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John Wayne Set Out To End The Era Of ‘Phony’ Western Heroes – My Blog
It’s been nearly half a century since John Wayne last donned his iconic stetson hat to play a Western hero, but the actor’s name is still synonymous with America’s collective image of the Wild West cowboy. During the golden age of Hollywood Westerns, Wayne was the most recognizable gunslinger around, and he won the hearts of millions playing tough, imperfect, sometimes irascible men fighting their way through the rough-and-tumble frontier. From “Stagecoach” to “The Shootist,” Wayne frequently embodied what many remember as the prototypical on-screen cowboy.In reality, though, Westerns existed on screen even before Wayne made his cinematic debut in the 1920s, and the actor wasn’t particularly fond of the way they tended to be portrayed. “I made up my mind,” Wayne told Maurice Zolotow for his biography “John Wayne, Shooting Star,” “that I was going to play a real man to the best of my ability. I felt many of the Western stars of the 1920s and 1930s were too goddamn perfect.” Beginning in 1934, censorship from the now-infamous Hays Code put a moral responsibility on Hollywood that restricted violence on-screen. Even before the Hays Code, many on-screen cowboys (like other early film figures) had a sense of costume to them, and Western heroes often looked more like playactors than real down-and-dirty cowpokes.‘They were too goddamn sweet’Paramount PicturesWayne took issue with this. “They never drank nor smoked. They never had a fight,” the actor lamented in Zolotow’s biography. “A heavy might throw a chair at them, and they just look surprised.” Wayne famously played some questionable antiheroes along with his white-hat roles, as in John Ford’s “The Searchers.” That 1956 film grappled with — though didn’t completely address — long-brewing questions about violence, racism, and gender dynamics within the genre. Wayne’s Ethan was a revenge-driven antihero who shattered the illusion of the morally pristine cowboy once and for all.“They were too goddamn sweet and pure to be dirty fighters,” Wayne says of the early film cowboys. He adds:“Well, I wanted to be a dirty fighter if that was the only way to fight back. If somebody throws a chair at you, hell, you pick up a chair and belt him right back. I was trying to play a man who gets dirty, who sweats sometimes, who enjoys really kissing a gal he likes, who gets angry, who fights clean whenever possible but will fight dirty if he has to.”Ironically, this portrait of a cowboy sounds just as oversimplified and idealized now as the 1920s cowboys did to Wayne at the time. The Western genre has mostly died out in recent decades as its traditional templates of racism, nationalism, and machismo have fallen out of fashion. When it has returned, it’s been with fresh spins on the cowboy story that reveal facets of the archetype rarely put to screen before, as with Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” and Jane Campion’s “Power of the Dog.” Both of those movies center the stories of gay cowboys, a notion that Wayne himself would likely find blasphemous if his homophobic reaction to “Midnight Cowboy” is any indication.What counts as ‘phony’ anyway?
NetflixWayne isn’t alone in his homophobic attitudes. The idealization of the “manly man” cowboy has always gone hand in hand with an unstated put-down of anyone less-than, whether that’s actual gay cowboys (who did exist, of course) or simply men who didn’t perform the gruff, reckless sort of physical masculinity that Wayne popularized on screen. Just last year, actor Sam Elliott made comments about “Power of the Dog” that echoed Wayne’s from the early ’70s, criticizing the shirtless cowboys and “allusions to homosexuality” in the film. “What the f*** does this woman from down there, New Zealand, know about the American West?” Elliott said on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast. In his biography, Wayne condemns the squeaky-clean cowboys of the era before him. “I didn’t want to be a singing cowboy,” he says. “It was phony.”The ironic thing about these juxtapositions between the cowboys Wayne and Elliott don’t like and the “real” men they idealize is that both treat the less overtly masculine portrayals as inauthentic in a way that offends them personally — as if they themselves were real cowboys, not actors who grew up in Portland and studied at USC, respectively. This isn’t to say that Wayne and Elliott aren’t qualified to have strong opinions on the matter, but that Westerns have always dealt in American mythology, which is ever-shifting and much more complex than a single portrayal of masculinity.There’s no way of knowing how Wayne would feel about the recent return of movies about cowboys aren’t brawlers, but we do know that Wayne was aware of the way he shaped that image in the first place. “You could say, I made the Western hero a roughneck,” he says in “John Wayne, Shooting Star.” And the genre was never the same again.
