• “To understand how the Wayne phenomenon revises the Westerns in which he appears by introducing twentieth-century preoccupations and attitudes into the 1880s, it is necessary to understand how noir elements work. In the hardboiled tradition, the connection between characters and milieu is extremely important because states of the inner world, the mind and emotions, are transmitted by expressionist techniques of exaggerated or distorted representations of the outer world” (890).
• “Only the fittest, the strongest, and the most ruthless survive in the noir frontier, those who…draw a gun faster than anyone else” (891).
• “Wayne’s Westerns, generally considered to be reactionary narratives that reinforce the conservative status quo, furnish their audiences with a revised vision of the American West, one that reflects the postwar disillusionment and realism characteristic of the twentieth century. It may be said that after Hiroshima, America—and Western culture, for that matter—lost the last vestige of its innocence” (891).
• “…pervasive corruption, a seminal characteristic of the noir sensibility, is also the basis of characterization in Wayne’s Westerns….the Wayne persona is an antisocial loner who functions in a world peopled with sociopaths…where life is generally nasty, brutish, and short. Not surprisingly, therefore, unlike the traditional Western, the noir narratives of Wayne’s West are concerned with man’s savage nature rather than mankind’s ability to domesticate nature itself and create the garden that is ‘civilized’ America” (891).
• “In Wayne’s movies, cleanliness and dirt register how normal or abnormal a character’s psychology is. One can usually determine how aberrant characters are by their layers of grime—the dirtier their face, the darker their hearts…Outlaws…are severely disabled psychopaths. They are manipulative, callous, remorseless, parasitic, pathological liars with poor behavioral controls. Ironically, their disordered personalities, which disable them socially, enable them professionally.…in many of Wayne’s Westerns, sociopathic behavior…is carefully coupled with a critique of capitalism” (892-893).
• “…from Western films we can learn precious little about the historic American West, but often a great deal about the time and attitudes when a particular film was made” (894).
• “Wayne’s own political stance may have been conservative, but in these movies, his characters challenge and defeat ‘City Hall,’ ending the economic exploitation legitimized by the legal system and thereby appealing to their audience’s sense of natural decency” (894).
• “Existentialist thinking, which became popularized in America in the 1950s, is another important component of the noir framework and underpins much of the characterization and the action in Wayne’s West” (895).
• “In noir films, the world is ultimately corrupt and corrupting. Thus, decent, normally law-abiding citizens tend to find themselves enmeshed in situations that require them to become criminals. As in film noir, moral individualism and pervasive corruption are closely linked in Wayne’s Westerns” (896).
• “When one considers the Wayne canon, it becomes obvious that the Duke specialized in playing destabilized, alienated figures, socially marginalized men caught in double binds—in short, the modern existential antihero” (897).
• “Wayne’s…characters…can be counted on to act in good faith, however grudgingly…in spite of the cynicism and disillusionment reflected in Wayne’s movies, in John Wayne’s America, men are men because their behavior is fundamentally ethical” (899).
• “Wayne’s characters achieve their full human potential, living what may be considered a hardboiled, existential version of the good life, a life that in its completeness is both admirable and desirable to others” (900).
• “…what would usually be regarded as the good life is, in these Westerns, modified in a curious way—one may say ‘modernized’—by postwar disillusionment” (900).
• “In the traditional Western, men domesticate and regulate nature, and if they are not careful, they too are domesticated and regulated by the agents of civilization: lawmen, ministers, town sheriffs, and especially women. In such movies, the rugged individualist conforms to civilized norms. In Wayne’s West, however, the moral individualist is the norm” (902).
• “…the central relationships in the Western are conventionally those of the male hero and intimate (sidekick), and the central group is all male…In Wayne’s Westerns, however, when a woman is not the sidekick, it should be noted that these competing value systems are still carefully gendered” (903).
• “If Wayne’s student is a quick study…whatever the gender, she or he becomes ‘masculine’…the process of becoming a man emphasizes the modern preoccupation with individuality. Decision making becomes increasingly a matter for the individual rather than the collective conscience” (904).
• “As in 1967, when the Vietnam body count was at its highest, heroism on the Wayne frontier is not only an activity for the foolish idealist, but it is also the pastime of the immature. In Wayne’s movies, dying is not a glorious, romanticized activity….Refracting postwar disillusionment, Wayne’s Westerns critique not only the notion of heroism, but also long-held popular perceptions of who the hero was in the West of the 1880s....Behaving in good faith, however, is not always a solution to the problem posed by heroism, for it too can create moral tragedy” (905).
• “In Wayne’s movies, the American West is a noir place—an existential wilderness in which living successfully as an adult and being one’s own moral center involve balancing a set of necessary contradictions. Acting in bad faith also seems to ensure personal tragedy” (906).
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