Harrison Ford: Masculinity and Stardom in Hollywood 9781788310925, 9781350152427, 9781350152441

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Harrison Ford

ii

Harrison Ford Masculinity and Stardom in Hollywood Virginia Luzón-Aguado

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Virginia Luzón-Aguado, 2020 Virginia Luzón-Aguado has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Charlotte Daniels Cover image: Harrison Ford in Witness (1985) directed by Peter Weir (© Paramount Pictures / RNB / Collection Christophel / ArenaPAL) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN:

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To Elsa and Norah

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Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1

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Harrison Ford, Masculinity, Stardom The Development of Masculinity Studies Masculinity Studies and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema Star Studies: From the Picture Personality to the Media Celebrity

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Harrison Ford, Hollywood’s Self-Made Man The Making of a Star: The Beginnings of Harrison Ford’s Career

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Harrison Ford and Male Individualism in Hollywood Enter Indiana Jones Broadening the Range: Blade Runner and Witness Weir (Again), Polanski, and a Look at the Dark Side Working Girl: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

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11 14 25

37 55 77 97 117

Harrison Ford, Hollywood’s Favorite Father Presumed Innocent: Is This Man as Innocent as He Looks? Regarding Henry: The Great Shift? Patriot Games: The Man Can’t Help It The Beleaguered Innocent, or “By Endurance We Conquer” Air Force One: Everyone’s Favorite President Six Days, Seven Nights: Intertextuality in Action! Random Hearts: Grief Encounter

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Harrison Ford and Aging Masculinity in Hollywood A Waning Star? Harrison Ford and the Complications of Aging Conclusion

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Films Cited Works Cited Index

133 150 168 189 209 227 244 257 279 285 289 308

List of Figures 1 and 2 Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand) gazes at her object of desire in The Way We Were (1973). The Way We Were (produced by Richard Roth, Ray Stark, 1973). 3 The US Dad as Hero: Harrison Ford as President James Marshall in Air Force One. Air Force One (produced by Gail Katz, Jonathan Shestack, Wolfgang Petersen, Armyan Bernstein. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, 1997). 4 Cocky Bob Falfa was the perfect harbinger for the later part of Han Solo. American Graffiti (produced by Francis Ford Coppola, Gary Kurtz, 1973). 5 Harrison Ford and Gene Hackman in Coppola’s grim 1974 masterpiece The Conversation. The Conversation (produced by Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Roos, 1974). 6 “The rapscallion of the Universe”: An updated parodic, and very sexy, ­version of the lone cowboy myth. Star Wars. Episode IV. A New Hope (produced by Gary Kurtz, George Lucas, 1977). 7 Harrison Ford truly excels as anxious Colonel Lucas in Coppola’s second Palme D’Or winner Apocalypse Now. Apocalypse Now (produced by Francis Ford ­Coppola, Gray Frederickson, Fred Roos, Tom Sternberg, 1979). 8 “Larger Than Life”: Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) is still haunted by shadows of the past. Raiders of the Lost Ark (produced by Howard G. Kazanjian, George Lucas, Frank Marshall, 1981). 9 The dark side of the hero is made patent by his arch-enemy Belloq. Raiders of the Lost Ark (produced by Howard G. Kazanjian, George Lucas, Frank Marshall, 1981). 10 and 11  “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage”: physical, and psychological, vulnerability are essential components of Indiana Jones’s brand of everyman heroism. Raiders of the Lost Ark (produced by Howard G. Kazanjian, George Lucas, Frank Marshall, 1981).

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57

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List of Figures

12 “No means yes?” Deckard and Rachael’s intensely unsettling love scene symbolizes the breakdown and dislocation of romance and affection in the modern/future world. Blade Runner (produced by Michael Deeley, Hampton Fancher, Brian Kelly, 1982). 13 Framing underlines John Book’s vulnerable position among the Amish. While he is forced to surrender his city-style masculinity in the form of a phallic gun, he will soon find other ways to reassert it. Witness (produced by Edward S. Feldman, David Bombyk, Wendy Stites, 1985). 14, 15, and 16 “Don’t know much about history, don’t know much ­biology …,” but Weir clearly knows “what a camera is for,” as his “A-student” use of framing in Witness indicates. Witness (produced by Edward S. Feldman, David Bombyk, Wendy Stites, 1985). 17 Although still unaware of it, Dr. Walker is holding the power of “the great whatsit” in his own hands. The same (phallic) visual metaphor will be replicated at the end of the film. Frantic (produced by Tim Hampton, Thom Mount, 1988). 18 and 19  As in classical noir, low-lit rooms, Venetian blinds, and awkward camera angles stand for morally distorted realities and the characters’ ambiguous motives. Presumed Innocent (produced by Sydney Pollack, Mark Rosenberg, Susan Solt). 20 The explicit representation of sexuality in Presumed Innocent conforms to generic parameters but introduces new meanings into Ford’s clean-cut persona. ­Presumed Innocent (produced by Sydney Pollack, Mark Rosenberg, Susan Solt). 21 and 22  Something old, something new: Harrison Ford excels as old Henry, which makes new Henry’s story of painful transformation seem implausible and ­rather dull in comparison. Regarding Henry (produced by J. J. Abrams, Robert Greenhut, ­Susan MacNair, Mike Nichols, Scott Rudin). 23 and 24  Harrison Ford and the “sex question”: Henry’s embarrassed face says it all. Regarding Henry (produced by J. J. Abrams, Robert Greenhut, Susan MacNair, Mike Nichols, Scott Rudin). 25 Sarah must remain in the background for Henry’s/Ford’s heroism to become the sole focus of the film’s sentimental finale. Regarding

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83

89

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112

139

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158

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List of Figures

Henry (produced by J. J. Abrams, Robert Greenhut, Susan MacNair, Mike Nichols, Scott Rudin). 26 and 27  Drenched in water vs. drenched in blood: Ford’s restrained, child-friendly use of violence is devoid of brutality. Patriot Games (produced by Lis Kern, Charles H. Maguire, Mace Neufeld, Robert Rehme). The Patriot (produced by Michael Dahan, Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich, Ute Emmerich. Directed by Roland Emmerich) 28 and 29  Harrison Ford, heroism, and patriotism are conflated in the film’s trailer. Patriot Games (produced by Lis Kern, Charles H. Maguire, Mace Neufeld, Robert Rehme). 30 and 31  “It was rage, pure rage”: A slight facial movement indicates a ­significant shift from intense pathos to intense rage, or from melodrama to the ­action thriller. Patriot Games (produced by Lis Kern, Charles H. Maguire, Mace Neufeld, Robert Rehme). 32 In The Fugitive, the “average” man can both escape a spectacular train crash and melt into the crowd. The Fugitive (produced by Keith Barish, Roy Huggins, Arnold Kopelson). 33 “How dare YOU, Sir?” US citizen par excellence Ford/Ryan faces up to the president, who has brought disgrace to the iconic political post. Clear and ­Present ­Danger (produced by Lis Kern, Mace Neufeld, Robert Rehme, Ralph S. Singleton. ­Directed by Phillip Noyce). 34 Ford and the melodramatic sensibility: The action president shows evident signs of vulnerability when his family becomes threatened. Air Force One (produced by Marc Abraham, Armyan Bernstein, Thomas A. Bliss, David V. Lester. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen). 35 “She never knew it could be like this”: Like Karen Holmes, Robin Monroe finds her perfect match in a rugged loner on a Hawaiian beach. Six Days, Seven Nights (produced by Julie Bergman Sender, Daniel Goldberg, Joe Medjuck, Roger Birnbaum. Directed by Ivan Reitman).

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List of Figures

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36 Quinn’s heroic nature, and certainly Ford’s persona, is subverted at ­moments like these. Six Days, Seven Nights (produced by Julie Bergman Sender, Daniel Goldberg, Joe Medjuck, Roger Birnbaum. Directed by Ivan Reitman). 239 37 Back to familiar territory: mise-en-scène is employed as a form of dramatic relief. Random Hearts (produced by Warren Adler, Sydney Pollack, Marykay Powell, Ronald L. Schwary. Directed by Sydney Pollack). 255

Acknowledgments Writing a book is a very personal challenge that requires constant dedication and absorbs a lot of your time. However, I would like to acknowledge the important contribution that others have made to this piece of writing over the years. First of all, I would like to thank my former PhD supervisor, Dr. Celestino Deleyto, for his diligence and invaluable input, which always improved the quality of my work. Thanks are also due to the Spanish and Aragonese taxpayers for helping fund this research in dire times thanks to the grants received from both the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Aragonese Government. I am also indebted to the members of the research team that I form part of for sharing with me their knowledge about myriad areas of Film and Cultural Studies. It is also necessary to acknowledge the precious help I have received from my colleagues at the Library in the Faculty of Work and Social Sciences at the University of Zaragoza as well as the editorial staff at both I.B. Tauris and Bloomsbury, especially Madeleine Hamey-Thomas and Rebecca Richards. I gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint revised versions of the following pieces: “¿Qué hace un chico como tú en un sitio como éste? Harrison Ford y la comedia romántica,” from Archivos de la Filmoteca de Valencia, vol. 44 (2003); “A Look at the Dark Side: The Impact of Film Noir on Harrison Ford’s Developing Persona,” published in Generic Attractions: New Essays on Film Genre Criticism (2010), edited by Celestino Deleyto and Marimar Azcona (Paris: Michel Houdiard Éditeur) and “It’s the Years and the Mileage: Harrison Ford Grows Old on Screen,” published in Star Bodies and the Erotics of Suffering (2015), edited by Rebecca Bell-Metereau and Colleen Glenn (Detroit: Wayne State University). I cannot thank my friends and family enough for their support despite all the time I have dedicated to Harrison Ford, not them, in recent years. In particular, I would like to thank my mother for sacrificing much of her personal time looking after my children so that I could dedicate my own to this book. Last but not least, I would like to thank my husband, Julian, and daughters Elsa and Norah for their unconditional love and for making life beautiful every day.

Introduction Throughout his long-running career, Harrison Ford has come to be considered as one of the most influential artists in Hollywood. The success of his many films garnered the actor the US National Association of Theater Owners’ (NATO) “Box Office Star of the Century” accolade in 1994. Ford received such a distinction thanks to the box office returns that his films had accumulated until then, and although the reasons why NATO did not wait until the actual end of the century to give this award are unclear, one could speculate that they did not envision any other performer achieving the same degree of popularity during the years to come. Indeed, the website Box Office Mojo confirms Ford as one of the most financially successful actors in Hollywood, his films averaging takings of approximately $120m. Meanwhile, the prestigious American Film Institute recognized Ford’s artistic achievements in 2000, before such Hollywood heavyweights as George Lucas, Tom Hanks, and Meryl Streep. Generally considered one of the most enduring stars in Hollywood, Harrison Ford has never stopped working since he achieved his first film role in 1966. For the last fifty years, his artistic contributions to the Hollywood film industry have been outstanding. More recently, one of his most iconic roles, namely Indiana Jones, was reprised with great success, which guaranteed the future production of a fifth Indiana Jones feature, inevitably starring Harrison Ford. Furthermore, 2015 witnessed the successful re-release of the “final cut” of Ridley Scott’s science fiction masterpiece Blade Runner and the muchawaited Han Solo return to the screens in Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens. Ford’s international success is undeniable and yet this iconic actor has seldom been the object of academic inquiry perhaps, or precisely, because The research for this book was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (project reference number FFI2013-40769) and the Innovation, Research and University department of the Government of Aragon (project reference number H-12).

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of his close connections with commercial Hollywood. To my knowledge, there are no academic English or Spanish language books dedicated to the star, although various unofficial biographies have been published. Indeed, while researching for this book, I was only able to find one essay by Adam Knee1 dealing exclusively with Ford in a 2010 book dedicated to Hollywood film stars of the 1980s. Although certain films of Ford have been extensively analyzed from multiple standpoints, these studies have not considered the performances of the star per se in any extensive way. As Martin Shingler2 points out, academic books examining the work, image, and appeal of “an individual star” are still “a rarity” in Film Studies. By considering Ford’s almost entire output, this book will, it is hoped, start to fill this noticeable gap in Star Studies. This book, however, does not purport to be a definitive assessment of Ford’s persona,3 since the full significance of any given star can never be ascertained through one study alone. The multidimensionality of star images allows for multiple perspectives to be adopted, and it is simply not possible for one single monograph to encompass all of them. This book has specifically adopted a “Dyerian” perspective in its analysis of Harrison Ford’s star image from a social and cultural standpoint. Hence, this study pays particular attention to the ways the development of his image ran parallel to the redefinition of masculinity in the context of the United States during the last decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the new one. Nevertheless, while Dyer’s contribution to the field of Star Studies can never be overestimated, other perspectives, such as the industrial one or the contemporary focus on the media celebrity, have also been incorporated to a certain extent. In addition, this study also strives to go beyond the mainstream understanding of Ford’s film persona, as it places a strong focus on certain aspects that have rarely been discussed. The redefinition of gender roles at the end of the twentieth century was subject to socio-cultural debate in the Western world and the controversies this redefinition fostered were also Adam Knee, “Harrison Ford: A well-tempered machismo,” in R. Eberwein (ed.), Acting for America. Movie Stars of the 1980s (New Brunswick and London, 2010). 2 Martin Shingler, Star Studies. A Critical Guide (London, 2012), p. 13. 3 Terms like “persona” and “image” have been differently theorized, which has created terminological ambiguity around them. In this study, I have tended to use the former term to refer to the artificial construct built around the personal attributes of a real person/performer and those of the characters they have embodied. The latter, as I understand it, incorporates extrafilmic texts that are not necessarily controlled by stars, such as gossip websites and pieces of film criticism. 1

