A Brief History of Action Movie Heroes Categorized by What "Type of Guy" They Are: Part One
From The Invention of Cinema Until Right Before The Hays Code
Recently, my husband and I went about five miles out to sea and camped on a cold and drought-ridden island about the size of a large parking lot. We did this as a way to safely be anywhere else at all besides our apartment for the first, and so far only, time this year. There are somehow residents on this island, but they openly despise all outsiders and the lighthouse keeper told us that we are not legally allowed to approach their cottages.
To which we said, “Right ho!” because there’s still a pandemic happening and we had signed up for this level of social distance on purpose.
Seth reads very fast, so he finished his book before the end of the trip. I had also brought a book, but kept spacing out every few pages, which was not the book’s fault. I’ve been having “short-term memory issues” that look kind of like attention span issues, but I recognize as part of a cognitive disability that comes and goes in severity, and which has been on the moderate-to-severe end for about a year now. When it comes to words and language, my experience of this is best conveyed by that episode of Batman: The Animated Series where Bruce Wayne figures out he’s in a dream because he can’t read.
Right, so, it is exactly like this, except that I’m awake and cannot pinch myself out of it.
Anyway, devoid of other distractions and full of fresh, freezing-cold ocean air with a whiff of hostility, we started discussing the “Type of Guy” phenomenon. Primarily, Seth wanted to know if you had to be a guy to be a type of guy (you don’t).
With that settled quickly, Seth either asserted that, or wanted to know if, Jason Borne from The Borne Identity was a Type of Guy, and we started talking about action hero archetypes in English-language movies in general, and why some characters and some genres appeal more than others at given cultural moments. This sequence in the conversation may or may not be fully accurate (see also: “short-term memory issues”) but that was the gist.
I guess I should mention that we generally, or previously, had completely different knowledge of and taste in movies. We’ve gone to see one in a theater together less than half a dozen times in the five years we have known each other (it is just one of those things that has not mattered much before). But now it’s The Stay Home Times, so anything goes, and we’re both catching up and having dork-ass conversations about media.
Since returning from the Isle of Cold Solitude, our list for action movie heroes as Types of Guys got very long and became yet another one of my sporadic series.
Here are the first three:
A Brief History of Action Movie Heroes Categorized by What "Type of Guy" They Are: Part One
From The Invention of Cinema Until Right Before The Hays Code
1. Western Sheriff Guy
The Great Train Robbery (1903)
Hat, badge, gun, horse, the whole deal.
Maybe the original action movie hero. If only by default, because when some people invented the pulp magazine, it made the already-popular Western adventure story also-popular with East coast urban audiences. This was around the same time that some other people invented the movies, making it possible for audiences to go to them.
Sometimes he’s a mob of townspeople, sometimes he’s a specific Law Dude. Either way he is, functionally, an individual and rugged individualist. An optimist, too, in a sense. He succeeds through sheer blunt force more than brawn, per se, or anything else.
He thinks he’s protecting the quaint little settler train on its way to and the quaint little settler town from gangs of bandits and pissed-off Native Americans.
Does he think about why, maybe, they are so pissed off? No, he does not.
I don’t know why he’s called a “cowboy” when he works out of a dusty office with a jail cell in it.
Zero cows in there.
Another thing he does not think about is that most real cowboys were probably Mexican, African-American, and Native American, but they are not in his movie.
He’s just a weird white cop dressed like a cattle rancher.
The main thing he thinks about is the extreme “brutality” of the landscape that he invited himself to, and how it parallels the extreme “brutality” of the society that he contributes to from a position of enormous influence.
He does ride a horse very fast, and sometimes into the sunset! But that sounds painful, for both him and the horse?
Ah, but the brutality thing. Right.
Still, the horse did not sign up for this. And parking your horse by a water trough does not count as animal husbandry.
He is one of many, many Types of Guy who know in their hearts that all vehicles are girls and all dogs are boys. Therefore, by reverse-deduction, one can only conclude that this particular Type of Guy believes that female horses are steam locomotives and male horses are tame coyotes. This is especially evident since “Horse Girls” exist but “Horse Guys” are illegal and forbidden as a concept (due to the horses being vehicles and dogs).
Oh, here he comes, big tough Guy tying up the reins of his motorcycle-horse (a girl). He’s gonna mosey on up to that there saloon.
At high noon.
On the floor, there’s a spittoon.
Upright piano out of tune.
Some hay and piss about the floor is: strewn.
He did stop that train robbery. Though another thing he does not think about is the exploitation of the Chinese railroad workers who built the transcontinental railroad.
I would like to watch a Western action hero movie about all of the things he does not think about.
