c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) A good man is hard to find. Which must be why everyone is trying to track them down, increase their numbers or just attempt to explain who the heck they are.
“In Praise of Manly Men,” gushes the cover of this month’s O (“the Oprah magazine”). “Who are they, where are they and why do we still want them?”
“A Guy’s Guide to Being a Man’s Man,” promises a new celebrity book, offering actor Frank Vincent’s thoughts on how to be a stand-up mug who knows how to treat a dame right.
“Manliness,” announces a scholarly offering from Yale University Press, providing Harvey C. Mansfield’s definitive treatment of the cult, and culture, of the macho.
Clearly plenty of men, and women, are wondering what it means to be a man. But they won’t find many answers in the movies.
Take a look at some of the characters who made up this year’s Best Actor nominations. A bisexual ranch hand. An effete gay writer. A drunk and drug-addicted singer. A pimp who wants to be a music star. That the most traditionally “manly” man among them was a quietly intellectual TV journalist tells you something about how the definition of heroism has changed _ and how the one of masculinity may have to.
The issue has nothing to do with sexuality. In “Capote,” for example, the delicate little Truman goes into a murderer’s cell to drag his story out of him _ not the sort of job any coward would jump at. In “Brokeback Mountain,” when two bikers are a little loud and lewd for the closeted Ennis’ taste, he uses his fists to teach them some manners, then stands tall while patriotic fireworks explode behind him.
What keeps Capote and Ennis from being male role models isn’t that they love men, but that they each refuse to act like one. The fey writer may be brave enough to go after a story, but he’s not honest enough to tell his subjects the truth. The rugged cowboy may not shrink from a fistfight _ after all, it’s about the only time he’s allowed to touch another man in public _ but when it comes to facing the truth and sparing his wife some pain, he runs away.
When it really matters, both men aren’t men. They’re boys.
Definitions of masculinity have changed over the years. No one needs to be able to swing a heavy broadsword today, or even homestead an arid 40 acres of land. Modern society requires different things of men, and offers them different challenges. Still, certain virtues remain. If you won’t stand by your family, then what will you stick with? If you’re not honest with yourself, then who wouldn’t you lie to?
Other characteristics have changed, though, and you can track them through the movies.
It is no accident that the first, recognizably American feature film was the 1903 shoot-’em-up “The Great Train Robbery” _ the American cowboy remains the foremost model for the American hero, and through that, the American man. He has a code of honor he will not compromise. He has a job, and he takes pride in doing it well. He stands up for the weak, but acknowledges the rough justice and final decision of a fair fight. He doesn’t complain or explain, or have much time for people who do.
For the first 40 years or so of American movie history, this heroic model stood unquestioned. It did not leave an awful lot of room for emotional nuance _ William S. Hart, Hollywood’s first great cowboy, was more likely to kiss his horse onscreen than his co-star _ but it gave several generations of boys a good, simple template for adulthood. Stand up for yourself. Fight fair. And always tell the truth.
That last virtue began to weaken a bit in the ’40s, though, as new and growing challenges demanded a different kind of hero. There were new villains abroad, and straight talk and a good left hook would not be enough. And so _ with the iconic “The Maltese Falcon” opening only two months before Pearl Harbor _ the private detective became the new hero, and a new model for the age.
The private eye had a few things in common with the cowboy. He wasn’t a snob (although he was educated enough to be able to quote Shakespeare when necessary). He was brave, and he worked hard. But there were some significant differences. He had a healthy appreciation of sex and a bracing disrespect for authority. And as a modern hero facing the worst sort of villains, he wasn’t above lying when he had to.
Humphrey Bogart in “The Big Sleep,” Dana Andrews in “Laura,” Dick Powell in “Murder, My Sweet” _ these were the heroes for a new age, and for a new generation of young boys, all busy practicing their insolent wisecracks or pretending to light their Lucky Strikes. These men were still heroes and role models. But they weren’t always polite and they didn’t always tell the truth, and if they were kissing anybody in the final scene, it wasn’t their horse.
And then the war ended, and America’s real heroes came limping home. And Hollywood’s innocence disappeared, and its image of what it meant to be a man changed.
Suddenly, in movies like “The Red Badge of Courage” or “Fort Apache,” soldiers cut and run, and unthinking officers send men to their doom. In cowboy pictures like “The Searchers” even John Wayne is one step from psychosis; in detective stories like “Vertigo,” James Stewart has a crippling mental breakdown. The teen movies that once featured kids putting on a show now starred bikers, delinquents and rebels without a cause.
Movies were growing more complex and sophisticated _ but, as a result, their heroes were growing more flawed and unlikable.
