“Tough Guise” is a study guide used to teach feminist media criticism in places such as UNC-Wilmington Prof. Donna King’s SOC 303: Mass Media and Society course. Produced by the Media Education Foundation, “Tough Guise” offers a glittering array of batty feminist complaints. One target is John Wayne. Examples:
… The women’s movement, the civil rights movement, and gay and lesbian rights movements presented a direct threat to traditional notions of manhood, rendering dominant straight, white masculinity visible and therefore vulnerable. The immense popularity of masculine icons such as John Wayne, Ronald Reagan and Sylvester Stallone might be seen, then, as an expression of longing for backlash versions of violent, traditional, dominant versions of masculinity …
The ultimate political manifestation of this backlash against the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s came in the election to the presidency in 1980 of the arch conservative Ronald Reagan. … His cowboy image and his right-wing beliefs represented a vision of America rooted deep in the past, when blacks were not demanding equality, when women accepted their second-class status, when gays were still in the closet. Basically, a past when men were still men and knew what that meant. … The relationship between John Wayne and Ronald Reagan shows us two important things. First, that the ideal of manhood that was being offered as an alternative to the changes of the 1960s and ’70s came from the past, when racism, sexism and homophobia were the norm. Second, that the image that people like Ronald Reagan were trying to reproduce was already an act that attempted to repress a more real, complex masculinity.
Why do I bring that up? To set up the following quotation from New Orleans Mayor Nagin today:
Now, I will tell you this — and I give the president some credit on this — he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is [Lt.] Gen. [Russel] Honore.
And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he’s getting some stuff done.