Rambo And Dirty Harry Look example essay topic

Men love action movies. Masculinity dictates that they have to - How can you not like someone who perfectly fits that ideal male image you have in your head? I've been a huge fan of actions movies as long as I can remember. Give me a big guy with big guns, a fresh mouth and have him kill the bad guy at the end and I'll be satisfied. For years, I never questioned why I liked these movies so much.

However, at some point during this course I began to think about action movies and how they were linked to our images of masculinity. I wanted to know why men turned out in droves to watch the same formula carried out by different actors over and over. I decided to look at the action hero and how he fits in with the current prevailing ideal image of male masculinity. Using three specific characters from three different eras I examined why these action heroes were portrayed as they are, why they act like they do, and how they are related to that era's society. The action hero is a reflection of the current image of masculinity.

How he looks, how he acts, his views and his objectives can all be traced to present feelings towards the male image and societal issues. However, there are certain qualities that the action hero possesses that haven't changed. These basic characteristics are what define him as an action hero, and are used as the foundation for his image. All action heroes can withstand an excessive amount of pain.

Bullets, stab wounds and profuse amounts of bleeding are mere distractions to the completion of their task. Since showing injury is perceived as 'weak' and 'feminine', an action hero takes this stereotype to an absurd level. An average man demonstrates his masculinity by not wincing after stubbing his toe; an action hero demonstrates his mythical masculinity by taking a bullet to the leg and just grating his teeth and continuing like nothing ever happened. The action hero is always fighting for a higher cause not understood by the common man. In each instance some institution of society misunderstands his goals and tries to prevent him from completing his task. Be it the government, the police, or the city bureaucracy, there is always someone out there who doesn't see things at his level.

No action hero is ever evenly matched. The odds are always stacked against him, and he's the underdog until near the end when he finally gets the upper hand and succeeds in his quest. The whole 'root for the underdog' motif is an integral part of almost any type of competition in society. For some reason, even though we always know the action hero is going to win out in the end, we are that much more satisfied by him having to overcome impossible odds to succeed. I'm going to digress a bit here, but I just saw 'Gladiator' this weekend and I brought my lens of masculinity with me. It wasn't sufficient for him to be a slave and always win battles stacked against him to the death in the arena.

He also happens to have been personally wronged by the emperor, the most powerful man in Rome who coincidentally desperately wants him dead. Even though I immediately picked up on the underdog theme, I could not help being that much more satisfied at the end due to the hero's victory. It's a general action movie trend that the more impossible the odds are for the main character, the more satisfying to the audience his success is. Bravery varies directly with masculinity - the braver you are the 'more of a man' you are. The action hero takes bravery to a new extreme.

Fear is an unknown emotion to them. No matter what the odds, no matter how bad the situation seems to be, the action hero is unwavering. He will jump head first into any situation, no matter how slim the chance of victory. Every man wishes that he has the 'guts' to get him through any situation, and the action hero does, living up to his mythical masculinity.

The last generic quality the action hero possesses is his decision-making skills. Decisions regarding the fate of the world are made in seconds, with no second-guessing and no regrets. The ability to make life-changing decisions in a split-second is a fairy tale, and yet the action hero does it so frequently. I wanted to focus more on recent action heroes and their relation to the current images of masculinity. I decided to start with the 1970's and take who I considered to be the most prominent action hero from each decade.

Dirty Harry, Rambo, and John McClane from the Die Hard series were the three men I chose to represent the movie going public's favorite hero of each decade. Dirty Harry was released in 1971, and was vastly different than any action movie before it. He created the 'bad cop' image, the first in a genre that would spawn many more movies based on the original formula. If you look at Dirty Harry by today's standards, there's nothing striking about him. We " ve come to expect much more out of our action heroes than audiences did thirty years ago (That seems way too long ago.