Introduction

3

reflected in the somewhat contradictory development of Ford’s persona and brand of masculinity. Therefore, this book pays special attention to what I call Ford’s “dark side,” which has been present in his filmography more often than it is generally acknowledged. Because of his largely positive characterization in his most economically successful films, Ford was once labeled “the Teflon actor.”4 My research, however, has tried to read against the grain of this preconception to a certain extent and uncover the less appealing side of his persona through close readings of such films as Blade Runner (1982), Frantic (1988), or Presumed Innocent (1990). Because of Ford’s outstanding productivity and sustained success, this book analyzes the majority of his output, although certain films that I consider key to unlocking Ford’s complex persona have been analyzed more extensively than others. These films fall both inside and outside what is considered to be the “Ford (action-adventure) canon.” Despite his reputation as an action-adventure star, the actor has produced work in all Hollywood genres, except the musical, frequently with excellent results. As I see it, focusing exclusively on his most economically successful films, which mainly belong to the action formula, would obliterate some ingredients of his persona and acting style that I found well worth investigating in detail. Still, it is within the context of the actionadventure formula that the most recognizable elements of Ford’s persona, or of his brand of masculinity for that matter, were forged. These elements, which include Americanness, rugged individualism, resourcefulness, love of work and family, the spirit of democracy, vulnerability, or heroic “everymanness,” to name but a few, have continued to feature prominently in most accounts of Ford’s work and public image.5 However, this is only one side of Ford. Michael Atkinson, “Bomb proof,” in The Guardian (1999), https://www.theguardian.com/film/1999/ jan/23/features (accessed December 21, 2011). Teflon is a non-stick material present in modern kitchenware, the implication being that Ford’s image is “bombproof,” i.e., immune to criticism. 5 Many of these traits, Dyer notes, are culturally ascribed as male and white (Richard Dyer, White (London and New York, 1997)), and it is indeed evident that this study deals mainly with the construction of the white masculine norm using Ford as a paradigmatic example (despite Ford being of Jewish, Russian, and Irish descent). Even though most of the narratives under scrutiny do not explicitly deal with race relations or race conflict, this has not made me blind to the fact that they are dealing with white masculinity as a default or “transparent” identity category. Still, it is no less evident that Ford’s multidimensional brand of hegemonic yet “average” masculinity also incorporates other relevant identitarian elements, social class, and nationality among them, which this study also makes reference to. Thus, for the sake of clarity and conciseness, it has been my conscious decision to refer to the concept of masculinity, rather than more specifically white middle-class US American masculinity, throughout this book. 4

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Therefore, this book pays sustained attention to the multidimensionality of Ford’s persona not only by focusing on his memorable action roles, but also by interrogating his work in other generic contexts, from (romantic) comedy to melodrama to neo-noir, which, I believe, have allowed for the star’s persona and brand of masculinity to be articulated differently and much more complexly. Moreover, Ford’s incursions into different genres provided him with a chance to experiment and broaden his performing range, which is an aspect that also receives special attention in this study. My exploration of Ford’s oeuvre has therefore yielded results that were both expected and unexpected. Although the beginnings were difficult, Ford has been active in the industry for half a century and therefore progression is to be expected. For instance, while earlier roles reflected the ethos of individualism quite plainly, later heroes in the Ford canon mellowed thanks to the star’s increasing construction as a reformed family man. Nevertheless, the largely masculinist perspective of some later films still allowed the main protagonist to hold on to his individualistic drives once the narrative focus shifted toward the male hero’s crucial intervention in defense of the family or the nation. On the other hand, in more recent years the aging process has become incorporated into Ford’s characterization with different degrees of success. In any case, Ford’s persona, or brand, has frequently been linked to an evolving set of attributes that generally stand for successful white masculinity in Western culture. By virtue of his guy-next-door persona, which over the years has combined vulnerability, morality, love of family, dependability, and heroic competence in equal measure, Ford has often been understood to represent a renovated, gentler style of masculinity, a new man with feelings and a strongly moral conscience in a “post-feminist” world. At the same time, Ford’s “everymanness” has constantly been foregrounded, whether by critics, film directors, or fans. This aura of normality and authenticity, which perhaps represents the essential ingredient of his successful heroic trademark, has been accentuated by a constant emphasis on his characters’ vulnerability, whether physical or psychological. In this regard, the melodramatic mode has had an important role to play in most of Ford’s output and has permeated his production and performance across generic boundaries. This emphasis on the melodramatic and the most vulnerable side of Ford’s characters has at the same time allowed for their masculinity to be openly tested, criticized, and even mocked, generating certain cracks in Ford’s apparently seamless façade.

Introduction

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Ford’s own model of masculinity, both on- and off-screen, also incorporates more traditionally rugged features that are commonly associated with life in the frontier. Moreover, parallels have often been established with the seemingly more natural, unforced masculinity of certain actors of the classical period of Hollywood cinema, from Spencer Tracy to James Stewart. Indeed, Ford has been frequently referred to as a throwback to the stars of yesteryear. As will be explained in more detail, his construction as a largely asexual hero who does not need to resort to a display of aggressive sexuality in order to assert his male mystique corroborates this point. Ford’s brand of masculinity, therefore, appears to be a little paradoxical. This paradox springs from the fact that Ford’s image constitutes a powerful amalgam of tradition and modernity and this potent combination probably accounts for much of his crossover appeal. At the same time, my research has also identified significant dissonant elements in Ford’s prolific output. His roles in, say, Blade Runner, The Mosquito Coast (1986), Frantic, Working Girl (1988), Presumed Innocent, Six Days and Seven Nights (1998), and a large portion of his most recent production have foregrounded the perceived social crisis of masculinity more obviously than it is commonly acknowledged.6 While it is true that, in most cases, these narratives eventually vindicate the hero’s capability, they still allow for the actual complexity of Ford’s star persona to come into sharp focus, while also highlighting the constructed nature of both star personas and, more generally speaking, contemporary masculinity as a socio-cultural category. It seems to me that these multiple sides of Ford have more or less coexisted throughout his extensive career, although it is easy to identify which side the public at large has favored. Despite the actor’s best efforts to diversify and experiment with his own brand, which garnered the aging star more failures than successes during the 2000s (and beyond), Ford has regularly been happy to revert to type in order to cater for the public’s “expectation of constancy”7 regarding a Harrison Ford product and secure his status in the overcrowded Hollywood firmament. In more recent years, with his star power clearly on the Hamilton Carroll locates the source of white male disenfranchisement at the feet of both women and ethnic minorities (Hamilton Carrol, Affirmative Reaction, Durham and London, 2011, p. 6). It seems to me that, in Ford’s case, the “crisis” usually emanates from the former source, which points to clearly unresolved gender conflicts in the era of “post-feminism.” 7 Barry King, “Embodying an elastic self: The parametrics of contemporary stardom,” in T. Austin and M. Barker (eds), Contemporary Hollywood Stardom (London, 2003), p. 47. 6

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wane, Ford has openly admitted that interesting roles have become harder to come by and that he, like Han Solo, is still in it “for the money,”8 which signals both Hollywood’s ageist culture and the limited options that the industry offers to “professional” actors like Ford, in the sense proposed by Christine Geraghty.9 The closing chapter of this book therefore analyzes aging Ford’s changing role within the Hollywood industry, which is currently closer to “guest star” status than that of a first performer. This book represents an expansion of my own earlier research on the representation of masculinity in the films of Harrison Ford of the 1990s, the decade in which the actor’s popularity reached a zenith.10 During the 1990s, Ford became increasingly associated with the sphere of the family and thus provided an important case study for the representation of new forms of masculinity and (heroic) fatherhood in particular. Nevertheless, as this research developed, it became increasingly evident that in order to analyze the cultural significance of Ford’s films of the 1990s it was absolutely necessary to make more than a passing reference to his roles of the 1970s and especially the 1980s, as many of the most important elements of his successful trademark were forged during those earlier years. Indeed, one could not ignore the impact that his difficult beginnings in Hollywood had on his public image during the following decades, just as one can never leave the Han Solo/Indiana Jones legacy aside. Likewise, as aging Ford entered a new phase in his career, it became essential to explore the significant and inevitable changes that his popular brand has undergone since the beginning of the new century. The scope of this book is therefore necessarily broad, approximately forty-five years in Ford’s career, simply because “the process of identifying a star’s cultural significance necessarily involves mapping the shifts that take place over the course of their career, rather than fixing upon one moment that may seem more significant than any other.”11

Quoted in Gill Pringle “Harrison Ford: I’m in it for the money,” The Independent (2010), http:// www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/harrison-ford-im-in-it-for-themoney-1903806.html (accessed November 4, 2015). 9 Christine Geraghty, “Re-examining stardom: Questions of texts, bodies and performances,” in C. Gledhill and L. Williams (eds), Reinventing Film Studies (London, 2000). 10 Virginia Luzón-Aguado, “¿Qué hace un chico como tú en un sitio como éste? Harrison Ford y la comedia romántica,” Archivos de la Filmoteca de Valencia 44 (2003); “A look at the dark side: The impact of film noir on Harrison Ford’s developing persona,” in M. M. Azcona and C. Deleyto (eds), Generic Attractions: New Essays on Film Genre Criticism (Paris, 2010). 11 Shingler, Star Studies, p. 174. 8

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Unsurprisingly, this analysis has revealed a clear evolution in terms of the representation of masculinity in Ford’s output and hence his persona. Broadly speaking, this evolution echoes certain social developments that had a bearing on the emergence and development of Masculinity Studies as an academic discipline. These developments are explicitly dealt with in the first chapter of this book. Likewise, certain key texts focusing on the study of masculinity within the Hollywood film context are dealt with in this section. Although these references are by no means exhaustive, they help to better contextualize my particular analysis of Ford’s image and performance. Thus, the first chapter discusses certain significant aspects of Ford’s brand of masculinity (as fatherhood) that, in my view, constitute his most salient contribution to the contemporary representation of masculinity in mainstream Hollywood cinema. In addition, notions such as the contemporary crisis of masculinity and its impact on our understanding of gender and gender relations in the twentyfirst century, together with the way it may have affected the development of Ford’s image, are also referred to. Indeed, general arguments in this chapter have been applied to the specific case of Harrison Ford whenever possible. Finally, the first chapter also looks at the institution of Hollywood stardom. The study of stars provides fertile ground for the analysis of masculinity and gender in general, inasmuch as stars are understood to represent ideal or particularly successful ways of being and behaving in a given society. Star Studies provides a further useful tool for the analysis of the representation of masculinity, since gender and stardom share interesting parallelisms and can be analyzed from a broadly similar perspective. If gender may be regarded as a cultural script that is (un)consciously internalized and performed, stars are understood to be both real people and representations of people, of culturally sanctioned ways of being in our society in terms of gender, nationality, age, race, or other. Therefore, because this study intertwines the analysis of gender and stardom, it attempts to bring together Film Studies and Cultural Studies. Although the study of stars may be carried out from various perspectives, my particular approach has predominantly leaned toward the inter-textual representation of Ford’s image. Nevertheless, relevant data regarding the construction and significance of Ford’s unique commercial brand for the Hollywood industry have also been introduced. Above all, my own inevitably subjective reading of Ford’s trademark as developed in the narratives and non-filmic texts that are

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Harrison Ford

the focus of this book has been contrasted with the star’s (critical) reception, especially as recorded in various newspapers, magazines, and websites from the United States, the UK, and Spain. Social media have been purposely excluded as Ford has a declared aversion against such methods of communication and therefore has no official Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram accounts.12 The remainder of this book is devoted to the specific dissection of Ford’s star image and its articulation of masculinity as represented in his multiple films, as well as on the internet and, particularly, the press. Chapter 2 is inevitably shorter and charts Ford’s difficult beginnings in Hollywood. While one cannot assert that Ford became a true superstar during this decade, some of the meanings that this chapter deals with have certainly endured in the public imagination, as the long-lasting popularity of the Han Solo character amply demonstrates. Chapter 3 is devoted to the films of the 1980s, the decade in which Indiana Jones turned Ford into a Hollywood icon for the years to come. In general, this chapter combines an analysis of Ford’s developing image as constructed in film texts, in the press accounts of his life and work, and in the documentary material I have had access to. These readings are also informed by my understanding of film genre and, in particular, the crucial impact that generic conventions may have had on Ford’s evolving image. In this sense, Ford’s more or less continuous attempts to stretch the limits of his filmic persona started to become evident during this decade, which led him to accept parts in films belonging to different genres that, on occasion, questioned his heroic credentials. Indeed, in films like Blade Runner and Frantic, the crisis of masculinity transpires and starts to have an effect on Ford’s developing persona. While the star may have wanted to confound the audience’s expectations to a certain extent, some of the films that Ford made during the 1980s did not yield the expected economic results, which led him to seek refuge in more familiar, “safer” environments. His choice of parts during the 1990s, which Chapter 4 deals with, can be generally described as conservative, inasmuch as they were clearly dictated by the prospect of financial profit rather than artistic prestige, although it must be acknowledged that this strategy had the desired effect, at least from the

Adam Sternbergh, “I hate it when they change stuff,” The New York Times Magazine (August 11, 2013), p. 12.

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industrial point of view. This chapter also pays close attention to his increasing “post-feminist” construction as a father and hero during the “caring nineties.” Many of Ford’s most significant successes incorporated melodramatic elements that turned him into the epitome of heroic and virtuous fatherhood. Nevertheless, other significant yet more ambiguous films in his output, such as Presumed Innocent, Regarding Henry (1991), or Six Days, Seven Nights, continued to put Ford’s heroic status in inverted commas. The last chapter of this book is, once again, comparatively shorter than the previous two. It dissects Ford’s output since the 2000s, a decade during which his starshine became badly tarnished due to the evident difficulty the star had in reconciling his artistic choices to the reality of his aging process. In general, the 2000s yielded a number of films lacking in popularity, which inevitably dented the star’s reputation within the industry. However, in more recent years, roughly coinciding with the successful release of the fourth Indiana Jones film, Ford has managed to revitalize his career and “stay put” by changing artistic course and playing what he adamantly refers to as character parts. Interestingly, it is thanks to his willingness to “guest star,” rather than lead, in his most recent film productions that Ford has managed the difficult feat of staying in the disputed Hollywood limelight.

