Heroic Hollywood: American Exceptionalism and the Hollywood Hero

Bitter Gun-Clinger – and Hollywood Hero

For nearly a century now, Hollywood has inspired generations of Americans with the central truth behind the American Dream: in this country, people are free to choose their own destiny. It’s the moral message found in every film that features the classic Hollywood Hero. Here’s a look at how our movie heroes were shaped by American values, a personal look at how the Hollywood Hero can inspire our lives, and the belief that, despite the rise of explicitly anti-American movies, the Hollywood Hero will continue to ride to the rescue.

The late Stanley Kubrick awakened my interest in films. But it was a one-eyed fat man that launched my career in the movies.

The first time I started thinking about films as something more than Saturday afternoon’s amusement was in 1968 with the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was a Midwestern boy in the 8th grade at the time, and it was the first film I kept thinking about after I left the theater: Who made it? How was it done? What does it mean?

2001 was unconventional, modern filmmaking and I was fascinated by it, discussing it endlessly with friends and family. Yet, as much as I admired and was intrigued by what Kubrick had done, the film held no personal message for me.

The following year, however, I saw a very different type of movie that did have a message…an inspiring call to action that changed my life.

Unlike 2001, this movie was conventional – even retrograde – Hollywood moviemaking and I was ashamed to let anyone know I was going to see it. As I stood in line at the box-office near my high school, I furtively scanned the crowd, hoping none of my classmates would see me. My social crime? I was about to buy a ticket for a John Wayne movie.

True Grit was released in June of 1969. In those days, we still wore onions on our belts and the “New Hollywood” was just getting started, fueled by the rise of the “New Left.” At that time, the New Left was a catch-all phrase for the youth movement, the counter-culture movement, the anti-war movement…in sum, the entire political shift of the left towards radical social activism. In the 60s, the New Left was a minority, but they understood that influencing the culture was key becoming a majority.

Hollywood, of course, was one of their targets. Films that featured heroic figures were replaced by a surge of anti-hero movies such as Bonnie & Clyde and Easy Rider. In the growing counter-culture, a movie like True Grit was hopelessly old fashioned and out-of-date. Not only did the movie feature John Wayne – considered by New Hollywood to be an embarrassing cultural and political throwback – but the picture was a western.

By 1969, the western, once a staple of Hollywood, had become a threadbare, dying genre fit only for radicalizing, like the shocking bloodlust featured in The Wild Bunch released the same year. The only other picture with a cowboy I remember from that year was Midnight Cowboy, which tells you a lot about the times!

What drew me to the movie that day was actress Kim Darby, who in the newspaper ads looked very much like a girl I had a crush on at the time. It was her I was going to see, not John Wayne. Aside from Darby, I was certain I would hate True Grit, but the movie turned out to be a revelation to me.

The story and characters were terrific, both Wayne’s part as an old, disreputable yet cagey U.S. Marshall called Rooster Cogburn and Darby, who played the part of a girl named Mattie who hires Cogburn to find the man that killed her father. What made them fascinating was that both characters had different moral perspectives, yet the same unyielding strength at the core of their personalities. Rooster was a heavy-drinking, violence-prone lawman, and Mattie was raised as a Christian moralist. The central characteristics of each, however, were perseverance, resolution and courage in the face of danger. Both characters showed true grit in the course of the movie…and it was inspiring to see.

The moral theme of the movie was the importance of fortitude, as reflected in the title. No matter if you were an old man or a young girl, sometimes only fortitude – the strength of mind that enables one to endure adversity with courage – will get you through the rough spots in life. Watching the film was an exhilarating experience, and for the first time it struck me that writing and directing movies was something I’d like to do…and the inspiring message of True Grit gave me the courage to pursue it. Walking out of the theater, I knew I was going to be a filmmaker.

But, of course, I couldn’t tell that to anyone. How shameful it would have been to admit to my friends in 1969 that I was inspired by a John Wayne movie. How doubly shameful to admit that I was inspired by a 15-year-old girl! And yet I was inspired, and I wasn’t the only one. At a time when John Wayne and what he represented was considered by many to be corny and embarrassing, True Grit came in at #3 overall at the box office that year and Wayne won a Best Actor Academy Award for his performance.

My point is that nearly everybody – even sophomoric 15 year olds – needs the emotional and ethical inspiration that the dramatic arts offer. When asked about the success of her book, and later hit movie, Seabiscuit, author Laura Hillenbrand said “I think people need to see examples of individuals succeeding in spite of all the obstacles in front of them.”