). But if you examine Dirty Harry's looks from an early 1970's masculinity perspective you will see that he fits their ideal image to a 'T'. One thing that I found particularly interesting was Dirty Harry's clothing. Unlike future action heroes like Arnold, Stallone and even Bruce Willis, he's always fully dressed. I noticed this during the second or third movie of his that I watched, but he is always wearing a full suit. Not even his forearms are showing.

The Dirty Harry series takes place before the whole 'gym culture' masculinity began, before we began to place such an emphasis on the build of our heroes. Dirty Harry was as tough as they come, but you weren't able to tell just by looking at him. He relied on his overall appearance and demeanor instead of his physique. At the time, height was a much larger factor than size was in judging a man's appearance. Dirty Harry is over six feet tall, and another thing I noticed after watching all these movies again is that in any confrontational situation of any sort, Dirty Harry is always taller and looking down on the other person. Men's facial expressions where much more controlled than they are today, and Dirty Harry certainly held up that theory.

The only expression you'd ever see from Harry is a sneer or half-smile, usually accompanied by his famous words "Do you feel lucky... ". Dirty Harry certainly does his part to fulfill the roles of an action hero. In each of the movies he is wounded in some manner but it has almost no effect on his progress throughout the rest of the movie.

In the first Dirty Harry film, he takes a shotgun shot to the knee and still proceeds to take out four armed bank robbers. Later in the film he's almost beaten to death, but he's still out hunting criminals the next day with a patch on the leg. The higher cause Dirty Harry fights for is quite obvious - justice. He upholds his version of the law, and there's no one that will prevent him from doing so. He's rarely evenly matched; take the example of him vs. the four armed bank robbers from the first movie, or him first the youth movement criminals in sudden impact. The odds don't matter, Harry always comes out on top.

His bravery is readily apparent throughout his movies - you " ll never see Harry back down from a tough job or an unbalanced gunfight. Last but not least, Harry never once second-guesses himself. After watching all five of his movies not once does he hesitate to shoot someone, even if they are holding a hostage at gunpoint. After placing myself in a 1970's mindset and watching his movies again, I was able to much better understand exactly why Dirty Harry was so popular with his audience. In the later 1960's early 70's it became commonplace for the media to focus much more on the criminals and not the victims. People were beginning to feel that the criminals were more important, and in such high-profile cases as the Charles Manson case the criminals were getting off on a technicality.

In a 'world gone soft's society needed someone to take the law into his or her own hands and serve justice when the courts couldn't. People just ate it up when Harry would take the crimes to a personal level, like when the villain murders an innocent girl or hijacks a school bus. It's because they felt that their current society was allowing criminals to get away these kinds of acts and it was pleasing to see someone give them their dues. The late 60's early 70's era also saw an increasing number of serial killers. The Manson's, the Zodiac Killer, the Boston Strangler, it seemed that every year one would pop up somewhere and go on a rampage before finally being subdued. Dirty Harry was society's answer to the serial killer, a guy who would make it his business to take them out as quick as possible.

Here's a guy who didn't need to worry about police shortcomings or bureaucratic red tape. There's no question in any of the movie's whether or not Harry will get his man, but people still loved to watch it. The era in which Harry started was also that in which political correctness began to take shape. Initially a lot of people were very against it, but they could not voice it in the workplace or in public because of fear of repercussions. Along comes Harry Callahan who goes completely against everything political correctness stood for and it's just another thing that people loved him for. We move on almost ten years to a different action hero - John Rambo.

Like Dirty Harry, he's the first in a genre that today is a common theme in action movies. Unlike Dirty Harry, Rambo's physical prowess is blatantly visible on screen. Lord knows how much time Sylvester Stallone invested in getting such a ridiculous body. The difference between why Rambo and Dirty Harry look as they do is centered on the gym culture.

As I said earlier, there was no desire to see Dirty Harry's muscles. All you had to do was be tall, and that satisfied the physical aspect of masculinity. Fast forward to 1984, when Rambo 2 comes out. The body-builder physique has been deemed a requirement for action heroes, largely due to the builds of Stallone and Arnold.