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Harrison Ford, Masculinity, Stardom The Development of Masculinity Studies The rise of Masculinity Studies can be traced back to the 1970s. This novel area of study was initially heralded by anti-sexist men and was clearly influenced by Women’s Studies’ concern with the deconstruction of gender categories. Feminist thought, however, tended to discuss masculinity as a homogeneous identity category with hardly any possibility for variation or contestation.1 Men, it was assumed, did not find the need to question this identity paradigm for they are the prime recipients of what Connell2 has called “the patriarchal dividend,” or “the [social and material] advantage men in general gain from the overall subordination of women.” Nevertheless, some pro-feminist men started to interrogate the paradigm of normative masculinity and it was these men who started to refer to diverse masculinities as their object of study. The result of this shift was the emergence of the more inclusive academic discipline of Gender Studies. In every culture, there exist certain gender models that are more socially respected than others as they tend to signify power and authority. These models may vary across cultures and over time and therefore are notoriously difficult to define unless one attempts to pin down local or contingent conceptions of the hegemonic or, for the purposes of this analysis, particularly popular media representations of the male at a given time in history. Thus, the work of cultural theorists consists in explaining what a given culture or group has to say about hegemonic models of identity, in whose formation cultural practices Robyn Wiegman, “Unmaking men and masculinity in feminist theory,” in Gardiner (ed.), Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions (New York, 2002), p. 34. 2 Robert W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge, 1995), p. 79. 1

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and representations have a key role to play. Nonetheless, cultural theorists find and celebrate that their analyses evince a diversity of identity constructions as cultural products do not necessarily offer a seamless identity script to which individuals necessarily conform. Yet, it is evident that their coexistence is far from being a happy one. Contrasting and competing representations do exist, which suggests that identity is far from being seamless or static. Nevertheless, it is possible to talk about hegemonic or dominant discourses on manhood, which seem to hold a firmer grip on the social imagination than others. Still, hegemonic ideologies are not unproblematic and do not remain unchallenged forever. Cultural Studies therefore offers some essential tools for the analysis of the workings of the gender order. It is thanks to the research undertaken within this tradition that the ideology of male power, as well as the different attempts to both uphold and overthrow it, has been most clearly exposed. Agency, however, seems to remain a blind spot within this field. Indeed, according to Grossberg,3 a crucial step forward for the cultural critic is to engage in some kind of political action that will contribute to the dismantling of dominant ideologies. To a certain extent, the emphasis on collective action characterized the men’s movement’s second wave, which was strongly influenced by the Jungianbased mythopoetic movement led by US poet Robert Bly during the 1980s and early 1990s. Essentially, Bly’s crusade constituted a backlash effort to contain the advances of the feminist movement. Men were no longer considered to be the victims of obsolete patriarchal identity constructions, but of the negative impact that feminism had had on their lives. Although popular for over a decade, the movement seemed to have lost momentum by the turn of the century. However, given its strong investment on US foundational myths and its reverence for traditional male archetypes of the rugged frontiersman type, its enduring impact on the collective imagination should not be underestimated. In this respect, Clatterbaugh has warned that the decline of the movement “may in fact [have resulted] from successful mainstreaming, so that misogyny and anti-feminism have at the same time lost their distinctive organizational forms and their marginality within US society.”4 Lawrence Grossberg, “Introduction,” in H. A. Giroux and P. McLean (eds), Between Borders (London and New York, 1994). 4 Quoted in Gardiner, “Introduction,” in J. K. Gardiner (ed.), Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions (New York, 2002), p. 4. 3

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Still, the libertarian spirit that gave rise to the first wave of the Men’s Movement was not entirely superseded. In fact, it remained very much alive, especially in academia. However, at the beginning of the twenty-first century sociologist Michael Kimmel5 still found it necessary to remind the reader that Masculinity Studies is not necessarily the reactionary defensive rage of the men’s rights groups, the mythic cross-cultural nostalgia of mythopoetry, not even the theologically informed nostalgic yearning for separate spheres of Promise Keepers. Rather, Masculinity Studies can be informed by a feminist project to interrogate different masculinities, whether real (as in corporeal) or imagined (as in representations and texts).

Thus, one may question whether the postulates of feminism and the profeminist men’s movement have successfully reached the mainstream and whether their (limited?) popularity and impact remain firmly within the world of academia for as Whitehead and Barrett6 assert, despite the evident multiplicity of masculine expression, traditional masculinities and associated values still prevail in most cultural settings. Countless numbers of men still act dominant and “hard,” deny their emotions, resort to violence as a means of self-expression, and seek to validate their masculinity in the public world of work rather than the private world of family and relationships. Moreover, such performances not only often go uncriticized, they are in fact lauded by many, both women and men.

The resurgent popularity of the “strong man” type after the September 11  attacks in the broad media corroborates this point. Still, representations of non-traditional forms of masculinity continue to play a prominent role in the cultural arena. Promoting understanding and encouraging critical consideration  of Hollywood products, or any other form of cultural representation, necessarily provide us with a refreshing way of looking at the way  things are slowly, but surely and necessarily, changing. It is therefore important to highlight the various ways in which masculine identity is constructed in Hollywood films, as well as the ways in which these constructions may or may not contribute to the perpetuation of hegemonic Michael Kimmel, “Foreword,” in Gardiner (ed.), Masculinity Studies, p. ix. Whitehead and Barrett, “The sociology of masculinity,” in S. M. Whitehead and F. J. Barrett (eds), The Masculinities Reader (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 7; 9.

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forms of masculinity. It is by focusing our combined efforts on stressing the significance of the unconventional, as well as the contradictions present in the conventional, and specially by striving to reach the mainstream through our analyses and actions, that the hegemonic masculine norm may be disturbed and, hopefully, superseded.

Masculinity Studies and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema The study of masculinity in the field of Film Studies is relatively new, as compared to other academic areas, such as sociology. Earlier developments in the sociology of masculinity failed to make an impact on the research on masculinity in film because of their essentially ethnographic focus and extremely factual detail.7 Clearly, films did not easily fit the empirical paradigm of sociological research. In any case, cinema and the media in general are now commonly understood to be a powerful vehicle for socialization, which has brought the study of cinematic representations and sociological research closer than ever. As Kimmel8 claims, “if masculinity is socially constructed, one of the primary elements in that construction is the representations of manhood that we see daily in the mass media.” Still, this should not obscure the fact that the representation of masculinity in Hollywood and the wider media is not without omissions or ambiguities. As Bruzzi9 explains, Hollywood’s own history, or “the recurring narratives that films rather than society have made popular,” does not objectively reflect social history and can indeed go against it. If hegemonic masculinity is constructed through, among other things, representation, any challenges to the gender order will require a critical confrontation with both social reality and cinematic, or media, representations. On the other hand, the belated development of Masculinity Studies in film may also be attributed to the advance of Gay/Lesbian Studies as an academic discipline.10 Stereotypes were challenged in an attempt to eradicate prejudice Phil Powrie et al., “Introduction: Turning the male inside out,” in P. Powrie et al. (eds), The Trouble with Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema (London and New York, 2004), p. 2. 8 Michael Kimmel, “Foreword,” in S. Craig (ed.), Men, Masculinity and the Media (London, 1992), p. xii. 9 Stella Bruzzi, Bringing Up Daddy: Fatherhood and Masculinity in Post-War Hollywood (London, 2005), p. 116. 10 Powrie et al., “Introduction,” p. 2. 7

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against homosexuals. The logical result, however, was that hegemonic forms of (heterosexual) manhood still remained largely unexplored by film critics. The lack of critical questioning of the norm may have cemented the natural, “common-sense” logic of masculinity and reinforced the idea that masculinity was an eternal category that could escape deconstruction. Finally, the comparatively late development of the study of masculinity in film should also be explained from a different perspective, which cinema shares with other academic disciplines. The critical study of gender in film was inaugurated by an interest in the representation of women or in the contribution of women to the art as actors, directors, scriptwriters, etc. It was during this stage that Laura Mulvey’s11 article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which was to have a major impact on film criticism during the next decade and beyond, was published. Put very briefly, Mulvey’s main thesis was that, within classical narrative cinema, women were invariably represented as passive objects of visual, or erotic, pleasure displayed for the enjoyment of the male protagonist and, by extension, the male viewer. In a way, it was the sheer influence of the Mulveyan paradigm, which established the figure of woman as the cinematic spectacle and thus encouraged a focus on the representation of the female, which once again delayed the development of Masculinity Studies within the broader area of Film Studies. This development was representative of the broader tendency within Gender Studies. However, this paradigm changed to a significant extent with the publication of Steve Neale’s equally influential article “Masculinity as Spectacle: Reflections on Men and Mainstream Cinema” in 1983.12 Neale’s radically new vision stressed that certain portrayals of the male in classical Hollywood cinema called into question Mulvey’s theory as to the binary logic of patriarchal representations and patterns of identification. For Neale, who sought to expand on, rather than refute, Mulvey’s either/or argument, it was also possible for the male to be read as an erotic object to be contemplated, whether by the female or the male character or spectator. From Neale’s perspective, desire and identification could be mobilized from and in multiple directions. Laura Mulvey, “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema,” Screen 16/3 (1975). Steve Neale, “Masculinity as spectacle: Reflections on men and mainstream cinema,” in S. Cohan. and I. R. Hark (eds), Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema (London and New York, 1993a (1983)).

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When the male body is put on display in Hollywood cinema, a woman (much less frequently a gay man) is normally made to be the bearer of the diegetic look, thereby providing an alibi for male objectification and dispelling any fears of homoeroticism for male viewers who are not, in general terms, understood to identify with the female in the narrative.13 This contrasts with the traditional position allocated to the female within the narrative, whose objectification is often “without alibi, overt and even blatant.”14 The logical conclusion to be drawn is that classical Hollywood cinema provides an essentially masculine experience, with iconic “exceptions” such as the onscreen treatment of Rudolph Valentino15 and the various male stars discussed by Steve Cohan.16 Nonetheless, the social changes brought about by feminism ever since the 1960s started to translate to the screen more and more frequently, as evidenced by the treatment of such “stunning” male stars as Robert Redford, among other popular male stars (see Figures 1 and 2). In more recent times, Hollywood cinema has continued to provide more and more sexualized images of beautiful male bodies. During the 1990s, superstar Brad Pitt became a good case in point. Whether the object of the female or the male gaze, the treatment of Brad Pitt’s pin-up image was an indication that desire for the male body could be mobilized from different perspectives and in different directions, even if it was finally disavowed through different strategies. Still, it is debatable whether the contemporary objectification and commodification of the male body will bring about radical changes in the way gender is socially configured. Meanwhile, the emergence of the tough action heroine traced by Brown,17 among others, remains a controversial topic.18 Indeed, not everyone agrees that these developments in the representation of masculinity and Clover, however, has been persuasive in arguing that male spectators can identify with the female victim in the slasher movie. Carol J. Clover, Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton, 1992). 14 Kenneth Mackinnon, Representing Men: Maleness and Masculinity in the Media (London, 2003b), p. 30. 15 Miriam Hansen, “Pleasure, ambivalence, identification: Valentino and female spectatorship,” in J. Butler (ed.), Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television (Detroit, 1991 (1986)). 16 Steven Cohan, Masked Men: Masculinity and the Movies in the Fifties (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1997). 17 Jeffrey A. Brown, Beyond Bombshells: The New Action Heroine in Popular Culture (Jackson, 2015). 18 Sherrie A. Innes, “Boxing gloves and bustiers: New images of tough women,” in S. A. Innes (ed.), Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture (New York, 2004). While these changes in representation point to a welcome dissolving of gender categories, Innes’s enthusiastic celebration of women’s appropriation of violence is worrying, as it suggests that it will successfully lead us in the direction of positive social change. 13

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Figures 1 and 2  Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand) gazes at her object of desire in The Way We Were (1973). The Way We Were (produced by Richard Roth, Ray Stark, 1973).

femininity have brought with them a noticeable change in the social status of, and relations between, men and women, that is, the gender order.19 Neale’s landmark article made explicit reference to the complexity of masculine representation, which seriously challenged the notion of a natural, stable masculine identity. In the wake of this influential paper, masculinity became increasingly explored as one more problematic social construction/ cinematic representation or, literally, a performance, if not a self-conscious masquerade.20 For evident reasons, it is hardly possible to analyze cinematic Jeffrey A. Brown, “Gender and the action heroine: Hardbodies and the point of no return,” Cinema Journal 35/3 (1996); Yvonne Tasker, “Introduction: Action and adventure cinema,” in Y. Tasker (ed.), Action and Adventure Cinema (London and New York, 2004a). 20 Chris Holmlund, “Masculinity as multiple masquerade: The ‘mature’ Stallone and the Stallone clone,” in S. Cohan. and I. R. Hark (eds), Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema (London and New York, 1993); Richard Dyer, “Rock: The last guy you’d have figured?” in P. Kirkham and J. Thumin (eds), You Tarzan: Masculinities, Movies and Men (London, 1993). 19