In other words, people need heroes. In Hollywood, the films that make the most money are usually the ones with just this type of heroic inspiration.

Take a look at the all-time world-wide box office champions here. Nearly every one is a Hollywood movie and nearly every one features a heroic main character who succeeds, despite all the obstacles in front of him. Even the lightweight comedies on the list such as Night at the Museum features a main character who succeeds in changing his life for the better after a heroic showdown with his antagonists.

In the classic sense, a hero is defined as somebody who commits an act of remarkable bravery or who has shown great courage, strength of character, or another admirable quality. In a dramatic sense, the hero is the main character of a story who is “good,” that is, he exhibits some admirable moral quality that relates to the moral theme of the work.

The character doesn’t have to be (although he frequently is) a hero in the classic sense, that is, someone who has remarkable bravery or great courage. But he does have to possess some quality that the author defines as “good” and this “good” quality must impact the choices he makes in the story, ultimately supporting the moral theme of the work. In True Grit, Rooster and Mattie had their faults, but the ethical choices they made – especially the choice of fortitude – achieved their goal of bringing justice to a murderer.

Don’t forget that the author’s purpose of drama is to answer the question What should I do? for the audience. Heroes serve as a clear and vivid example of what the audience should do…and why.

One of the reasons movie heroes move our emotions so strongly is because film is a potent medium for identification, that is, the attribution to yourself of the characteristics of another person. Most films are constructed so that we experience the drama though the eyes of the main character. We get inside the character’s thoughts and emotions, and so we judge things the way the character judges them.

As a result, when heroes like Indiana Jones feels frightened, we feel frightened. When Indy feels angry, we feel angry. When Indy acts bravely, we feel brave. Most dramatic works allow identification with its characters, especially its main character. So it’s not surprising when, after experiencing the same thoughts and emotions as the main character, we understand and agree with the ethical actions and moral conclusions that the character expresses at the end of the story. Identification leads to emulation – this is one of the methods by which the author gets us to agree with the moral theme of the work and to adopt the theme in our own lives.

Cinema seems to heighten our emotional identification because film is paradoxically both highly realistic and highly stylized. On screen, the photographic image of Indy makes him appear real to our eyes, yet he stands two stories high. We can hear him speak just like a real person, yet he has his own theme song whenever he appears. This combination of realism and stylization heightens the emotional impact of film. We feel the bravery of Indy deep inside our hearts in a way that a mere textbook description of bravery could never accomplish.

Now, it is quite possible that anti-heroic films can be inspirational to you, if you live in a culture where anti-heroism is celebrated. From the late 60s to the mid-seventies, large segments in America were in a distinctly anti-heroic mood, thanks to the cultural and political turbulence of the 60s followed by the malaise-ridden, downsized expectations of the 70s. Many films reflected this anti-heroic mood back to their audience with characters and plots that argued that life is absurd, the good times are over and it’s useless to struggle against the collapse of the American Dream. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jimmy Carter!

But this is, after all, America – where anti-heroic inspiration is a passing fad for most people and of enduring interest only to the leftist elite. The need for heroic inspiration re-asserted itself and the spell was finally broken in 1977 with the release of Star Wars. After that, heroes were in fashion, again. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ronald Reagan!

I don’t think it was a coincidence that, in the wake of Jimmy Carter, America embraced as president a figure from the movies who exemplified the iconic American hero: the cowboy. Paraphrasing Yankee Doodle Dandy, Ronald Reagan was the whole darned country squeezed into one pair of cowboy boots.

I have to laugh at European intellectuals who sneer at cowboy movies, and think they insult Americans when they call us “cowboys,” call Bush and Reagan “cowboy” presidents, or complain about a “cowboy foreign policy.”

They don’t get it. They don’t understand that most Americans – indeed, most of the non-elite of the world – love cowboys and what they represent. To be called a cowboy is a compliment. It means heroic qualities such as individualism, integrity, risk taking, strength, courage and…well…fortitude.

Even commies like cowboys.

Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev meets The Rifleman.

John Wayne was a film star, not only in America, but around the world. His films sold tickets and inspired millions of people in every country where they ran. European films about nihilism or the absurdity of life inspire hardly anyone, which is why there aren’t any Nihilist film stars of comparable fame.

Cowboys hold our imagination because they are the embodiment of the American sense of life. That’s no accident. Hollywood movies were not born in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America or the Middle East. They were not born in Canada or Mexico.

They were not even born in Hollywood.

The first “Hollywood” movie was shot 3000 miles away from Hollywood in New York City and in the countryside of New Jersey, in 1903. It was called The Great Train Robbery and it is considered by many to be the world’s first narrative movie.