Stallone looks almost inhuman in Rambo 2, and for the rest of the series he doesn't wear a shirt. It doesn't matter if he's in the middle of the jungle, or spending a freezing cold night in Afghanistan. Rambo only displayed one emotion, the one deemed acceptable by the code of masculinity. Rambo was very capable of displaying anger, as was evident in all of his movies.

Only once, and for about ten seconds did he display sadness, and that quickly turned to anger. His 'girl' was shot in Rambo 2 so in this case it was masculinely acceptable for Rambo to mourn her, but the killers quickly showed their face and Rambo was back to anger mode, gunning them all down. If anyone fits the ideal action hero qualities, it's Rambo. It's almost as if the mold was created from him. Rambo's ability to withstand excessive pain is well documented. Whether he's stitching himself up in the woods, or cauterizing bullet wounds with gunpowder there's nothing that's going to stop this man.

No human being is capable of sustaining the injuries Rambo did and still be able to perform his tasks. But that's why he's Rambo. The higher cause that Rambo fights for is easily visible as well. He's trying to win the wars that our country couldn't. He fights for what is right, not what is in our government's best interests. Both of the outcomes of his war-related movies are against the government officials' wills.

Rambo is also one of the most absurdly outmatched action heroes there is. While he's only outnumbered about 15 to 1 in the first movie, by the end of the third Rambo movie he's taking on entire armored divisions by himself. Rambo is a one-man killing machine who will be victorious, no matter what they odds. They take it a little too far in Rambo 3 in the clip I should in class with him naked with a grenade launcher first the entire Russian army. This directly ties into Rambo's bravery. Being sent in as lone man into the heart of Vietnam or war-torn Afghanistan is no problem.

Rambo certainly isn't afraid of anything. He knows no fear, and there is no task he will not accept. Lastly, Rambo never second-guesses his decisions. He rarely thinks, but when he does he makes his decisions in a split-second and doesn't look back. When faced with the choice of whether or not to surrender to an armored Russian division or to go back and get the POW's, Rambo seems to make the decision before he even thinks about it.

Without a doubt he fits perfectly into the action hero mold. I've always been a huge Rambo fan, but I never really thought to look at why such a simple character could generate such a popular following. After carefully viewing the films again, it became obvious how Rambo struck a cord with society. In the 1980's there were two wars that the public felt America did / was doing poorly in. The Vietnam War was viewed by most people as a poorly run debacle, and sentiments were similar to the cold war. On the other side of this you have the Vietnam veterans, who felt their country wronged them and is ignoring them and trying to forget what they did.

The Vietnam issue was nicely pushed to the back burner by the media, but only a decade later it was still pretty fresh in a lot of people's minds. Along comes Rambo and solves everything. Not only does he right the wrongs of the American government in Vietnam, but also he rescues the POW and brings the attention of the veterans to the forefront. If this isn't enough, he goes to war for us again, this time defeating the Russians in a war we could never have. Rambo became the symbolic American soldier, capable of solving any conflict that the useless bureaucrats couldn't.

All of the above symbolism is readily apparent, but a very interesting piece of symbolism I discovered in Rambo shows the character's ties with the very core of masculinity. The oldest example of recorded mythical masculinity is that of David and Goliath. In each Rambo movie, John Rambo is pitted against a helicopter of some sorts. A single man vs. a helicopter is ground for comparison by itself. But in each movie, the helicopter grows in strength while Rambo stays the same.

The action hero must continually prove himself; once he's already done something he cannot do it again. His tasks must be more and more difficult, or his bravery could be questioned. In the first Rambo, he takes out a simple police chopper with a sniper on it. In Rambo 2 it's him versus a Vietnamese attack chopper. Then in Rambo 3, he takes on a fully armored Russian gunship that has sufficient firepower to lay waste to a city. In each case Rambo does the impossible; defeating the larger more powerful enemy.