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masculinities, or stardom, for that matter, without making reference to the notion of performance and masquerade.21 As a result, the notion of a crisis in the cinematic representation of masculinity, which is often regarded as one more piece of evidence of the perceived social crisis in masculinity, has permeated much contemporary film criticism. Nevertheless, one still has to be cautious about the actual effects that the portrayal of the white male in crisis may bring about. Various recent films have portrayed the crisis of masculinity only to revert to more traditional or nostalgic male definitions, suggesting that resorting to violence is the only way out for the beleaguered white male in the contemporary world. Yet others appear to be more critical, albeit not always disruptive, of traditional masculine constructions. These conflicting portrayals are but an indication of the multiplicity and fragmentation of masculine identity that characterizes both contemporary Hollywood film and the wider culture. Whether this “crisis” in representation has made a noticeable impact outside academia is still debatable, however. For as long as economic, political, and social structures fail to transform, widespread academic interest or increased visibility and representation can only achieve limited results. During the 1990s, certain important texts22 followed in the wake of Neale’s landmark work. Some common themes may be identified in these texts, such as their emphasis on masculinities, or the diversity and provisionality of male subjectivity, and on the analysis of the male form as visual spectacle, particularly within the action genre. The films analyzed also pointed at the gap existing between the impossible masculine ideal and the actual powerlessness and inadequacy experienced by many of the characters under scrutiny, a view that is again echoed in Bruzzi.23 A further concern was the way in which, and the extent to which, the aging male body, such as that of Bill Munny in Unforgiven (1992), may reflect personal failure, which was seen to contrast Cohan provides a cogent explanation: “the movie star […] [is] an institutional product, a construction. […]. Far from reproducing the original person, a star image on film is itself always a copy of a copy, a mask, […] meant to authenticate a social, racial and gender type in theatricalized settings of a movie and its promotion” (my emphasis). Steven Cohan, “The spy in the gray flannel suit: Gender performance and the representation of masculinity,” in A. Perchuck and H. Posner (eds), The Masculine Masquerade: Masculinity and Representation (London and Cambridge, 1995), pp. 58–9. 22 Cohan and Hark (eds), Screening the Male; Kirkham and Thumin (eds), You Tarzan (London, 1993a); Pat Kirkham and Janet Thumin (eds), Me Jane: Masculinities, Movies and Women (Houndmills, Basingstoke: 1995). 23 Bruzzi, Bringing Up Daddy, p. 191. 21

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with the dominant 1980s’ images of male hard bodies which Jeffords24 cogently analyzed in Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era. Jeffords’s influential reading of masculinity in 1980s and early 1990s Hollywood cinema also dealt with Unforgiven as a paradigmatic example of the changes that were taking place in both cinema and the wider cultural arena. In this influential book, Jeffords traces the evolution in the representation of masculinity in Hollywood cinema of the 1980s and early 1990s as projected through the juxtaposition of the hard bodies of the “Reagan heroes” and the “soft bodies” of their antagonists or of the vulnerable characters they try to protect. Jeffords establishes a connection between politics, society, and cinematic representation and persuasively argues that the hard-bodied Hollywood heroes of the 1980s can be said to stand for the hard-line politics that the Reagan administration inaugurated. A key social and political issue during Reagan’s consecutive mandates was the reassertion of US supremacy and leadership as an imperial (and moral) power through both a drastic revision of US foreign policy and the domestic revitalization of traditional family values, which were understood to have been undermined during the 1960s and 1970s, a period when “soft-line” or “liberal” domestic and foreign policies were in operation. These were the years during which feminism and other civil rights movements started to change the fabric of US society forever. However, the fall of communism, together with the economic crisis that hit the United States at the end of the 1980s, questioned the socioeconomic and political assumptions that had prevailed during the decade and plunged the Reagan administration into a crisis. As a result, Reagan’s political heir, George Bush, strove to implement radical changes in the government’s home policies affecting the lives of ordinary citizens, thereby projecting a more caring image at home, while also remaining tough on foreign affairs. According to Jeffords, Reagan’s socio-political vision and Bush’s eventual change of direction found a clear reflection in the films of the decade, as witnessed by the emergence of tough muscular heroes such as Rambo, Rocky, Conan the Barbarian, or the Terminator, who became iconic figures during the 1980s. Their popularity pointed to a contradiction present in much Reaganite mythmaking: like the heroes in the Western genre, they were essentially loners, distant figures who could not be easily assimilated into Susan Jeffords, Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era (New Brunswick, 1994).

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society, let alone the family. Despite their autonomy and disconnection from the social fabric, they still embodied the heroic ideal that would protect ordinary US citizens and their families at home and abroad. By the end of the decade, however, the symbolic significance of the self-reliant hard body had started to dissolve and there was a renovated interest in narratives that focused on the family and especially on the “softer” figure of the father as hero. Important ideological battles started to be fought on the home front, as the protection of the US nuclear family and the traditional values it symbolized increasingly became the focus of political strife. Internal fiber, or family values, substituted then for external signs of strength. The father’s inner strength, as well as his crucial role in protecting the family, and by extension the US social fabric, took center stage.25 This radical shift in representation also seemed to be influenced by discourses present in society, which questioned the applicability of older masculine models and welcomed the emergence of the popular figure of the “new man” or the “new father,” which managed to conflate the potent images of the male, or more specifically the father, as both tough protector and soft nurturer. Jeffords concluded that this change was to have a noticeable impact on the representation of “post-feminist” masculinity over the rest of the decade. In addition, she forecast that the new ideal might even “terminate,” to use her own wording, traditional masculine models, which were now considered to be detrimental, to both men and women.26 However, in far too many cases, this reformed male figure did not yet seem to be ready to give up his male prerogatives altogether or work toward facilitating social reform, for, as Jeffords explains, “their histories as men are limited to their personal sufferings at the hands of traditional codes of masculinity, and their messages of change remain at the level of individualised experience within the interpersonal realm.”27 Some critics writing on the subject of masculinity in the new century have proven Jeffords’s forecast to be partially wrong. In fact, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, traditional tough images of masculinity appear to have

Karen Schneider, “With violence if necessary: Rearticulating the family in the contemporary action thriller,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27/1 (1999), pp. 2–11; Yvonne Tasker, “The family in action,” in Y. Tasker (ed.), Action and Adventure Cinema (London and New York, 2004b). 26 Susan Jeffords, “The big switch: Hollywood masculinity in the nineties,” in J. Collins, H. Radner and A. Preacher Collins (eds), Film Theory Goes to the Movies (New York and London, 1993b), p. 197. 27 Ibid., p. 207. 25

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persisted alongside more nuanced or critical versions. For instance, Bruzzi,28 writing on masculinity and the key masculine role of fatherhood, has remarked that since the 1990s, Hollywood films have offered “a diversity of representations […] that […] suggest the fragmentation―or at least the dissipation―of the traditional paternal role model,” which is far from confirming that masculinity has been “terminated.” In fact, some representations of masculinity and fatherhood, such as those in Independence Day (1996), Mystic River (2003), 300 (2006), and Taken (2008), seem to point toward a nostalgic retreat to more traditional images of manhood that evince a “desire for certainty in respect of what it is to be masculine.”29 These films project a masculine image whose defining traits are toughness and violence, whereas other films such as In America (2002), Around the Bend (2004), A History of Violence (2005), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Remember Me (2010), and Chef (2014) explicitly refer to the anxieties and insecurities that men may experience in real life. Yet, it is the coexistence of multiple images that suggests the absence of a clear, homogeneous discourse on masculinity within the contemporary Hollywood output. Yet again, these plural representations do not necessarily entail the likely dismantling of the gender order or of the male order, for that matter.30 Hollywood continues to be a deeply patriarchal institution, one in which traditional images of manhood and fatherhood still abound and which is supportive of fathers in a way in which it is not supportive of mothers; it is a patriarchal institution and it respects the patriarch […]. Even films that critique the traditional […] patriarchal position signal the importance of it as a determining model. The father is often considered […] the lesser parent. Not so in Hollywood.31

To conclude this section, I would like to refer precisely to the figure of the father and the problems that it may pose when analyzing contemporary film renditions of masculinity. This is particularly important for this analysis, as, during the 1990s, Harrison Ford’s star persona started to become increasingly associated with the role of devoted husband and father, especially after the Bruzzi, Bringing Up Daddy, p. 152. Jill Nelmes, “Gender and film,” in J. Nelmes (ed.), An Introduction to Film Studies (third edition) (London, 2003 (1996)), p. 270. 30 Shary makes a similar point in his recent exploration of “millennial masculinity.” Timothy Shary, Millennial Masculinity: Men in Contemporary American Cinema (Detroit, 2012). 31 Bruzzi, Bringing Up Daddy, p. xviii. 28 29

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success of such films as Regarding Henry, the Jack Ryan films Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger ( 1994), The Fugitive (1993), and, most significantly, Air Force One (1997) (see Figure 3). During the 1980s and 1990s, masculinity in the cinema was commonly researched within the generic context of the action film or the classical war epic, in which male characters are predominant and where the spectacular body of the hero is most obviously on display. Because the action and war genres often featured self-reliant heroes who could not easily be integrated into society or the family for that matter, the figure of the father as (action or war) hero went largely unexplored.32 In other words, these essentially masculine genres, in which the violent display of action remains the raison d’être, could hardly assimilate the “soft” figure of the (nurturing) father, which, by virtue of its familial associations, was somewhat feminized/emasculated and therefore did not fit the predominant masculine paradigm of the action hero.33 In Bruzzi’s34 words:

Figure 3  The US Dad as Hero: Harrison Ford as President James Marshall in Air Force One. Air Force One (produced by Gail Katz, Jonathan Shestack, Wolfgang Petersen, Armyan Bernstein. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, 1997). The restoration of the father and of patriarchal authority was a powerful undercurrent in 1980s Hollywood cinema. See Andrew Britton, “Blissing out: The politics of Reaganite entertainment,” Movie 31–2 (1986) and Robin Wood, “Papering the cracks: Fantasy and ideology in the Reagan era,” in J. Belton (ed.), Movies and Mass Culture (New Brunswick, 1995 (1986)) for more on this issue. It is the absence of actual fathers in 1990s’ action cinema, which has often been regarded as the genre where prevailing definitions of masculinity are fraught, that I am trying to highlight here. 33 MacKinnon has put it quite bluntly: “the attributes of masculinity—such as muscularity, […], dominance, independence, […], aggression, work as such only if the male is kept out of the domestic setting and away from his family. […]. Thus the American male, swift as a panther, free as a mustang outside the home, is infantilized within the family, becoming stupid and emasculated.” MacKinnon, Representing Men, p. 90. Cronenberg’s A History of Violence is a particularly interesting example that both confirms and contradicts MacKinnon’s assertion. 34 Bruzzi, Bringing Up Daddy, pp. xvii; xviii. 32

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It is the particular conjunction of domesticity, traditionalism and a lack of eroticism that forces fathers to exist outside the discursive limits of Film Studies’ definitions of masculinity […]. The father has been marginalised by discussions of masculinity in film because his symbolic significance to masculinity as the de-eroticised ideal stands in direct opposition to the dominant body-centred work undertaken in film’s eroticisation of the male form.

This broad conception might help to explain why Harrison Ford, an action hero of sorts,35 has only very rarely featured in books or articles dealing with masculinity or the action cinema in the 1980s and 1990s, despite his consistent popularity track record during both decades, especially within action-adventure formulae. Another influencing factor might have been the fact that the actor was first associated with what Krämer36 has called “the family adventure movie” (my emphasis), a virtually bloodless, children-orientated offshoot of the action-adventure genre, represented by such popular examples as the early episodes in the Star Wars saga or the Indiana Jones films, where Ford embodied an unthreatening, virtually asexual action hero, especially in the latter case. In these films, the special effects and amazing stunts, rather than the hero’s muscular, aggressive, or sexualized body, were arguably the real spectacle. Yet a shift in the representation of the father as hero had already begun to take place in the late 1980s. As Schneider37 explains: When debates about the family moved to the forefront of American sociopolitical discourse in the late 1980s, the family began to find its way into the action-thriller […], a genre that previously had focused on the isolated individual―often an outsider―and/or on simple heterosexual romance. The actor has always denied being one: “I am not an action movie star, as I am often referred to. I have only done one film that really falls into that category, Air Force One” (quoted in Brantley Bardin, “Idol chatter: Harrison Ford,” Premiere 16/11 (July–August 2003), p. 120). Maybe it was not coincidental that Air Force One was the only Harrison Ford film whose review was included in Arroyo’s anthology on the “action/spectacle” cinema (José Arroyo, “Introduction,” in J. Arroyo (ed.), Action/Spectacle Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader (London, 2000). Lichtenfeld, for his part, included a reading of Air Force One in Action Speaks Louder, in which Harrison Ford is only mentioned in passing (Eric Lichtenfeld, Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie (Middletown, 2007)). Yvonne Tasker includes a reading of the Indiana Jones saga in The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film, but again Harrison Ford’s action credentials are never the main focus of this piece of criticism (Yvonne Tasker, The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film (Malden and Chichester, 2015). 36 Peter Krämer, “‘Would you take your child to see this film?’ The cultural and social work of the family adventure movie,” in S. Neale and M. Smith (eds), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (London and New York, 1998b). 37 Schneider, “With violence if necessary,” p. 3. 35

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Indeed, it was during the 1990s that new discourses on masculinity and fatherhood that questioned the validity of traditional role models for males started to make some progress, after a decade of profoundly anti-feminist backlash. My view is that it is within this particular context that the alwaysevolving star persona of Harrison Ford should be considered. In “post-feminist” Hollywood, fatherhood has become an important new arena in which men can validate their masculinity and become the new heroes, thereby saving their families, the world, and their own manhood to boot. This paved the way for the establishment of the father as a new type of action hero, even though this new depiction has frequently proved problematic. For instance, Gabbard38 has analyzed the father-as-hero narrative Ransom (1996) only to find that the Law of the Father can only be restored when the agency and decision power of other family members have been reduced to nil. It seems that the father as action hero is not yet able to relinquish his independence. This film, like Ford’s Air Force One or Firewall (2006) or the more recent Taken franchise, suggests that fusing the family man and the independent man of action into a seamless one is still anything but simple. Hence, most popular narratives still seemed to focus exclusively on individual male heroics, relegating, if not altogether discarding, the role of the mother or the children in the family.39 In an era when Western white males appear to be enjoying fewer professional opportunities as a result of increased mechanization, economic globalization, and affirmative action programs, this is, perhaps, hardly coincidental. Although written back in 1993, I believe Jeffords’s40 justification is still pertinent here: In the face of a society that is perceived as increasingly technologized […] and anonymous, the power of individual decision-making […] is drawn as paramount […]. Male viewers―particularly white male viewers―who Krin Gabbard, “Someone is going to pay: Resurgent white masculinity in Ransom,” in P. Lehman (ed.), Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture (London and New York, 2001). 39 Notable exceptions include Spy Kids (2001), The Incredibles (2004), or even Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), but they differ from films such as Ransom, Air Force One, or Firewall in that they fit the contemporary “family adventure movie” category more easily, where, arguably, children (and mothers) get to play a more active role. Similarly, some films in Jodie Foster’s output during the past decade, from Panic Room (2002) to Flight Plan (2005) or The Wild One (2007), also seem to contradict the general father-focused trend. 40 Susan Jeffords, “Can masculinity be terminated?” in S. Cohan and I. R. Hark (eds), Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema (London and New York, 1993a (1983)), pp. 257–8. 38

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may feel increasingly distanced from what they understand to be traditional male forms of power and privilege can be empowered through assertions of the role male individualism must play in the future […], [and it is through fatherhood] that men can regain a sense of their expected masculine power, without having to confront or suggest alterations in the economic and social system that has led to their feelings of deprivation.