What made it a Hollywood movie was not the location it was shot, but the moral theme it expressed. It was born in America because, at that time, the people in America were the most likely to express that moral theme. And that first dramatic film was – significantly – a western. Few genres are more up-front about their moral values than the American western.

The film only lasted 10 minutes, but it managed to establish most of the vocabulary of the classic Hollywood western: horses, hold ups, dance halls, posses, shoot-outs – and the beginning vocabulary of classic film technique: parallel editing, location shooting, pan shots and so on.

Just as importantly, however, it established the moral vocabulary of the western and the Hollywood movie in general: good guys, bad guys, the moral choices they make and the consequences of their choices. In short, it created the Hollywood Hero.

When motion pictures were born at the turn of the last century, cinema was viewed as merely a curious novelty. People were entertained by movies the same way they were entertained by jugglers and magic acts. Moving images of trains, waves breaking on the shore, famous people and so on were new and surprising amusements, but nothing more.

Movies did not become a phenomena of mass entertainment until the filmmakers began to tell stories in film. Only then did people become passionate about cinema. That’s because the story contains the stuff we really care about, which means, it’s the stuff we can really get emotional about. Cinema was a new way of creating drama that expanded the vocabulary of storytelling.

Almost from the beginning, and certainly by the mid-1920s, America dominated world cinema. The classic Hollywood Hero was a potent inspirational figure because it represented a unique moral force in the world – American Exceptionalism.

American exceptionlism can been defined as:

…the idea that the Untied States and the American people hold a special place in the world, by offering opportunity and hope for humanity, derived from a unique balance of public and private interests governed by constitutional ideals that are focused on personal and economic freedom.

Freedom is fundamental to American Exceptionalism. The central moral idea of America is that individuals, by right, should be free to choose their own destiny and that the purpose of government is to insure the freedom of individuals.

And freedom is fundamental to the Hollywood Hero. Hollywood filmmaking assumes that the hero has free will. The Hero is presented with numerous moral choices during the course of the movie, just as we are faced with moral choices in life. When he makes the wrong moral choice, things go badly. When he makes the right moral choice…well, things may still go badly and it will be a tough fight, but in the end the good will win out.

The blessings of Freedom are the “opportunity and hope” that America Exceptionalism brings to humanity. And freedom is the inspirational message behind the Hollywood Hero.

As one example, there’s this 2005 shot from a huge protest rally in Beirut after Syria brazenly assassinated a Lebanese politician.

The two things I want you to focus on…er, ah…I mean the one thing I want you to focus on is the sign. It reads “They can take our lives…but they can never take our freedom.”

It is, of course, a quote from this scene in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart. And it is one example of how the American movie culture influences politics – not just here in America, but across the globe.

Modern authoritarian leaders from Stalin to Hugo Chavez (aided by their useful idiots) understand the need to control the production of movies within their countries and limit the influence of American films. Why? Because they fear the call to freedom that the Hollywood Hero can inspire in their audiences.

Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush believed in American Exceptionalism. Both men believed that freedom can inspire the hearts of all humanity, whether they lived behind the Iron Curtain or the beneath the heel of despotic Arab/Islamic rule.

And what of the current President?

Barack Obama recently traveled overseas and was asked by a reporter if he believed in American Exceptionalism. As he so often does, he tried to please everybody with carefully worded nonsense.

First, he admitted that America has a leading role in the world by virtue of its political principles and past sacrifices. But the politician in him quickly followed up with boilerplate internationalist palavar, saying that Americans should be “humble” and create “partnerships” and “compromise” with other countries. However, he prefaced his remarks with the following, which tips us off to his real state of mind:

“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

Even a cartoon character knows enough to call Barbara Streisand on this political blather. Quoting from The Incredibles:

Dash: But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our powers made us special.

Helen: Everyone’s special, Dash.

Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is.

Obama doesn’t really believe in American Exceptionalism because every nation thinks it is exceptional, which as Dash rightly points out, means nobody is.

For Obama – as it is with all leftists – values are subjective and relative; one nation’s values are as good as another, which is why compromise is always the ultimate virtue. That’s why Obama has no misgivings about “fundamentally transforming” our nation away from it’s traditional American values and towards the values of socialist Europe. It’s better to be just another humble, compromising, partner nation of the G20 than a “shining city upon a hill.”

But even then, he gets it spectacularly wrong when he “suspects” all nations believe in their own exceptionalism.

They don’t. And that’s one of the things that makes America exceptional.