Entertainment
Mel Gibson slammed for sharing ‘insane’ conspiracy theory about LA fires after his mansion burns down
Mel Gibson has been met with backlash from social media users after discussing a conspiracy theory on live TV regarding the Los Angeles wildfires.
The 69-year-old actor revealed over the weekend that he had lost his Malibu home in the blaze after it succumbed to the flames while he was a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Speaking on Elizabeth Vargas Reports on NewsNation, Gibson revealed he was in Austin, Texas, when he found out that his multi-million dollar mansion was “completely toasted” ,describing the loss as both “devastating” and “emotional”.
“I’ve never seen such a complete burn,” Gibson said. “It is obviously devastating, it’s emotional. You live there for a long time, and you had all your stuff. I lived there for about 14, 15 years, so it was home to me.”
Now, Gibson has appeared on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle to speak about a conspiracy theory that even he admitted was “insane”.
He told the host: “I know they were messing with the water, letting reserves go for one reason or another. They’ve been doing that a while. California has a lot of problems that sort of baffle the mind as far as why they do things.”
Gibson then asked the questions, “Is it on purpose?” and “Do they want the state empty?”
The actor then admitted he was guilty of concocting “horrible theories” about the fires in his mind, adding: “I can make all kinds of horrible theories up in my head, conspiracy theories and everything else, but it just seemed a little convenient that there was no water.”
“And that the wind conditions were right and that there are people ready and willing and able to start fires,” Gibson continued. “And are they commissioned to do so or acting on their own volition? I don’t know. But they seem pretty well equipped these people that they are catching.”
During their discussion, Ingraham said: “Well, now there’s already talk. And we played a couple of soundbites. Of re-imagining the way rebuilding occurs.
“And obviously there’s a great need for high-density housing in California and across the country. That’s a big push by the climate folks. And you’re already hearing rumblings of that. In this case, like goodbye single-family homes. Hello high-density housing!”
In response to the segment, viewers took to X to bash the actor’s baseless claims.
“Conspiracy theories are his last claims to fame,” one person wrote, with another adding: “The has been is now an expert on water reserves.”
A third tweeted: “I will never watch another movie with him in it.”
“Mel needs a rest,” one viewer responded, with another simply writing: “Shameful.”
The fires remain one of the most destructive and costly disasters in US history.
At least 16 people have lost their lives — 11 in the Eaton Fire and five in the Palisades Fire. Thirteen others remain missing, as of this writing.
As firefighters continue to contain the blazes, officials have issued critical health and safety warnings to the public:
Water Safety: Residents in and around Pacific Palisades have been advised not to drink tap water due to potential contamination from the fires. Bottled water is being distributed at Westwood Recreation Centre and Brentwood Country Club.
Air Quality: The LA County Public Health Department has urged residents to avoid using power blowers like leaf blowers to limit exposure to ash, smoke, and particulate matter worsened by the fires and windstorm conditions.
Ocean Waters: Authorities have also warned against swimming, surfing, or playing in ocean waters between Surfrider Beach and Dockweiler State Beach, covering a 20-mile stretch. “People entering these waters could become ill,” the department stated.
Meanwhile, early estimates suggest that recovery efforts in the Los Angeles area could cost upwards of $150 billion, per AccuWeather.
Our thoughts continue to go out to everybody impacted by this unfolding tragedy.
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How people view beauty in American and the world at large
Entertainment
She hasn’t cut her hairs for 20years, even though her husband begged her to. Then, one day, she finally gave up and cut her hair! Better sit down before you see what this woman looks like today
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