Pictures like “Mr. Roberts” emphasized the change, by contrasting the virtues of Roberts, the old-fashioned hero (Henry Fonda, brave, taciturn and devoted to the community) and Pulver, the new go-getter (Jack Lemmon, cowardly, voluble and only in it for himself). Of course, the film is firmly on Roberts’ side; while it acknowledges his generation has to pass away, it makes sure a newly matured Pulver is there to take his place.
This, however, was wishful thinking.
The new heroes of American movies were, in fact, the unreconstructed Pulvers, sharp, sneaky and blissfully self-involved. At the beginning, they were played by Kirk Douglas or Bill Holden; as the ’60s took hold, they fell more often to Lemmon, Paul Newman and James Garner. They were charmers, all of them, and smart, but they used their charm and wit only to help themselves. If they had a saving grace, it was that they knew they were damaged; if not for the self-loathing that flickered across their faces, they would have been intolerable.
For complex filmmakers and sophisticated filmgoers, this cynicism was a step forward. Few real film fans would say that Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence,” with its false heroism and layers of deceit, was a lesser movie than his earlier, simpler “Stagecoach”; no true movie lover could claim that Hitchcock’s lively “The Thirty-Nine Steps” rewarded repeat viewings the way the obsessive “Rear Window” did. But while it made for better movies, it didn’t make for better heroes. A generation looking for their own models of masculinity would have to look elsewhere.
When a new American hero began to emerge in the late ’60s, he embodied many of the virtues of the old, prewar hero. The bitter irony was that this time those virtues weren’t enough. Often mistakenly tagged as an “anti-hero,” the new male leads were in fact extraordinarily heroic, going up against corrupt institutions, traitorous friends, even entire nations. The difference was this time, no matter how hard they tried, they failed.
And so “The Wild Bunch” goes up against overwhelming odds _ and, overwhelmed, is blown to pieces. “Serpico” tries to live his life as a man of honor and is shunned and reviled. McMurphy stands up for sanity in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and has his brain cut away. J.J. Gittes, perpetually one step behind, stands lost in the middle of “Chinatown” while the heroine lies dead and the villain claims another victim.
There were still heroes, Hollywood declared. But heroism itself was futile.
The last shift came in the ’80s, as the art neatly split along economic lines. The big-studio movies went for the simplest male character possible _ the jut-jawed adventurer who could knock out villains with a single punch and bed women merely by raising an eyebrow. (It is no accident that Hollywood’s favorite source material these days is the comic book.) The independent pictures, meanwhile, went defiantly in the opposite direction, centering their stories on men who drank too much, lied to everyone and regretted and accomplished nothing.
And yet there are still some “manly men” on the screen, if you know where to look, and what to value.
Russell Crowe’s Jim Braddock in “Cinderella Man,” for example, is a genuine male hero _ not for what he accomplishes in the ring, but for how he lives when he’s out of it, for his willingness to do anything to provide for his family, and to honor his promises to his wife. This is this movie’s real lesson. True courage isn’t facing a mob with a machine gun but getting up with blistered hands and still going off to do a day’s work. Real masculinity doesn’t spring from bedding 100 women, but from truly respecting one.
David Strathairn’s Edward R. Murrow in “Good Night, and Good Luck” presents another kind of heroism, too. It isn’t the sort of macho bravery that comes from riding the range or interviewing murderers. Murrow has good suits, a country house and a nice job on TV. The time he spent reporting from the middle of a bombed London is more than a decade gone. But when it comes time to speak the truth, he shouts it. And that is true heroism, and more than any of the other Oscar-nominated heroes ever did.
That’s because real manliness doesn’t come from cowboy fisticuffs, or private-eye bravery. It comes from telling the truth, and fighting the everyday fight.
(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)
That’s why the greatest hero of Hollywood’s golden age may not have been the Ringo Kid, or even Sam Spade, but poor George Bailey of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” laboring away at his family’s small-town Building and Loan, getting up every day and going to a job he hated, paying his family’s bills and helping his neighbors when he can.
George didn’t become a war hero like his kid brother, Harry, or a big defense contractor like his friend Sam Wainwright. He didn’t run off with the lovely Miss Violet Bick, and he certainly didn’t become “the richest man in town” _ at least not in anything you could measure. Instead, he went to work. He kept his promises. And he stood up for a few things on which he would not compromise.
It may not be very exciting, and it certainly doesn’t require any special effects. But it’s what real manliness meant once. And still means today, even if Hollywood has trouble remembering.
MO PH END WHITTY
(Stephen Whitty is film critic for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)