So, is it safe to say that the current re-articulation of masculinity signifies only its reassertion or can we accommodate a more optimistic reading of these transformations, of what Powrie et al. have described as “moments of becoming, the interstitial moments which undermine fixed ontologies, as cinema attempts to come to terms with change”?41 Like all transitional images, contemporary renditions of masculinity are rich in ambiguity, which makes them all the more attractive. Therefore, it is by focusing on the unconventional, as well as on the uncertainties present in the conventional that we may work at destabilizing the representational norm. It is also by highlighting its constructed nature that we may draw attention to the unnaturalness of the general gender order itself.

Star Studies: From the Picture Personality to the Media Celebrity Critical analyses of masculinity benefit enormously from close readings of the models provided by the film industry and other products of popular culture. Hollywood stars such as Harrison Ford may be analyzed from such a standpoint in order to tease out the cultural and ideological meanings that are generally attached to them. As Hirsch42 claims, “representing more than the roles they play, [stars] both embody and help to shape the values, consciousness, the wishes and anxieties and fantasies, the ideals and fears, of the culture that pays to see them.” Given the large amount of popularity that stars have traditionally enjoyed, it may come as a surprise that stardom did not become a serious area of academic research until the late 1970s. There were several reasons for this, such as the Powrie et al., “Introduction,” p. 14. Foster Hirsch, Acting Hollywood Style (New York, 1996 (1991)), p. 15.

41 42

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fact that in trying to elevate the recent discovery of cinema to the category of art, film critics of the early decades of the twentieth century regarded technological aspects and the mastery of film language, or the craftsmanship of cinema, to be of prominence over any others. This devalued the work of the actor and neglected the importance of performance, while montage or lighting, and later on mise-en-scène and the text, became the main focus of film theory.43 All of this, coupled with the belief prevalent during the years of the studio system, but still existing today, that stars could not “really” act but played themselves, or “behave[d] on cue” as Dixon44 has beautifully put it, led to the widespread neglect of the study of stars and the work they performed in front of the camera. However, ever since the pathbreaking work of Richard Dyer was published in the late 1970s,45 it has been firmly established that film stars contribute fundamentally to the creation of meaning in a film text, and their prominent role in the film industry, as well as in the process of cinematic creation, should not be underestimated. Dyer’s pioneering work established that the star was not only a fascinating person who deserved admiration and celebration, but the icon of an era, a cultural sign that could be deciphered with regards to prevalent ideas regarding class, race, gender, sexuality, or nationality. As McDonald46 explains, the approach inaugurated by Dyer “allows one to see that the appeal of stars is not the product of some unique, ‘magical’ quality inherent in the individual star, but of the ways in which a star works in relation to certain ideological issues.” Indeed, before the Depression years, stars in US cinema had a god-like, ethereal quality and their presence both on- and off-screen was equally magnificent. During the 1930s, however, stardom changed significantly, incorporating a blend of familiar features and extraordinary qualities, which granted stars “their ideological power.”47 According to Dixon,48 during the Jeremy G. Butler, “The star system and Hollywood,” in J. Hill and P. Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford, 1998), p. 342. 44 Simon Dixon, “Ambiguous ecologies: Stardom’s domestic mise-en-scène,” Cinema Journal 42/2 (2003), p. 83. 45 Richard Dyer. Stars (London, 1999 (1979)); Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies (New York, 1986). 46 Paul McDonald, “Star Studies,” in J. Hollows and M. Jankovich (eds), Approaches to Popular Film (Manchester and New York, 1995), p. 81. 47 P. David Marshall, “The cinematic apparatus and the construction of the film celebrity,” in G. Turner (ed.), The Film Cultures Reader (London, 2002), p. 232. 48 Dixon, “Ambiguous ecologies,” p. 88. 43

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Depression years film stars could no longer be shown to be leading a luxury lifestyle, but a more restrained one. Accordingly, stars started to be presented as average citizens who had been “casually” discovered and turned into film stars as a result of their hard work. In this way, they became living embodiments of the American Dream and perpetuated the bourgeois myth of democratic access to Hollywood fame. Inasmuch as stardom depends on stars’ popularity among ordinary members of the audience, popular actors were then understood to form part of a truly “democratic elite.”49 Stars became ordinary human beings who could be presented as normal people, one of us, only hugely attractive, popular, and very lucky. Ford has always been fond of presenting himself this way: The thing that makes me good at what I do, if I’m good at all, is not feeling special. Not feeling different than other people. What I have to sell as an actor is my sympathy and understanding of what real people’s lives are like. I need to know what I have in common with all the people who are coming to the movies that I make.50

Therefore, by virtue of their ideal lives and status, stars have been understood to be particularly successful exemplars of individual subjectivity within consumer societies, and the ease with which such an exemplary and successful nature is conveyed, together with their alleged authenticity, naturalizes their image and the particular cultural meanings they embody, whether in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, or any other identity category. The fundamental star paradox is that stars can do this despite our awareness that their stunning image is largely illusory, constructed. In other words, we seem to love the lie. Meanwhile, stars have on occasion been discussed as representing traditional or core social values that have become threatened, that is to say, ideal yet fading standards that are difficult to sustain, let alone embody, for the majority of mortals. It might also be the case that, as King51 suggests, the fascination of stars lies in their ability to project a coherent form of individuality, bringing together apparently clashing aspects that are hard to reconcile in real Paul McDonald, “Supplementary chapter: Reconceptualising stardom,” in R. Dyer, Stars (London, 1999 (1998)), p. 197. 50 Quoted in Brad Duke, Harrison Ford: The Films (Jefferson and London, 2005), p. 167. 51 Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction (London, 2002), p. 175. 49

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life. Jodie Foster, for instance, has regularly embodied women who are tough, independent, and resourceful but also maternal, an attractive amalgam that Angelina Jolie has, to a large extent, come to personify these days. Harrison Ford, I believe, may be read in a similar fashion, particularly as regards his film production of the 1990s, a time during which he represented the epitome of “post-feminist” masculinity: a powerful, heroic yet average family guy, or an everyman, as it is often put; he is strong and tough yet also tender, loving and not afraid of displaying his vulnerability.52 Sellers sums it up well when he argues that Ford represents “a hero so confident in his own masculinity and sexuality that he is unafraid to reveal his sensitive side.”53 In addition, in his films he has often signified conventional US values à la George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), such as the dignity of hard work, traditional family values, and the honesty and decency of the common man. In short, his persona has the potential for appealing to men and women alike. The semiotic and (inter-)textual perspective heralded by Richard Dyer therefore claims that stars can be studied as cultural signs or texts that bring particular meanings to the film narrative. The work of Star Studies consists then in disclosing the different meanings that a particular star, or rather the (constructed) persona or image of the star, contributes to the overall film narrative at a particular time. Inasmuch as these meanings are always ideologically and culturally produced, they may be related to other cultural texts, that is to say, the ideology of the wider culture and/or historical period in which the star, or the work of the star, is produced, reproduced, or interpreted. Yet because the persona of the star is always constructed through the integration of different highly manipulated texts (not only film roles but also countless examples of film criticism, film posters, promotional interviews, social media, and so on), the real “truth” behind the screen roles and the artificial persona, behind the façade, can never be fully disclosed. Indeed, “stardom is only accessible to us through texts, and thus only exists as a text.”54 Surely, our interpretations of the image of star are always “true,” Similar views were expressed by some of his fans on the discontinued website apartment42.com (multiple access dates): “Forget the sensitive abilities of projecting believable bravery and sorrow; it’s the scar. And the nose” (Erica); “Harrison is one of the last of the Renaissance Men: He is sensitive and heroic, but more than that, he is a real person” (Breeze). 53 Robert Sellers, Harrison Ford: A Biography (London, 1993), p. 5. 54 Paul Watson, “Critical approaches to Hollywood cinema: Authorship, genre and stars,” in J. Nelmes (ed.), An Introduction to Film Studies (third edition) (London, 2003 (1996)), p. 170. 52

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yet they are also always lacking for they are contingent, subjective, and partial, as well as truly based on performance and artificiality. In other words, stars, who are both real people and representations of people, are nothing but “fictional truths” that offer both the possibility and impossibility of knowing the authentic individual. It is thus  the gap existing between the real person and the constructed persona that fuels the audience’s desire to know more, to build a more authentic or substantial picture of the star. In trying to bridge the gap between the real person and the image, different meanings may be foregrounded by different spectators or groups of spectators, which may be in accordance or in contradiction, thereby revealing the complexly multilayered, polysemic nature of the star’s image.55 Those artificially generated meanings making up the star image may in turn be contextualized within the wider cultural arena, thereby denaturalizing (but perhaps also demystifying in the process) the powerful image of the star. In a nutshell, Star Studies attempts to make “visible that which seems invisible,”56 even if provisionally. Yet Dyer57 insists that the cultural meanings a star embodies at any particular time are not limitless. He introduces the concept of “structured polysemy,” whereby the star is understood to embody several interlocking but finite meanings. While some of these meanings may reinforce each other, others may contradict one another. In addition, not all the meanings comprising the image of the star carry the same significance. Some may be foregrounded or relegated to the background under particular circumstances, such as an important event in an actor’s life, a significant shift in an actor’s career, or more commonly a new film role. In the latter case, certain elements may be mobilized and displayed in such a way that the star image is seen to correspond with the features of the character (1) in a partial or selective way, in which case some meanings are foregrounded while others are put aside, as in Random Hearts (1999), with Ford playing glum police officer Dutch Van der Broeck; (2) in a seamless way, in which case the image of both actor and character becomes almost interchangeable, as in so-called star vehicles, like Clear and Present Danger or Air Force One; or (3) in a problematic way, in Dyer, Heavenly Bodies, p. 5. Paul McDonald, “Star studies,” in J. Hollows and M. Jankovich (eds), Approaches to Popular Film (Manchester and New York, 1995), p. 82. 57 Dyer, Stars, p. 3. 55 56

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which case the star is seen to be cast against type or simply miscast, as in The Mosquito Coast, What Lies Beneath (2000), or K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), thereby generating contradictory meanings that are not always appropriately conveyed, or discontinuities that are not always well received by the public.58 In such instances, it becomes difficult for the public to suspend disbelief, for the presence and performance of the star become more “evident” when he or she is cast against type. Some “flops” may be the direct result of such unwillingness or inability to suspend disbelief on the part of the audience. Indeed, certain stars’ popularity and marketability seem to rely on the maintenance of a fairly homogeneous persona with a consistent form of idiolect, rather than on their impersonatory skills. Hence, experiments pushing the performer’s persona too far may result in the star losing an important share of their popularity at the box office, thereby denting their status within the industry. In these instances, the power of the audience is revealed. When a star like Harrison Ford considers himself to be a “public servant” in the nowadays unpredictable world of Hollywood, he may not be too far off the mark: “I  am nothing more than a worker in a service occupation […]. It’s like being a waiter or a gas-station attendant, but I’m waiting on six million people a week if I’m lucky.”59 Undeniably, stars have over the years played a key role in the development and success of the film industry, but they have done so differently at different moments in time. From the moment the star system became established with the creation of the picture personality (i.e., a performer with a biography) in the 1920,60 stars’ importance within the industry has continuously increased due to their market value as both labor (as performers) and capital (as economic assets, brands, or marketing devices generating public demand, securing financing, and hopefully ensuring profits).61 During the studio era, that is, from the late 1920s and well into the 1960s, actors were tied to the studios for an average period of seven years, during which time, while enjoying a lot of exposure, they had very little room for maneuver and had Ibid., pp. 126–31. Quoted in Garry Jenkins, Harrison Ford: Imperfect Hero (New York, 1998 (1997)), p. 287. 60 Richard de Cordova, “The emergence of the star system in America,” in C. Gledhill (ed.), Stardom: Industry of Desire (London and New York, 1991 (1985)). 61 Marshall, “The cinematic apparatus,” p. 228; Graeme Turner, Understanding Celebrity (London, 2004), p. 35; Paul McDonald, Hollywood Stardom (Malden and Chichester, 2013). 58 59

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to acquiesce to whatever decisions the studio managers made on their behalf, whether in terms of contracts, film roles, or public image. With the eventual fall of the studio system, actors became freelancers in an open market who, together with their agents, were free to decide on their next career move. With decreased film production, acting opportunities also diminished, but the most popular stars’ salaries increased exponentially for within the new system of production they performed an essential part in the marketing and production of the film commodity. Even in today’s uncertain climate, with increasingly unpredictable audience response, the presence of a star can make or break a financing deal, and indeed they have become the focal selling point in the new package-deal system operating in contemporary Hollywood. Indeed, in the absence of any other strategy or element capable of attracting the huge potential returns that come with a box office hit, highly paid stars are the best option currently available […]. Actors are therefore the central focus […] around which mainstream American filmmaking is constructed. They are the main attraction for audiences deciding which film to see, the lead element in the package which now determines whether a film project will be green-lighted. In a character- and narrative-driven film system, they will always command centre stage.62

Yet, with Hollywood film production involving escalating costs, the presence of the star may generate massive profits but also make a company bankrupt if the film does not perform as well as expected, hence the necessity for stars to do more than just act to justify their massive salaries. They have to generate interest by attending premieres around the world, engaging in film advertising, promotional interviews, photo shoots, endorsing and sporting film merchandising, and so on. Their role is essential in turning the film into “an unmissable event.” Stars’ popular appeal, or “bankability” in marketing terms, is so precious that it is often seen to justify their inflated salaries: For the industry, the stars’ economic value transcends the nature of their work and thus their wages far outstrip those earned by generally unionized film workers. The celebrity’s independent connection to the audience permits

Michael Allen, Contemporary U.S. Cinema (Harlow, Essex, 2003), pp. 132; 139.

