but it is central to Hollywood. I do not mean that it is the only central genre, but the western is part of what defines Hollywood, even today.
There are some who will object that the Western is a silly genre. It is. Silly and dismissible are not the same. The Western glorifies strength in the face of adversity. This stands in stark contrast to the genres such as foreign films, which are mostly about weakness in the face of adversity. It may be brutish, unsophisticated, or even childish to glorify people overcoming their troubles in a direct, physical way, but it is not dismissible. Human beings are more than purely physical objects, we are not disembodied intellects. Perhaps the Western appeals to the basest of human instincts. What of it? So does breathing. If you wish to understand a culture, you must understand its myths. If you wish to understand America, you must understand Hollywood. If you wish to understand Hollywood, you must understand the Western. In a strange way, Hollywood is more about reality than it is about fantasy, and nothing is more real than the basest of human instincts.
The rest of this article wavers between well-written and overblown without ever saying much of anything. It ends as follows:
Dan Barden's success suggests that the myth and meaning of John Wayne may be at once too big and too small to fit the bounds of conventional biography, and may instead be best understood in sidelong glances, by analogy and metaphor. The man's life itself is strangely beside the point. John Wayne is finally something other than either a man or a film star, but rather a kind of archetypal figure. Through this figure, the deeply American resistance to settling into the bounds of family and community -- a resistance echoed not only in the various anti-government sentiments that plague our nation today, but in the struggle of any man to learn to properly love and be loved by women -- can be played out again and again. And, if we're lucky, understood.
Just as this author takes so much for granted, I will leave off a discussion of what an ass he is except to say that there really is a certain amount of respect which is owed to the dead. It's not due because they can't defend themselves, but rather because we owe all men the belief that had they lived until now they would have become better.
With that out of the way, Wayne's image was not about the struggle to learn to properly love and be loved by women. It may have been central to some of his movies; I have not seen all of them. Wayne was male and was never cast as androgynous that I heard of. Still, that was not the main theme even in his movies with a romantic interest. John Wayne the archetype was about struggle with hardship. Wayne played men who were run ragged by events which happened before the film. He portrayed men struggling to keep themselves in one piece, men struggling to overcome what life threw at them. He portrayed men who succeeded, at least for now.
What Hollywood is and has always been about is strengthening our dreams. American movies are very predictable: the good guy always wins in the end. Always. Those who do not understand may scoff, but they're missing the point. We want the good guys to win, we want the innocent to prosper, and we want the bad guys to be become good guys or, failing that, to become dead guys. In short, we want every ending to be happy. Not all happy endings are ideal endings, though. Usually the bad guy will not repent, often innocent bystanders are hurt. This is why we are not bored by our movies: we know that life is going to work out well. The important question is how well.
This is, in a sense, naive. Not all endings in the real world are happy. The key, though, is that this is because there are no endings in the real world. In a movie the story must end but in real life the story goes on. We are sure that the story is going to end happily because we are going to make it end happily, even if it takes two sequels, even if it takes a Part VI. In Hollywood, as in real life, it often does.
This is why our stars will always be celebrities no matter what they say. We don't go to the movies to see what people currently are, we go to the movies to see what people can be if they try hard enough. That can't be tarnished by the actors who give our ideals form; even the good ones are never as good as they pretend to be. We aren't as good as they pretend to be either. What matters is that some day, we will be. Even if it's in part 106.
If we ever get there, our actors will get there too and we'll be able to take them seriously. In the mean time, when they speak as ordinary people who happen to be famous, we listen to them (or not) as ordinary people. At least those who can keep fantasy and reality straight do. Thankfully, that's most of us.