The Pew Research Center conducted a polls of 91,000 people in fifty nations and found that “Three-quarters of Americans say they are proud to be Americans; only one-third of the people in France, Italy, Germany, and Japan give that response about their own countries.”

And more: “Two-thirds of Americans believe that success in life depends on one’s own efforts; only one-third of Europeans say that.”

This is precisely why the Hollywood Hero was not born in France, Italy, Germany or Japan. We Americans take pride in the moral principles that guide our country and the Hollywood Hero is the cinematic expression of these American values. And since we believe that our success in life depends on our own efforts, we give our heroes a Hollywood Ending.

Along with “The American Dream” and “The American Way of Life,” “The Hollywood Ending” is a favorite epithet of intellectuals – both American and European – to heap scorn on the inspirational principles that shape the American experience.

That’s because the Hollywood Ending is the very definition of inspiration. The Hollywood Ending makes us feel that we want to do something and believe that we can do it.

When the guy gets the girl, it’s a Hollywood Ending, and it makes us makes us feel that getting the girl is worthwhile and we can get the girl in our own lives.

When the soldier wins the battle, it’s a Hollywood Ending, and it makes us feel that winning battles is worthwhile and we can win the battles against our enemies.

When Rooster and Mattie bring the killer of Mattie’s father to justice, it’s a Hollywood Ending, and it makes us feel that showing fortitude like Rooster and Mattie is worthwhile and we can call on fortitude in our own lives.

All of these are Hollywood Endings, that is, a story ending where the hero’s moral choices lead logically to happiness. Often the hero is fighting for more than his own personal happiness; he is fighting for the happiness of his loved ones, his friends or his country. And, as is often the case in real life, he will sacrifice himself for the sake of others. The deaths of Walt Kowalski in Gran Tornio and William Wallace in Braveheart are examples of the sacrifices heroes suffer so that others may benefit from freedom. It’s no accident that the final shout of defiance from Wallace before his death – Freedom! – is achieved by the film’s ending. The hero dies, but the audience still gets its Hollywood Ending.

There is one sense in which it is proper to sneer at a Hollywood Ending…when the ending is not justified by what has gone before it, that is, it is not a logical plot outcome. But then, that’s a knock on bad writing, not the Hollywood Ending itself.

The Hollywood Ending is identified with American movie making and American moral values. The Hollywood Ending is a reflection of the basic American optimism. It is not a blind optimism, which is a belief that things will work out no matter what, but it is a pragmatic optimism, which is a belief that things will work out if we apply ourselves towards that end. It’s the difference between an unjustified Hollywood Ending and a justified one.

Americans believe that individuals are efficacious, that is, producing or capable of producing an intended result. Because individuals are efficacious, the main characters are able to influence the outcome of the plot. This is the justification for the Hollywood Ending…because we are free to choose, we are able to influence the course of our lives. This is the central inspiration that the Hollywood Hero and the Hollywood Ending offers.

In many ways, the Hollywood Hero is alive and well today. He may no longer work as a cowboy, but he’s found new employment in dramas, police thrillers, science-fiction and fantasy movies. While modern film heroes often embrace conservative (and I would argue, fundamental) American values, the leftist filmmakers themselves are loath to admit it. (Remember the “Is Batman Bush?“ debate?) Creating a heroic character whose virtue is fortitude is something people want to see. But it’s hard to create an inspiring hero out of someone who wants to be “humble” and create “partnerships” and “compromise.” There’s Ghandi and…um…well, there’s Ghandi. That’s why leftist screenwriters in Hollywood always talk like Obama in public, but write like Reagan on their scriptwriting word processors.

I believe that Hollywood Hero will continue to thrive because there is something that Hollywood loves and respects more than leftist ideology.

It’s called money. You may have heard of it.

The producers of Hollywood can read the all-time top-grossing film chart as well as you. They know that the Hollywood Hero is a good bet, and they will continue to back that horse. After all, they won’t get to keep their front lot production bungalow if they keep betting the rent money on last-place anti-America nags like Rendition, Redacted, Syriana, and Stop Loss.

That’s why I’m optimistic about boss Andrew Breitbart’s belief that “The revolution must begin in Hollywood.” My advice to conservative/libertarian/Republican screenwriters is to simply keep writing the Hollywood Hero, with moral themes that emphasize conservative/libertarian/Republican principles that will inspire the audience. Remember: everyone in Hollywood talks like a socialist, but acts like a capitalist. Use that to your advantage.

Oh, and give your hero a Hollywood Ending…he deserves it, and so does your audience.

Enough theory! Next time, some practical advice on how to write your screenplay.