Lights, action �� control 'em! Hollywood has shaped the "tough guy" image of the USA and exports this "don't mess with me" persona to the rest of the world as its contribution to the advancement of American jingoism and imperialism

California has the undeserved reputation of being a liberal stronghold, a land of progressive new ideas. In fact, politically it tends toward the conservative. From the venal and criminal to the sloppy and dull-witted, California has given the United States Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan as two of its more popular Republican presidents.

But politics notwithstanding, Hollywood, in particular, is often portrayed as the last great liberal holdout in California. Yet, again, nothing could be further from the truth.

In reality, especially in terms of foreign affairs, Hollywood has operated as the principle cultural sponsor of American imperialism (the others being the printed press and electronic news media). I am not talking about so-called cultural imperialism--like the McWorld argument or that Hollywood exports have overrun domestic film markets worldwide to the point of oblivion. Instead, I am referring to the more old-fashioned imperialism, the kind built on land seizure, racism, sexism, gunboat diplomacy, with a dash of genocide occasionally thrown in for good measure.

In the 20th century, American film--more persuasively and effectively than any other medium--sanctioned and championed Manifest Destiny, the name given in the 1840s for American-style imperialism. The basic tenets of Manifest Destiny averred that westward expansion was necessary, inevitable and inherently good.

To begin with, the idea ran, expansion would bring capitalism to the frontier and to the "savages" who lived there (Natives and Mexicans). Second, expansion would deliver democracy to these uncivilized, backward groups, the view being that Natives and Mexicans were not capable of running their own affairs. Third, and triumphantly, an intolerant and muscular Protestant Christianity would be forced upon the heathen Natives and Roman Catholic apostates (that is, Mexicans), all for their own good. In short, on the frontier Americans imagined themselves to be on an imperial mission from an aggressive, easily offended, intolerant deity.

This is well documented historically. In a blatant land grab the United States concocted a war with Mexico in 1846, claiming that Mexican forces had invaded the USA when the opposite was true. Further, driven by many of the same cultural notions that led Canada to attempt to starve its indigenous western populations into submission, the USA vanquished its western Natives to reservations in the late 1800s. And then, just as happened in Canada, it systematically violated the treaties, further reducing Indian land holdings by half--without batting an eye. The policies were known as assimilationism but are better understood as attempted cultural genocide.

But it doesn't stop there. Manifest Destiny didn't simply fade away after the historical western frontier was conquered and began to fill up with white American settlers. Instead, built firmly on notions of supposed American racial and cultural superiority, it continued and continues to drive USA foreign policy even to this very day.

For example, the war against Spain in 1898 landed the United States an empire that included Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. Or, in other cases, throughout the 20th century the United States intervened ceaselessly and shamelessly in Central American affairs, establishing puppet dictatorships, violently smashing democratic reformist movements, arming reactionary governments that in turn slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocents. All in the name of Manifest Destiny, though the name has fallen out of usage (in the case of Nicaragua in the 1980s, for example, Ronald Reagan characterized the reactionary death squads carrying out policies of wholesale imperial plunder as "freedom fighters," the moral equivalent of the founding fathers).

Or consider USA aggression in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, where American soldiers, in an oft-cited example, while fighting a Vietnamese enemy that basically wanted little more than to throw out a succession of foreign imperial powers (by turns French, Japanese, then French, and then American), literally envisaged themselves to be playing a game of cowboys and Indians. Or, more recently, the American invasion of Iraq, where the only thing missing has been the cinematic Arnold Schwarzenegger, a movie specialist in killing Arabs.

In fact, those ass-kicking roles that made Arnold a cultural icon and helped catapult him to the governor's seat in (where else!) California, are modeled on the same principles that gave rise to Manifest Destiny in the first place. Think about it. Arnold is basically a gunslinger, a cowboy, a western hero. His movie persona is by turns self-made, handsome, rugged, athletic, individualistic, democratic, hostile to authority, an excellent killer, and so on.

He's a John Wayne for the 21st century, where John Wayne was a filmic stand-in for the frontiersmen of 19th century novels such as James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. The point is not that these characters are unique, as they are presented and cast, but that they are standardized in American popular culture and history.

These heroes have served culturally and historically to personify and embody Manifest Destiny, the best of America's imaginary frontier in the flesh. Arnold beats up on Arabs where the Duke specialized in shooting Indians. And I say "imaginary" because Manifest Des tiny also exemplifies America's Frontier myth.

The Frontier myth is America's secular creation narrative--the story of how the waves of the historical frontier experience simultaneously birthed and cleansed the nation. In this way European culture was said to be stripped away by the challenges posed on and by the savage frontier; and then, in turn, through an ill-defined, nearly mystical, quasi-magical process of environmental determinism, America was born. That is, as the inevitable result of this transformation, the prototypical American emerged--Natty Bumpoo, John Wayne, Indiana Jones, the Marlboro Man--take your pick.

