Essay - What Is A Hero Introduction What Is A Hero? and...

What is a Hero

Introduction

What ***** a hero? And wh*****t has one got to do with the movies? The answer to that question - which is really ***** ***** of how the mass media influence popular perceptions of the heroic and ***** Hero - is a complex one as are any significant questions that examine the relationship between ***** media ***** the culture that produces, absorbs, reflects and reifies them.

********** paper ********** one person who ***** much as *****one became the emblem of a hero in the 20th century bec*****use of the image that he portrayed on ***** big screen: John Wayne or ***** Duke. To say that he w***** a hero because of the roles ***** he played is not to imply that ***** was not himself a good *****. But we remember him today, and remember him as a ********** figure not because ***** his actions ***** an individual but because of the characters ***** he took on. It says something important about our ***** that *****, nearly a quarter of a century after Wayne's death, we still ***** his roles w*****reas few of us can probably name a single *****e of the paramedics, firefighters or private citizens killed in the attempt to save others dur*****g the attack on the World Trade Center. Even though most ***** us would acknowledge ***** ********** people are the true heroes - for what, after all, could be more heroic than risking and losing one's life to ***** the ***** of a stranger? - and that actors merely represent heroes, it is the actors ***** we remember.

********** paper examines first of all the life and the work of John Wayne, looking at some of the films on ***** his reputation as a virile hero is based before turning to a more general consideration of the role that ***** mass media have in shaping ***** notions of the heroic.

Marion Michael Morr*****on

John Wayne, born in 1907 ***** the nation's heartland, died in Los Angeles in 1979 after a career in which he made over 150 feature films. Born Marion Michael Morrison - although there is ***** confusion over h***** original middle name - *****e is now known by millions by his ***** name of John ***** - for what ac*****r could ever hope to be seen as truly manly with an androgynous name like *****? ***** or by ***** nick***** of the Duke. In most ***** his roles he ***** either a cowboy ***** a soldier, ***** man short on words ***** long on courage.

Wayne actually *****gan *****ing at Fox Films when he w***** ***** a student at the University of Southern California in ***** Angeles (and play*****g the manly sport of football). While *****orking in the prop-room ***** *****, Wayne met Director John Ford, who befriended him and by 1928 was giv*****g ***** small roles in ***** *****. Wayne's first leading role, ho*****ver, ***** not in a Ford film but rather in the 1930 Raoul Walsh movie