And if I cannot have that, I would like this movie to have more close ups of the choo-choo train.
2. Romantic Swashbuckler Guy
The Mark of Zorro (1920)
Slinging guns somehow less exciting following end of World War I. Were there guns in World War I? I think there were. I’m remembering something now about how they got “extra” big and fast and efficient at murdering. So, understandably, now it’s all about slapping those who dishonor you with one from a set of bespoke monogrammed gloves, and dueling with swords.
Ideally, the sword is monogrammed, too.
The handkerchief (also monogrammed) must be left somewhere sort of naughty to effectively send a message to a lover and/or rival.
All of the above should, furthermore, match the belt, which match the shoes, and so on and so forth.
He is officially driven by strong inner morals or honor or whatever, but everyone knows he’s a peacock who lives for drama. He is agnostic to the law, which will become a cornerstone of all wealthy costumed vigilantes. You do not want to be close friends with him, but you know to invite him to every party worth dressing up for.
Costume balls for no reason are not out of the question here. Fabricate a birthday or debut if you have to, I don’t care. I want to see masks and manners and capers and intrigue.
Adherence to geography and history is also unimportant to him. The stakes and consequences of the plot, I think, are the rope stunts performed in the outfits. It’s like the circus, but inside a series of mansions instead of a big top tent.
Look, it’s not just the war. Booze is illegal now, too, so you can forget about forgetting about reality in the conventional ways. Sometimes we escape our lives with a story about nothing, but not the avant garde kind of story where nothing happens. The fluffy kind of story about nothing where everything happens.
Who is he fighting again? Some empire? I thought he was the landed gentry of that empire? Was it a different one? Oh, okay. I can’t really tell, but he has the better mustache, so I’m rooting for him.
Just the finest, tiniest little mustache (also monogrammed)!
Justice is only satisfying if is fun and a little poetic and there are feathered caps and tight pants with lots of buttons and embroidery. Rogues! Rapscallions! Royalty!
“One of the most flamboyant Hollywood film genres.”
3. Mafioso Noir Guy
Little Caesar (1931)
Sweaty, short, “accent.”
Does crimes. In the mob, or trying to be, but it doesn’t matter if he’s an eager young hothead or the grand patriarch of the Legitimate Businessmen’s Social Club: the paranoia never quite leaves him.
“Well, geeze bawse, just ‘cause y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ youse is paranoid d̶o̶e̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ don’t mean there i̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶o̶n̶e̶ ain’t nobody out to get y̶o̶u̶ ya…”
True, he is also someone to fear, but if there aren’t days you wouldn’t like people to be a little afraid of you, too, eh? To do some of the things he does… the things he gets away with…
He doesn’t make it look easy, but he doesn’t need to. Ain’t nothing easy these days!
Everything is hot baloney and the gum is in the works, eh? There’s a Great Depression going on, maybe ya’heard about it, genius. An honest day’s work is for the birds! The security of institutions a hot load of creamed meatloaf!
The American Dream? Don’t talk to him about no rottin’ stinkin’ American Dream… P’tooey!
He spits on the sidewalk to sublimate his despair. He stands still even as it starts to rain, as though he is waiting for something to arrive, something more important than acknowledging how uncomfortable it’s going to be walking around in wet shoes all night.
Because it is night time, as it is always night time for him. Daytime is for scrubs, pills, and Abercrombies, anyways!
Sweaty again. He switches tactics: pacing like a man on a mission, pretending that his wet shoes are not chafing like all hell and furthermore making a ridiculous squeaky-sloshy sound. His footfalls on the pavement sound like a̶ ̶c̶l̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶u̶n̶d̶e̶r̶w̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ an ickie making whoopee.
Well, zoots and cahoots to the rain, then, and the wind too! He squints into the storm. Storms are like dames, he thinks, certain that this means something.
He squints at everything. He needs glasses to see at night, which as you know, it always is for him. Night is when he gets his real work done in the back rooms of the Tom Tom Boom Boom Kids Bop Badda Bing Gum Gum Egg Cream Club, and he can’t be having the boys see him in those off-the-cob spectacles, you dig?
Squintily, he paces right into a trash can. Or maybe it’s a mailbox, or a tree. He’s not sure. Doesn’t matter. Landscape? Who gives a hoot about the brutality of some landscape? None of nature’s indifference can match man’s inhumanity to man, which is also like a dame, he thinks.
He feels of wave of anger and lashes out, just like his old man.
He feels a wave of homosexual desire and lashes out, just like his old man.
He lights up a stogie, right there in the storm, setting fire to his remaining vulnerabilities.
As well as what, indeed, turns out to be a tree.
To be continued.