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the configuration of a separate system of value for his or her contribution to any film. This connection to the audience is on an affective or emotional level that defies clear-cut quantification of its economic import.63

Within the actor-led package system, many stars are also granted other important benefits, such as the right to suggest and refuse acting partners or directors, as well as the right to effect changes in the script and final cut. For example, Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt confronted each other during the shooting of The Devil’s Own (1997) due to the changes that Ford insisted be made to the script so that his character would gain equal standing to Pitt’s and could be portrayed more positively. Pitt went on to blame the relative failure of the film on those “irresponsible” final-moment script changes. However, other celebrated moments and characterizations in Ford’s filmography are due to his contributions, even before he became a major star, such as Bob Falfa’s donning of a white cowboy hat in American Graffiti (1973), the celebrated “I love you-I know” line of dialogue between Han Solo and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), or the sabre man’s expedient shooting in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Pitt and Ford’s aforementioned dispute is a clear indication of the hierarchical system that characterizes the star system in contemporary Hollywood. This hierarchy is pre-eminently based on economic principles but within the acting profession, and the wider cultural arena, a different kind of artistic hierarchy operates. Some actors may be respected due to their box office appeal while others may be admired due to their acting abilities. The former usually feature in Hollywood’s most commercial or mainstream enterprises (say, Harrison Ford, Will Smith, Jennifer Aniston, or Angelina Jolie), whereas the latter excel in performance rather than at the box office (say, Meryl Streep or Joaquin Phoenix), which means that they can risk a number of “flops” without much dent being made to their prestige. It is only rarely that an actor may be considered to be representative of both categories, although popular exceptions, such as Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Jennifer Lawrence, and multiple-award winners Tom Hanks or Jodie Foster stand out. This artistic differentiation characterizes the Hollywood star system today, which contrasts with the situation in the studio era, during which the cultivation of personas was valued over and above Marshall, “The cinematic apparatus,” p. 231.

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impersonatory skills. The current prevalence of computer-generated, special effects-studded, action-packed blockbusters has arguably conferred added value to the performing abilities displayed by (human) actors since “acting has become a way of claiming back the cinema for human stars.”64 Unsurprisingly, performances in action blockbusters are only very rarely considered awardwinning material, even though the fact that some stars, such as Harrison Ford, insist on playing most of their own stunts, or on doing “physical acting,” provides another way in which they can retain the human element in action cinema. Likewise, more and more A-list actors are taking up roles in small independent film productions or on the stage in an attempt to give an aura of artistic prestige to their work. In addition, it may reasonably be argued that in today’s celebrityobsessed world, film stars are trying to vindicate their craft and differentiate themselves from other celebrities with whom they share the limelight and whose main claim to fame is to be found in their widely scrutinized lifestyle. This need for differentiation has been well noted within Film Studies, inasmuch as it has become necessary to establish the aspects that make a media celebrity such as Kim Kardashian different from a sports personality, a music icon, or a film star. Gledhill65 has argued that cinema once provided “the ultimate confirmation of stardom,” but this is no longer so, as one can easily verify by taking a cursory look at social media, television, or the press. Within the world of cinema itself, we may find that film stars now coexist with star directors, star producers, star scriptwriters, and even animated stars. Therefore, it has become necessary to explore and rethink the contemporary notion of film stardom and the ways in which it is differently articulated today. In this respect, Geraghty66 has identified three main forms of articulation or modes, which may apply differently to different film stars: the film star as celebrity, professional, and performer. Gossip and information about one’s private life predominate in the construction of the film celebrity, over and above discussions of their professional career or artistic achievements, whose significance is only relative within this mode. The degree to which the celebrity mode is seen to characterize a particular actor’s image at any given moment ranges widely, Christine Geraghty, “Re-examining stardom: Questions of texts, bodies and performances,” in C. Gledhill and L. Williams (eds), Reinventing Film Studies (London, 2000), p. 192. 65 Christine Gledhill, “Introduction,” in C. Gledhill (ed.), Stardom: Industry of Desire (London and New York, 1991 (1985)), p. xiii. 66 Geraghty, “Re-examining stardom.” 64

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even though it has become virtually impossible for any popular performer relying on promotion and their own ability to generate interest to escape this particular mode of representation, especially after a particular box office failure, or in between film projects. Meanwhile, Geraghty67 finds that Harrison Ford is a particularly good example of the star-as-professional category. This mode relies, to a large extent, on the existence of a well-established continuity, or in Dyer’s terms “fit,” between the star’s public image and the film roles that have brought him or her fame. In this sense, Ford’s perennial insistence on performing his own stunts can be considered to be an extreme form of personification. In this respect, he once declared: “I used to get very annoyed when people used this comparison but now I understand it to be true―you’re not just an actor, you become a brand” (emphasis in the original).68 Although the studios may indulge these performers with the occasional “vanity project,” in which they can fulfill their artistic aspirations, the need for differentiation within contemporary Hollywood has led certain actors to rely on this mode, which allows them to “sell their product” or exploit their unique “brand” to their own (and the studios’) professional and economic advantage. Generally speaking, the star-as-professional mode is seen to contrast with Geraghty’s third and last category, the star-as-performer, for in the latter it is the actor’s performance or acting skills that are foregrounded, over and above questions referring to their private life or public image. A logical consequence of the fact that the star-as-professional relies on the existence of a suitable image-role correlation is the widespread but misleading belief that professionals do not act, or work for that matter, but “perform themselves.” This circumstance, as Lovell69 stresses, does not necessarily imply that performers within this category are inevitably bad actors, but may in fact be an indication that their range is limited. Certain performers may be more suited to certain roles or genres than others. Likewise, workers in other areas may be more skillful when dealing with certain tasks than others, which does not necessarily diminish their value as workers. By contrast, the value of the star-as-performer lies in their renowned impersonatory skills and their ability Ibid., pp. 190–1. Quoted in Bardin, “Idol chatter,” p. 120. 69 Alan Lovell, “I went in search of Deborah Kerr, Jodie Foster and Julianne Moore but got waylaid,” in T. Austin and M. Barker (eds), Contemporary Hollywood Stardom (London, 2003), p. 263. 67 68

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to pull off believable performances in a wide range of characterizations and genres. It is by foregrounding and vindicating their work as serious performing artists that these actors seek to legitimate and maintain their standing in the overcrowded world of contemporary Hollywood fame. Unsurprisingly, they are the ones who reap the majority of the industry’s awards. Geraghty70 concedes that these three modes should not necessarily be regarded as tightly closed and independent, but may coexist to a lesser or larger extent within a particular star’s image. This may be exemplified by  making reference to Harrison Ford once again, a good example of the staras-professional category,71 whose media exposure as a celebrity accelerated ever since his apparently solid marriage to Melissa Mathison broke down in 2004 and the actor became involved with his present wife, Calista Flockhart, and various celebrities before her. The increased focus on his personal life, moreover, seems to have coincided with a period of professional decline. The publicity that his celebrity side granted him, as well as the much-hyped Indiana Jones and Han Solo comebacks, may be seen to have compensated for the lacklustre reception of many of his most recent films. This circumstance has led the actor to change artistic course in more recent years by choosing to play supporting or character roles in which his largely unrecognized impersonatory skills have been foregrounded. Therefore, Ford exemplifies Geraghty’s claim that the different modes may coexist within a particular star’s image, which helps us understand the ways in which the Hollywood film industry, and Hollywood stardom in particular, operates these days. In what remains of this book Ford’s iconicity will be assessed against the background provided by both Star and Masculinity Studies, as sketched above. If we accept that cinema and film stars in particular provide idealized images that have a more powerful and direct impact on the public consciousness than the everyday models surrounding us, analyzing the ways in which masculinity is represented, produced, performed, and received in the films starring an icon should then provide us with a better understanding of what masculinity has meant in popular cultural discourses over the last few decades. Geraghty, “Re-examining stardom,” pp. 188; 195. Ford himself seems to be well aware of his own status within the acting profession: “there are people that are more likely to be celebrated for their acting skills, and there are other people, who, perhaps, even by nature of their own taste, are less likely to be caught acting and thus, not celebrated. I’m fine with that” (emphasis in the original) (quoted in Bardin, “Idol chatter,” p. 120).

70 71

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2

Harrison Ford, Hollywood’s Self-Made Man The Making of a Star: The Beginnings of Harrison Ford’s Career Throughout most of his long-running career, “professional actor” Harrison Ford has become well known as a performer who can be relied on to play the part of the guy who one can rely on. As his Star Wars co-star Carrie Fisher1 put it, The roles get lost in Harrison. I don’t think that there’s a lot that is dissimilar between the character and the person. It is no accident that he plays a lot of heroes. He plays somebody you can rely on, who will take care of whatever it is, from a kid’s hurt finger to a murder, to saving the galaxy. He has that quality.

However, when he was a young boy in Chicago, Ford used to get beaten and bullied at school due to his chronic shyness and his preference for spending time with the girls.2 His introspectiveness also characterized his years at Ripon College in Wisconsin, where he almost majored in English and Philosophy. At that time, Ford was prone to depression, which was the result of his perceived inability to meet his father’s expectations, and never managed to end his studies. He was expelled when he only had one subject to complete. In 1985, fortyfive years after Spencer Tracy, another honorable “average man” of the movies, Quoted in Gerald Clarke, “Stardom time for a bag of bones” in Time (1985). Available at http:// web.archive.org/web/20091005092502/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/Miscellaneous/ bag_of_bones.php (accessed March 29, 2009). 2 All biographical references in this section, unless otherwise stated, have been sourced from Ford’s unofficial biographers Sellers, Jenkins, and Duke. Robert Sellers, Harrison Ford: A Biography (London, 1993); Garry Jenkins, Harrison Ford: Imperfect Hero (New York, 1998 (1997)); Brad Duke, Harrison Ford: The Films (Jefferson and London, 2005). 1

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collected his own honorary degree, Ripon College offered the undistinguished student Harrison Ford the same recognition, which he politely rejected. Nevertheless, Ford’s time was not entirely wasted at college. The reasoning skills he developed at the time eventually allowed the actor to avoid the Vietnam draft by putting forward a convincing argument justifying his conscientious objection, a little-known fact in the biography of an actor who came to embody the bravery and moral heft of the all-American hero like virtually no other actor in contemporary Hollywood.3 In addition, Ford first acquired a taste for acting by becoming a member of the college’s drama group, in which he usually played the leading man. Ford left college without an official qualification and married his first wife Mary shortly after, in 1963, at the age of twenty-one. In order to make a living, he decided to devote himself to acting and became a successful first performer in a summer stock company working in Wisconsin and, later on, various theatres along the Californian coast. The press of the area praised the performance skills of a certain Harry Ford unanimously.4 It was from there that Ford took the jump to Hollywood. The actor managed to enter the Columbia and Universal Studios’ “New Talent” programs, where he was paid wages of around $150 a week. Ford’s beginnings were not easy, not least because he despised the politics and the factory-like workings of such programs. He particularly disliked the (Method) acting lessons, the artificial grooming and photograph sessions, the sycophantic politics of self-promotion, in short, the sheer process of star construction under the old studio system. As one of the last contract players in the history of Hollywood, Ford used to loathe the old-fashioned “don’t think, just do” ways of the Hollywood “star machine.”5 As Ford saw it, the mechanical process involving “the discovery, the screen test, the makeover, the publicity, the casting to type”6 of stars in the classical period attempted to strip the studios’ acting talents of any form of individuality. It is for this reason that he developed a reputation for being temperamental and difficult. Still, at the age of Even though the actor has rarely expressed his political views in public, aside from his steadfast support for environmental causes, Ford became involved in anti-Vietnam war and anti-gun protests in the late 1960s (Jenkins, Harrison Ford, p. 89). 4 Duke quotes a particularly visionary critic’s rendition of Ford’s performance in Stephen Vincent Benet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning John Brown’s Body: “Handsome, debonair, arrogant and elegant, Ford […] is a neat pleasure to see and hear.” (Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 14). 5 Jeanine Basinger, The Star Machine (New York, 2007). 6 Ibid., p. 523. 3

