Rasmi Simhan
Dallas Morning News
July 27, 2002 12:00:00
Hollywood is chiseling a new kind of action hero for America - one who's often less cocksure and more introspective than the blast-'em-away Rambos and Terminators.
This summer, Ben Affleck stars as savvy CIA hero Jack Ryan in "The Sum of All Fears"; Matt Damon brings a new spin to an amnesiac spy in "The Bourne Identity"; and former pretty-boys Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey battle dragons in "Reign of Fire."
They're a far cry from the aging, musclebound heroes of the '70s, '80s and '90s - Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, both of whom are now in their mid-50s.
And what's more, today's heroes learned to act first and built muscles later.
Perhaps no two actors represent the new kind of hero better than Affleck and Damon, who starred and wrote a film about a math genius, "Good Will Hunting." In "The Bourne Identity," Damon is so unsure of himself that he has to stop and look at a map during a car chase.
Are Hollywood heroes getting soft? Or is America beginning to see heroism differently?
"In the wake of September 11, there's a feeling that mere muscles as a way of achieving the goal of saving society are not sufficient," says John Shelton Lawrence, co-author of the book The Myth of the American Superhero.
"I suspect that we're going to see a trend for a while toward heroes who are a little more self-doubting, a little less physically powerful."
As self-doubting, perhaps, as Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man, as not-so-buff as Anthony Hopkins in "Bad Company." Or as emotional as Elijah Wood, who cries while trying to save Middle-Earth in "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring."
(Even Viggo Mortensen, who plays the manly protector of Frodo in "Lord of the Rings," sheds a tear during a friend's death scene.)
All of today's action heroes, of course, aren't as conflicted - or as sensitive - as Frodo Baggins. Vin Diesel will be flexing his muscles this summer as an athlete-turned-agent in "XXX."
And The Rock, who has been billed as "the new Arnold," certainly shows his pecs in "The Scorpion King."
But The Rock also displays a self-spoofing sense of humor: In the first scene of "Scorpion King," he charges into a cave filled with enemy warriors and breaks the tension by quietly mouthing the word "boo."
No one can completely account for the changes in action-hero temperament, of course. But historians say movies like "The Scorpion King" and "The Bourne Identity" leave little doubt that Hollywood's notion of the hero is changing - and expanding - in the wake of Sept. 11.
Arguably, heroes cater to their times.
In describing the action heroes of today, historians still point to the past - to the heroes who came before and laid the groundwork.
Although heroes have a thousand faces, many share similar qualities. They're lone wolves who don't quite fit into society and usually lack families or close friends.
They're often literally outsiders as well, whether ensconced in the Bat Cave or newly arrived in town, like Alan Ladd's Shane. The capes and masks of superheroes emphasize their difference from everyday people.
Yet it's their humanity that makes them compelling figures. Many of them have an everyday persona on screen when they're not fighting evil, says Sam Grogg, dean of the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles.
"I think that in a democratic society, that's the mythological base: that everyone has the potential to win the day for good regardless of their station in life," Grogg says. As a result, a lowly teen can become Spider-Man, and a small hobbit with furry feet can become a savior.
Often, heroes are flawed, but that doesn't stop them from righteously rebelling against the established order. Where democracy and bureaucracy fail, the hero strides in.
"Their roles are to save societies in which democracy has already failed because it didn't produce the institutions or the leaders who could protect them," Lawrence says. "So these figures - in their use of violence, their circumvention of the law, their antagonism toward the police and the mainstream institutions - are really anti-democratic figures.
"That's one of the paradoxes of American culture: It seems unable to celebrate heroic figures who express the values of democratic institutions." ("Minority Report," for example, involves a cop whose own department accuses him of committing a future crime. And the title character in "The Bourne Identity" struggles with the government of his own country.)
Once the heroes' work is done, they slip from the scene - like John Wayne's character at the end of "The Searchers," watching the door to a house filled with family and friends close before him.