The consequence is that Manifest Destiny, which in reality stole a continent for the purposes of occupation and has subjected untold millions of others willy nilly to the results of its violent ethnocentric intolerance, is turned on its head: American imperialism becomes cast as anti-imperialism. The reasoning holds that because America was born in a nationalistically-affirming struggle against imperialism (the American war for independence) versus Great Britain in the 1770s, then it must by definition be opposed to colonialism in all its forms.

More accurately one might say that the United States was forged in a war versus Britain, an imperial power, even as it engaged in imperialism in its own right. In this way the breakup wasn't so much a divorce as it was the story of a child (the colony), weaned and fatted by its mother's imperialism, growing up to take its place at the table of imperial players with France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, and Spain.

Hollywood has played and continues to play an important role in this process for two reasons. First, movies serve as our most influential history teachers, reaching and swaying audiences that the professional historian cannot even dream of. Just think about it. You know what gladiators, Nazis, the Titanic and cowboys looked like because you've seen them in film (or, possibly worse, on television).

Second, the frontiersman represents the epitome of American masculinity. And he's everywhere fighting Indians, Nazis, Commies, Arabs, sissies and space creatures, playing out the mythical narrative of American birth and continual rebirth. Hollywood loves this guy because nothing is more American than he is (and, for corresponding reasons, he sells a lot of movie tickets). As a result, Hollywood has been instrumental in promoting America's imperial project. Without domestic support aggressive foreign policy is not workable in the long term (witness George W. Bush).

The formula pays rich dividends, too, whether it's Indiana Jones smacking down Arabs, Hart Solo gunfighting his way across the galaxy, Sigourney Weaver as Ripley playing against gender type by beating up an alien, or the Duke picking off Injuns/ Vietcong in the Green Berets. The choices are nearly endless and the recipe is simple. All you need is a version of the frontier story and a leading man who can play a plausible frontiersman--in short, a hunk and a few savages.

Visual images are far more effective than words in relating the simple emotive force of myth. A myth is nothing more than a story that a culture tells to itself about itself in order to portray itself in a positive light. It's all about perception. Physical reality is largely beside the point.

Here's the basic frontier mythical tale. See if you recognize it. A ruggedly handsome, innately clever and athletic white male simply appears on the frontier, where free land abounds.

He's challenged. Maybe it's from Indians, Mexicans, men in black hats, varmints, whatever. Doesn't matter. The point is the setting--civilization versus savagery. And that the white guy prevails.

He saves the day and he sets the standard.

He conquers the land and makes it his own. He makes it fit for civilization, for women and children and decency and apple pie. It's the movie Far and Away, starring Tom Cruise. It's Richard Harris in Man in the Wilderness. It's Bogart in African Queen. John Wayne in Hondo, in the Man Who Shot Lierty Valance, in Stagecoach. Gary Cooper in The Virginian. Kevin Costner as the fair-haired saviour of all Indians (except the Pawnee) in Dances with Wolves. Star Wars. Dirty Harry. And on and on.

It's nearly everywhere in American popular culture. And its signifiers are so powerful--tumbleweed, Monument Valley, cowboys, feathered headdresses, gunfighters, saloons, men on horseback, Clint Eastwood's eyes, that they have the power to invoke the myth in stories that fall well outside the frontier--as in advertising, science fiction, action movies, and the like.

While the symbols may seem innocuous--say, an ad for a jeep sitting atop a mesa in Arizona, or the skin color of the evil lion in Lion King, or the Hispanic accent of the bad bugs in a Bug's Life--they subtly reinforce (or not so subtly in the case of a typical Schwarznegger flick) white American conquest.

Of course there are a few very good exceptions, some of which have been fashioned by Hollywood's best (though don't expect Ebert and Roeper to have noticed from the confines of their insular little box). For example, Stanley Kubrick's brilliant Full Metal Jacket tackles the frontier myth straight on. Among its many observations, the film concludes that stripping culture away does not create Marlboro Men but instead fashions beasts. Then there is Howard Hawks' expansive and seminal Red River, full of frontier homo-eroticism on the hoof. Or the Big Lebowski, set against the backdrop of the Gulf War. Or Spike Lee's 25th Hour, which explores 9-11 and the frontier myth. Or Maggie Greenwald's gender-bending Ballad of Little Joe.

But make no mistake about it. The frontier rules in America. Just look at the White House today. Doesn't Bush style himself on Shane, the steadfast tin soldier of kinder, gentler hegemony? But isn't he really Captain Willard, the deluded elephant played by John Wayne in the Green Berets?

Mark Anderson teaches history at the University of Regina and is particularly interested in how the media exerts its power to influence and to tell people how to think.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Briarpatch, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group