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twenty-four he achieved his first film role as a bellboy in Dead Heat in a Merry Go Round, a 1966 Columbia film starring James Coburn. Yet after watching his short performance, the studio vice-president Jerry Tokovsky decided to sack him: “you ain’t got it, kid,” he said. The studio head drew an unfavorable comparison between Ford and the young Tony Curtis, through whose first performance as a grocery seller, Tokovsky told Ford, one could already catch a glimpse of the star Curtis was to become. Ford responded sarcastically, “I thought he was supposed to look like a grocery seller.” This incident led to the eventual termination of his contract but not before Tokovsky vetoed him from starring in Jacques Demy’s Hollywood venture The Model Shop (1969). Sadly for Columbia, Ford went on to become the “It Boy” a few years later. Three days later, the actor got a second chance at Universal, but he was mostly offered unimportant, occasional roles in films made for television or TV series. By then, the actor had become a father for the first time and was in need of a better wage than he was earning playing such small parts. It was at this time that he decided to take up a different career, carpentry, which he pursued for about eight years. Ford was ready to sacrifice his ambition to be an actor for the sake of his integrity and family responsibilities. This is how he became “the second most well-known carpenter in History.”7 Ford taught himself carpentry with the help of library books and little by little his skill became well known in Hollywood. His dedication to the job, as well as his meticulousness and attention to detail, made him a very popular craftsman. The actor eventually chose to give up his career as a carpenter, but this episode in his life had a strong impact on both his acting career and his overall public image. Comments such as this one peppered his early interviews: “I conduct my profession the way I make furniture. There’s no tricks, no magic, no mysteries. There’s nothing but work, willpower, technique and lots and lots of patience.”8 Knee9 contends that the parallelisms that have often been drawn between Ford’s carpentry skills and his acting technique helped the actor to stake a claim to artistic craftsmanship from the early days of his career. While this is a valid proposition, my personal view is that such parallelisms Ian Nathan, “The new Ford solo,” Empire 161 (November 2002), p. 116. Quoted in Laurence Caracalla, Harrison Ford (San Francisco, 2007), p. 8. 9 Adam Knee, “Harrison Ford: A well-tempered machismo,” in R. Eberwein (ed.), Acting for America. Movie Stars of the 1980s (New Brunswick and London, 2010), p. 163. 7 8

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were actually instrumental in cementing the star’s claim to authenticity both in real life and in his performance style. From the early days, Ford was keen to present himself as a self-taught carpenter/performer in control of his own career, rather than a merely artificial product of the Hollywood “star machine.” The fact that, unlike acting, carpentry is a craft “conventionally aligned with masculinity and physicality”10 also fostered the star’s early associations with traditional notions of “real” maleness. Ford’s widely publicized and carefully constructed from-rags-to-riches story therefore cemented his reputation as a conscientious worker with solid, traditional Midwestern convictions, especially as regards his can-do attitude and his eagerness to work hard and do his job to perfection. As he has jokingly stated: “I think ‘the Force’ is in you. Force yourself.”11 His access to stardom was neither swift nor easy but his willingness to take up carpentry rather than compromise his professional (and masculine) integrity by accepting insignificant parts resulted in him building up a reputation as a self-made man who never gives up on his ambition. Ford has acknowledged that carpentry allowed him to regain his self-esteem: “there was a significant change in my personality in those years out of films. I’d gotten my balls back.”12 Thus, Ford, an unsuccessful actor with important family responsibilities at the time, epitomizes the idea that success at work and successful, healthy masculinity are intimately related.13 Even though his slow path to stardom was also peppered with strokes of good luck, his fame as a hard-working ex-manual worker has perennially allowed the actor to project a long-held image as an average, self-made man that no-one else has been able to emulate in contemporary Hollywood. His uniqueness partly resides in this fact, which has been widely circulated and is therefore well known among a large portion of the public. His eventual success, coupled with his ability to “effortlessly” embody traditional US values through the various roles he has played throughout his career, has resulted in Ford becoming the archetypal American hero and a perfect example of the star mystique, bringing together such notions as ordinariness, naturalness, Ibid., p. 163. Evan Carmichael, “Harrison Ford’s top 10 rules for success,” YouTube.com, October 7, 2016, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl6vL_-mEbA (accessed November 16, 2016). 12 Quoted in Tony Crawley, “Harrison Ford: A superstar for the eighties,” Cinema, special issue (winter 1981), p. 51 (my emphasis). 13 Tim Edwards, Cultures of Masculinity (London and New York, 2006), pp. 8–9. 10 11

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hard work, determination, courage, and a genuine concern for others, thereby bridging the gap between the average (male) member of the audience and the star. On becoming the official “Box-office Star of the Century” back in 1994, he was described thus: When you watch Harrison Ford perform, words such as honest, capable, reliable, graceful, intelligent and responsible come to mind—characteristics that everyone wants to, and can, identify with. He does not perform acts that are unattainable by most of us. He co-stars with people who could live right down the block from any of us, and he seems to solve problems the way most of us would if faced with the same circumstances.14

Ford has never entirely left his carpentry legacy behind. Commentators have been fond of drawing parallelisms between his meticulous carpentry skills and his equally punctilious attention to detail when acting. A perfect illustration was provided by Empire critic Ian Nathan:15 [Carpentry is] integral to his image, the sense of solidity, down-home pragmatism and can-do ethics. It makes him seem more real than other superstars: this is the guy who can get you a $30m weekend and make you a free-standing shelf unit. […]. On each production, Ford is the one holding the hammer. If things fall apart, he will get the blame. […]. He hasn’t given up the carpentry—he’s relocated it (emphasis added).

The actor himself has fostered such parallelisms and prefers to be described as a craftsperson, rather than an artist, when his performance style is being discussed: I’ve never considered myself an artist. I’ve always considered myself a craftsperson. I’m a technical actor. For me acting is part intellectual, part mechanical. […]. The emotions you show may be spontaneous, but the bricks have to be carefully laid to fit with the other pieces. […]. Failures are inevitable. Unfortunately, in film they live forever and they’re forty feet wide and twenty feet high.16 Robert J. Dowling et al., “Tribute to Harrison Ford,” The Hollywood Reporter (Harrison Ford Tribute Issue), 331/14 (March 8, 1994), p. S-3. 15 Nathan, “The new Ford solo,” pp. 116; 119. 16 Quoted in Rochelle L. Levy, “In his own words,” in American Film Institute (2000a). Available at http://www.afi.com/tvevents/laa/laasite/tribute.asp?lname=Ford&fname=Harrison&id=4426&file= In_His_Own_Words$H_Ford.txt (accessed February 5, 2008). Link no longer available. 14

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Throughout his career, Ford has been keen to reminisce about his difficult beginnings in Hollywood, hence feeding back on and reinforcing his persona as a regular guy and unlikely hero, which he has portrayed in numerous films. Although Ford was offered minor parts in such films as Getting Straight (1970) or Zabriskie Point (1970), his first acting breakthrough was in American Graffiti (1973),17 the first installment in the fruitful collaboration between Harrison Ford and George Lucas. Ford initially rejected Lucas’s acting offer, as his salary as a carpenter doubled what the director of this low-budget film was willing to offer him. Eventually, Ford agreed to play the role of boisterous female magnet Bob Falfa, who arrives in town to challenge John Milner (Paul Le Mat) to a racing duel. This was a small part in comparison to others in the film, but Ford’s performance was powerful enough to attract attention. As Sellers18 commented, “in his first scene as Bob Falfa, that mocking face partly hidden beneath a giant white cowboy hat, he exudes star quality. That here was a captivating, new and exciting masculine presence was manifestly clear.” The sheer popularity of the film brought instant fame to the different actors in it. Unfortunately for Ford, this part only led to more character actor offers. Ford has always been particularly fond of American Graffiti, not only because it was the film that first brought him to public attention, but also because it was the first film in which his creative input was paid attention to. Lucas followed Ford’s suggestion that Falfa should wear clothes matching his arrogant personality, especially his characteristic white cowboy hat and shirt (see Figure 4). The character’s anachronistic sense of fashion and behavior is meant to signify an old style of devil-may-care masculinity that is eventually rejected in the film. His bully-like, working-class ways contrast with those of the main protagonists, middle-class boys-next-door Curt Henderson (Richard Dreyfuss) and Steve Bolander (Ron Howard), who are supposed to leave town to go to college the morning after the long night depicted in the film. Their potential social and geographical mobility is constructed as more desirable than life in a small town. Furthermore, Steve and Curt seem to be just as popular among women as any other character. Thus, their style of masculinity On an estimated low budget of $777,000, American Graffiti went on to make a record $115m at the US box office alone. 18 Sellers, Harrison Ford, p. 42. 17

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Figure 4  Cocky Bob Falfa was the perfect harbinger for the later part of Han Solo. American Graffiti (produced by Francis Ford Coppola, Gary Kurtz, 1973).

is presented as more successful than any other in the film, which coupled with the ironic treatment of the Falfa character reflects changing notions of desirable masculinity during the 1970s. The mocking treatment given to Ford’s character was certainly reprised in the later part of Han Solo in George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977). Ford appeared in other films before he had the chance to play the role of Han Solo in Star Wars, most notably in Francis Ford Coppola’s political paranoia film and Palme D’Or winner The Conversation (1974). His part was very small, but impressive enough to be considered one of the actor’s ten best performances ever.19 He played the part of Martin Stett, the snobbish assistant director left in charge of collecting the doomed tapes that private eye Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) has been paid to record. Once again, Ford’s artistic contributions were attended to. The actor considered that the significance of his performance would be enhanced were he to play Stett as a homosexual. However, given the short time allotted to this character, the only “evidence” of his sexual orientation seems to have been a $900 silk suit Ford bought for the part, as well as the subsequent changes made in the set design for Stett’s flamboyant office (see Figure 5) and, perhaps, his liking for baking cookies. For an actor who went on to become an icon of heterosexual, family-orientated masculinity, this obscure role remains an interesting rarity. Jenkins considers Ian Freer, “The top ten Harrison Ford performances,” Empire 202 (April 2006), p. 137.

19

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Figure 5  Harrison Ford and Gene Hackman in Coppola’s grim 1974 masterpiece The Conversation. The Conversation (produced by Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Roos, 1974).

this part to be the “most striking cameo”20 in Ford’s career, while Freer laments “if only he’d take such chances these days.”21 After The Conversation, Ford went back to carpentry once again as the roles he was offered were not of enough interest to him, which made an increasingly embittered Ford fall into frequent bouts of depression. Yet in 1977, he got the chance of a lifetime when George Lucas offered him to play the part of Han Solo. Star Wars: Episode IV. A New Hope was an instant success that catapulted its three protagonists to ultimate stardom, thereby allowing Ford to give up his carpentry forever.22 The never-seen-before special effects characterizing this revolutionary blockbuster and its two 1980s sequels did not prevent its main (human) protagonists from achieving fame. On the other hand, while Han Solo was arguably the least narratively important character in the initial trilogy, especially in episodes IV and VI, it was certainly a major landmark in Ford’s career that did much to shape his iconic heroic persona. Jenkins, Harrison Ford, p. 126. Freer, “The top ten,” p. 137. 22 Box Office Mojo ranks Star Wars number nine at the all-time US box office and, more modestly, number sixty-four at the all-time international box office. If figures are adjusted for inflation, then the film becomes the second most profitable film ever in the United States. These are phenomenal results, especially when one considers that the film’s initial 1977 release was confined to a meager thirty-two screens due to the industry’s total lack of faith in Lucas’s visionary project (Michael Coate (2003)) “The original first-week engagements of Star Wars,” in In70mm.com. Available at http:// www.in70mm.com/news/2003/star_wars/theatres/index.htm (accessed July 31, 2016). 20 21

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The film is essentially a Western-in-outer-space epic that also borrows freely from the adventure and war film, all seasoned with mystical undertones. The film stages the mythical confrontation between Good, as represented by the Rebels, and Evil, as embodied by an ensemble of Nazi soldier and Japanese warrior look-alikes, all belonging to the Empire. The Star Wars saga ran the risk of taking itself too seriously had it not been for the presence and sarcasm of Han Solo. The much-needed humor that Ford brought to the part, and Solo to the film, ensured the movie against being considered little more than a wonderful display of the changing production values in the New Hollywood. Lucas’s film was an essential contribution to a new chapter in Hollywood cinema history, at a time during which formal experimentation, narrative complexity, character development, and ideological commitment were being superseded by special effects, expensive production values, film merchandising, and the new ideology of entertainment epitomized by movie blockbusters.23 As one early advertisement for the film stated, “never before in cinema History has so much time, money and technology been spent […] just for fun.”24 Within this kind of industrial context, one can expect little character development or psychological exploration from one installment of the saga to the next, which is confirmed by a look at the character of Han Solo. Still hugely popular and widely available as an object for consumption, this “scoundrel” has truly become an icon of masculinity in US film: a cynical, rugged, selfmade individual with a heart of gold who discovers he is a better person than he thinks he is. In other words, a reluctant hero who we know will always come to the rescue, even if at the very last moment. In the first film, Solo is constructed as a self-serving mercenary with no strings attached except for his faithful co-pilot and friend, Chewbacca the wookie (Peter Mayhew). Yet he happens to become instrumental in the Rebel plot against the Empire, thanks to which he meets his fellow heroes, the future Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). Inadvertently, Solo takes part in the Rebel plot by transporting Skywalker and Ben Kenobi (Alec Guinness) in exchange for money. Later he decides to leave Peter Krämer, “Post-classical Hollywood,” in J. Hill and P. Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford, 1998a); Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction (London, 2002). 24 Quoted in Lee Pfeiffer and Michael Lewis, The Films of Harrison Ford (second edition) (New York, 1999 (1996)), p. 72. 23