"There's something about them that's a little scary, a little brutal," says Ray Merlock, professor of communications at the University of South Carolina in Spartanburg. "People don't necessarily feel comfortable with that person still being around. Often he has to leave."
Whether he stays or goes, the action hero usually reflects the anxieties and concerns of his time. And often, the same hero changes along with the times. As an example, Merlock charts the development of Robin Hood.
Errol Flynn, who starred as the noble thief in "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938), helped refugees in Sherwood Forest who were displaced by a totalitarian leader - a scenario inspired, perhaps, by the rise of Hitler.
After the war, Richard Greene's television performances in "The Adventures of Robin Hood" series (1955-60) made Robin Hood seem like an officer in charge of his outfit, again reflecting the wartime ethos.
Frank Sinatra's take on the legend, "Robin and the 7 Hoods" (1964), brought a celebrity-type aura to the man in green. The post-Vietnam version, Sean Connery in "Robin and Marian" (1976), is a grimmer tale of people slaughtered because they followed orders.
More recently, Kevin Costner starred as a Robin Hood with a black sidekick (played by Morgan Freeman) and women in his merry band. "In Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" (1991), he was a prince who understood that minorities strengthened his army, Merlock says.
"He's one example of a particular action hero who, traced through different eras, mirrors the concerns of that particular time."
The 1980s, meanwhile, led to yet another development in heroes - the hardbody type.
"The '70s were a period of a lot of frustrating hostage situations, and there was a feeling in the American public that Jimmy Carter was not a powerful figure as a leader," Lawrence says. "I think the hard bodies of Schwarzenegger and Stallone - and to a lesser degree, people like Bruce Willis - were a metaphor for the need for physical strength and the willingness to use it."
The movie heroes took action while politicians seemed ineffective.
Today's action stars still need enough brawn to please an audience that's predominantly male and between the ages of 18 and 24 (or 14 and 24 for PG-13 movies). So the action hero isn't going to completely sacrifice his muscles to meditation.
"I think it is obviously a genre that has been directed at a younger audience because most theatrical motion pictures, to be successful, have to attract that audience," Grogg says.
The portrayal of female action heroes, meanwhile, also caters to male teens. Roger Ebert, the Chicago-based movie critic, says that the idea of women as action heroes is merely "a teen-age boy fantasy" that Hollywood is trying to feed. They're shown as "just substitute men," he says in the new documentary "Searching for Debra Winger."
Merlock agrees: "I'd like to see a movie with a female action hero where the audience learns what it is to be a female action hero, rather than a female action hero from the male viewpoint."
Charting trends in action figures may seem like an ivory-tower debate. But these kinds of movies often speak louder than words in other countries: The hero embodies a certain view of American culture.
"Explosions don't really need to be translated," Merlock says.
But the movies also present an unflattering vision of America to much of the world, says film historian Robert Sklar in "Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of the American Movies." He argues that many Hollywood action films in the 1980s fostered "racisim in relation to non-European peoples, a belief in the efficacy of imperialism and demeaning attitudes toward women."
For better or worse, people in other countries tap into the action-movie mythology when discussing real-life topics involving Americans.
The German publication Der Spiegel recently printed a satirical cover that depicts President George W. Bush as Rambo, Donald Rumsfeld as Conan the Barbarian, Colin Powell as Batman, and other advisers with fearsome weapons. The article, titled "The Bush Warriors: America's Military Maneuvers Against Evil," says the U.S. approaches foreign policy as a stark combat between good and evil.
The White House apparently wasn't taken aback by the satire.
"The president was flattered to be pictured with such a body," says U.S. ambassador to Germany, Daniel Coats, who ordered 33 posters of the cover for the White House during a visit to Der Spiegel, the magazine reported.
Perhaps the heroes of the past - with their stark emphasis on good vs. evil - are more relevant than ever in Washington, if not in Hollywood.
Says Lawrence, "It's an interesting story that illustrates that popular heroic conceptions can have a symbiotic relationship with American politics. That was in effect saying we are proud to stand in the heroic tradition of American pop culture."
E-mail rsimhan@dallasnews.com
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