John McClane is the third hero that I put my lens of masculinity to. He's the 90's action hero, a guy who can be emotional and contains characteristics of the average man and yet he is still capable of incredible feats. No longer was the American public satisfied with these one-dimensional unstoppable killing machines. The people wanted someone they could identify with, but at the same time could still perform the duties required by every action hero. McClane has a past with a wife that leads up to his current situation. He's trying to balance a career, a wife, and two kids.

He's everybody's family man who just happens to be incredibly resourceful and ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unlike the previous two heroes discussed, he has flaws and shows weaknesses and emotions. At times, he even makes a mistake. Bruce Willis is a little toned down from the sculpted body of Rambo, but he's still head and shoulder's above Eastwood's fully clothed Dirty Harry.

Usually found in a wife-beater or small white t-shirt McClane is without a doubt a muscular guy, but not on a superhuman level like Stallone. While the gym culture was just as influential as ever, attitudes had shifted from pure bodybuilding bulk to being 'ripped'. Not overly large, but very fit, and very toned. Perhaps the biggest difference between McClane and previous action heroes is the fact that he has a wife, and she is not simply a distraction or the damsel in distress.

She's a take-charge career woman, who while not comfortable with it she handles dealing with the terrorists. A wife and kids certainly complicates our previous image of the lone warrior with no ties to the real world. Despite all these changes from our previous two action heroes, McClane still did his part in fulfilling the core attributes of the action hero. His ability to withstand pain is unquestionable; after crawling through a room filled with glass and slicing his feet to shreds you never see him limp again. At first it may be tough to see what higher cause he's fighting for as it differs from our previous men, as it may not seem as lofty - he's just trying to save his wife. Of course the police don't understand him and in each movie he's arguing with some type of ignorant policeman throughout the movie.

He's never even close to being evenly matched; each movie pits just him versus a group of well-armed and very intelligent terrorists, who he proceeds to slowly kill off. Taking on a coordinated group of international terrorists in your bare feet and a wife-beater certainly qualifies him for the absurd bravery characteristic. While he's different from our previous heroes in the fact that he makes wrong decisions, there is still no looking back for John McClane. Just like the previous two categories, John McClane's relationship with society is also different than that of Dirty Harry and Rambo.

Die Hard came out in a time in which terrorist hijackings were beginning to become increasingly familiar, almost all with bad outcomes. Here's a guy on the inside who just happens to be there by accident and saves the day. Countless movies have followed in this fashion, but Die Hard pioneered the formula. However, the similarities end here. The masculinity of the villain's were just as important to this movie as it's hero.

The male image was becoming much more complicated during this time, and the character's reflected this. Willis' character was not a far cry from your average guy, and his enemies were no longer powerless, anti-masculine men like in the previous two cases. Unlike Dirty Harry and Rambo who were superior to their enemies in every manner, Die Hard's villains seemed if anything better than our hero. Not only was he an underdog by numbers, now he was an underdog in ability.

It was just that much more satisfying to the audience to see him still come out on top. The action hero is arguably the most 'masculine' of roles taken in Hollywood. It's very interesting to examine three different men, each who pioneered their respective action movie genres, and how they relate to society and each other. The changes in characters can be measured against changes in society and it's prevailing image of masculinity, but at their core each man still obeys the basic characteristics of the action hero. Each man is compiled from current masculine theory and traits of his predecessors.

This creates the mythical male, the ideal image which American men base themselves against. NOTE Whether this is necessary or not, I felt the need to explain my lack of sources. I put a lot of time into this project, both presentation and paper. I don't want you to think that since I lack a page worth of work's cited that I didn't do any research. On the contrary, I spent a great deal of time on it.

While very little of my research centered on reviews and journal articles, I did watch all of the movies involved with my characters. While I had already seen all of them, it was in watching them again with my lens of masculinity that I was able to come to all of my conclusions.