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them as he considers the plot to be “suicide,” rather than an act of heroism, but especially because he wants to stay alive so that he can enjoy the reward he has collected for safely delivering the Princess to the Rebel base. Solo’s mercenary values are repeatedly criticized and ridiculed by spirited Princess Leia, a good match for Solo who refuses to be bossed around by him. Through the parodic aspects of the Solo character and especially through Leia’s no-nonsense attitude toward his constant swagger, the narrative places a subtle critical emphasis on the performative aspects of macho-style masculinity. In addition, Luke’s inner “force” and spirituality are also made to contrast with Solo’s infantile penchant for bragging. However, by the end of the first installment of the story, Solo comes back to help Luke in his final mission to destroy the Empire’s stronghold. Even though the character’s values are lightly mocked in the film, it is Solo’s final act of heroism that vindicates him as a fit masculine character. Having left his self-interest behind, he is now ready to join the team of heroes. Star Wars: Episode IV also succeeded in turning Ford into a star with sex appeal. Even though the characters in what is essentially a family-entertainment film25 are not sexualized in any obvious manner―Carrie Fisher was forced to wear tape around her breasts so as to avoid any excess “jiggling,” the chemistry between Leia and Solo, as well as Ford’s characterization in updated cowboy gear, did help to create a certain aura of sexiness around the character of Han Solo that was clearly reminiscent of his earlier role in American Graffiti (see Figure 6). At the end of the film, there is a ceremony in which Leia symbolically “marries” both spiritual Luke and physical, sexy Han,26 but it is with the latter that she eventually starts a relationship in the film’s sequel The Empire Strikes Back, which continues in Return of the Jedi (1983). Even though Luke conveniently turns out to be Leia’s brother in Episode VI, her choice recalls Pearl’s (Jennifer Jones) in Duel in the Sun (1946), in which excitement and Krämer reports that the saga was not initially conceived as such but Lucas was shrewd enough to spot the huge market niche for family entertainment in 1970s Hollywood. Peter Krämer, “‘It’s aimed at kids―the kid in everybody’: George Lucas, Star Wars and children’s entertainment,” in Scope (2001). Available at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/film/journal/articles/its-aimed-at-kids.htm (accessed May 28, 2005). 26 As Klein humorously points out, “Hamill was the perfect romantic-fantasy object for prepubescent girls—the kind of guy Lisa Simpson reads about in Sexually Unthreatening Boys magazine—while Ford appealed to the more mature” (Andy Klein, “The thinking man’s action hero,” The Hollywood Reporter (Harrison Ford Tribute Issue), 331/14 (March 8, 1994), p. S-35). Lucas, for his part, described Hamill as a “gosh and golly kid” (quoted in Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 34). 25

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Figure 6  “The rapscallion of the Universe”: An updated parodic, and very sexy, ­version of the lone cowboy myth. Star Wars. Episode IV. A New Hope (produced by Gary Kurtz, George Lucas, 1977).

sexual attraction prevail over the prospect of security, even if this leads to tragedy and death. In Star Wars, however, Leia shows that she can look after herself, which makes the prospect of security relatively unimportant and Solo her obvious sexual partner. Despite their initial bickering, theirs is a match made in heaven, which signals the film’s overt reliance on the conventions of the romantic comedy. Their sexual compatibility is also signified through Solo’s treatment of Leia as an equal, which is made to contrast with his archenemy Jabba the Hut’s sexual objectification of the Princess. In this particular sense, Star Wars proved to be generally in tune with changing ideas about gender and sexuality in the United States, as women’s social and sexual empowerment became increasingly visible. Still, since Star Wars is primarily a family film, this “token” romantic relationship receives comparatively little narrative exploration in the trilogy, unlike Solo’s roguish credentials or Leia’s significance for cosmic peace. As a result, it may be argued that the relationship has a minor impact on character construction. Nevertheless, one could still contend that Solo’s maturity process is the result of both his becoming part of the Rebel plot and his later involvement with political activist Leia. Meanwhile, the chemistry building on-screen between Solo and Leia was also developing off-screen. As Fisher remarked, You look at Harrison and you listen; he looks like he’s carrying a gun even if he isn’t. I think he has qualities that disappeared into the pioneering west.

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He’s this incredibly attractive male animal, in every sense of the word. This carpenter stud.27

Two decades later, in 1998, Ford went on to become “The Sexiest Man Alive,” according to People Magazine. Ever the self-effacing pragmatist, Ford28 was bemused by the award: I never feel sexy. I have a distant relationship with the mirror […]. My front teeth are not real […]. I’ve got a completely imbalanced face and a nose that has been broken three times. One eye is bigger than the other. When people photograph me, they have to twist the lights around to make me look like a movie actor.

Ford’s coy self-awareness serves as a counterpoint to the customary sexualization of younger male stars who have been granted this award in more recent years, such as Hugh Jackman, Chris Hemsworth, and Channing Tatum. Despite his sex appeal, it is generally true that Ford’s films, unlike those of other (action) stars, have seldom paraded his naked torso or displayed his body in a heavily sexualized manner. In addition, the very rare photographs seeking to call attention to this side to his image, most of which are from the 1980s, betray a certain feeling of embarrassment on the actor’s part, or else focus on everyday personal hygiene rituals, such as shaving, thereby de-emphasizing his sexual objectification while also highlighting his lack of narcissism and thus his thoroughly masculine “naturalness.” Unsurprisingly, the actor has stated that his self-confidence has never been based on his sexual appeal.29 The Star Wars experience also had a tremendous impact on the way Ford started to regard his own profession. On the one hand, he became aware of the enormous amount of dedication that becoming a serious actor required; on the other, he came to understand the importance of teamwork in a film production. As Lucas has pointed out,

Quoted in Robert Sellers, Harrison Ford, p. 55. John Daniel Reed “The sexiest man alive: Harrison Ford,” in People Magazine (1998), http:// people.com/archive/cover-story-the-sexiest-man-alive-98-harrison-ford-vol-50-no-18/ (accessed December 12, 2015). 29 Calista Flockhart, “The pillow-talk interview: Harrison Ford,” Interview 22/5 (June 2003), p. 94. 27 28

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Star Wars mellowed him as an actor […]. It made him realize how important the job of an actor is and how everybody depends on everybody to do their job well and not to be self-indulgent. He became a very good professional actor from that point on.30

Teamwork was important in an ensemble piece like Star Wars and the ever selfdeprecating star has continued to regard the different film projects in which he has participated as the product of collaboration among different stakeholders: “my job is assistant story teller. It is not icon”;31 “I don’t want to be the boss. I want to have unusual access to the boss. I’d rather be part of the team than the leader of it. The job, as I understand it, is not to take charge but to take responsibility.”32 As a result, Harrison Ford has managed to be regarded by his co-workers as an approachable star who, despite his tremendous star power, demands no special treatment, is easy to work with on set, and steadfastly refuses to be considered part of the Hollywood elite. As Steven Spielberg once said, Ford is “a movie star who also happens to be a regular guy.”33 After the success of Star Wars, the actor went on to accept roles that appealed to him artistically, even if some of them had little box-office potential. His desire to avoid being typecast as a Han Solo type led him to a supporting part as a mentally scarred Vietnam veteran in the unsuccessful low-budget film Heroes (1977) and a more important one as US Air Force Lieutenant Barnsby in big-budget box-office failure Force Ten from Navarone (1978), a late sequel to the war-adventure classic The Guns of Navarone (1961). The Britishproduced film depicts an allied mission in which US and British military men are forced to collaborate in order to kill a spy and blow up a strategic bridge in Yugoslavia during the Second World War. Lieutenant Barnsby was the first example of a string of roles in the late 1970s in which the characters played by Ford are in one way or another constructed in opposition to various non-US men, such that Ford comes to stand for the “American Way” or the “real” US style of masculinity. Such an early burden of representation would certainly become part of Ford’s developing star persona. In this particular Quoted in Todd Coleman, “On the run,” The Hollywood Reporter (Harrison Ford Tribute Issue) 331/14 (March 8, 1994), p. S-7. 31 Quoted in Roald Rynning, “The dream ticket,” Empire 52 (October 1993), p. 86. 32 Quoted in Tony Horkins, “In conversation with Harrison Ford,” Empire 202 (April 2006), p. 136. 33 Spielberg’s personal salute, in Dowling et al., “Tribute to Harrison Ford,” p. S-5. 30

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film nationality, but also age, are essential ingredients in the aforementioned confrontation. Nevertheless, the narrative shows that both the US and British models of masculinity, as constructed in the film, are indeed complementary: expertise and wisdom, which come with age, are shown to be compatible with the bravery and energy of the younger generation. Nevertheless, by the end of the film, it is actually the more mature and experienced British servicemen who are leading the way, which suggests a certain critique of the younger model, or at least the US model of masculinity that Barnsby and his men are meant to represent. Ford’s most significant role during this later period was probably that of Colonel Lucas34 in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). Ford’s character does not enjoy much screen time but, as in The Conversation, his performance is memorable. It is almost painful to watch him reluctantly brief Captain Willard35 (Martin Sheen) on his mission to terminate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) “by any means available” during the short but narratively crucial scene in which Ford appears (see Figure 7). His briefing is preceded by a speech delivered by General Corman (G. D. Spradlin) justifying Willard’s questionable mission.

Figure 7  Harrison Ford truly excels as anxious Colonel Lucas in Coppola’s second Palme D’Or winner Apocalypse Now. Apocalypse Now (produced by Francis Ford ­Coppola, Gray Frederickson, Fred Roos, Tom Sternberg, 1979). Ford adopted this name as a tribute to his friend and mentor George Lucas (Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 37). 35 Similarly, the name of this character, Captain Benjamin L. Willard, combines the names of Ford’s two oldest sons. 34

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Because of the references it contains to “the dark side” of human nature and “the conflict in every human heart between good and evil,” the speech is oddly reminiscent of the “Force philosophy” in the early Star Wars trilogy. Yet Ford’s tense performance undermines any possible justification for Kurtz’s termination and, by extension, for the war itself. Ford managed to depict Colonel Lucas as a fish out of water against the insane backdrop of the Vietnam War. In addition, the role was a perfect indication of Ford’s strong acting abilities, which have become blurred over time as a result of his blockbuster credentials. Even though from the start of his career Ford showed an interest in taking part in different kinds of projects in order to mature as a performer and broaden his range, his enormous success in blockbuster productions pigeon-holed him into the kind of unlikely man of action that became his trademark during the 1980s and especially the 1990s. Questions of performance ceased to be integral to his public image when in the eyes of the public Ford became a blockbuster star, rather than a performing artist. In 1979 Ford also appeared in another three minor films, More American Graffiti (1979), in an uncredited cameo as Officer Bob Falfa; The Frisco Kid (1979), a Western comedy; and Hanover Street (1979), a British romantic war melodrama mainly constructed from a male point of view. The latter film was a commercial failure but it offered Ford his first role as a leading man. In addition, the part was a good opportunity for the actor to broaden his range as a romantic lead, an aspect he had not fully developed before, while also allowing him to build on his persona as a nonconformist maverick and a hero despite himself. While stationed near London during the Second World War, Lieutenant-with-an-attitude David Halloran meets Margaret Sellinger (LesleyAnne Down), a married woman with whom he falls in love almost instantly. Their steamy affair is interrupted when David is sent to France on a dangerous mission alongside Margaret’s dull, older husband Paul Sellinger (Christopher Plummer), who has accepted the mission in order to make an impression on his wife, as he feels they are drifting apart. Through these two male characters, the film stages a confrontation between two different styles of masculinity, which broadly speaking can be categorized as “British” (polite, calm, selfquestioning, mature) and “American” (sexy, brash, defiant of authority, brave, inexperienced). For instance, as the two men are driving through the French

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countryside while on their mission, Sellinger waxes melodramatic about his comatose manhood and says to Halloran: “take a good look at yourself and you can see a hero […]. Even if you don’t want to be one, you can’t help it.” Yet again, the female protagonist is meant to choose between freedom and conformity, between the promise of romance and sexual excitement, as represented by young maverick Halloran, and the prospect of security, as represented by her bland mature husband Paul. As this is a fairly traditional melodrama, the conventional ending upholding conformity, sacrifice, and family values à la Brief Encounter (1945) comes as no surprise. However, despite the narrative’s emphasis on traditional masculine representations, the melodramatic mode inevitably permeates the characterization and confrontation of the two male characters. Even though Halloran’s manly heroic status is repeatedly underlined throughout the narrative, not least by his “rival” Paul Sellinger, the love he feels for Margaret allows him to display his sensitive side, thereby feminizing and mellowing the character on numerous occasions. In addition, he is tormented by self-doubt after the death of a pilot who replaced him during a dangerous mission, which has publicly put his bravery in jeopardy. In any case, although the “US” style of masculinity is eventually meant to prevail over the “British” style, Halloran sacrifices his love for the wellbeing of Margaret and her husband, who has finally proven his courage and regained his masculinity through Halloran’s manly inspiration. His noble sacrifice, nonetheless, also suggests that heterosexual commitment does not come naturally for dashing, independent all-American heroes like Halloran. Yet it took two major roles like Indiana Jones and John Book in Witness (1985) for the reluctance to commit to become an integral part of Ford’s early star persona. Incidentally, real-life rumors about an extramarital affair between Ford and his Hanover Street co-star LesleyAnne Down preceded the eventual announcement of Ford’s divorce from his first wife Mary in 1979.36 The purported inevitability of non-commitment, together with the contrast between different styles of masculinity, was further explored in the comedy The Frisco Kid, which was essentially a failed vehicle for Gene Wilder, rather than Harrison Ford. The film is a kind of “Western road movie” in which Polish Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 56.

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rabbi Avram Belinski (Wilder) meets bank robber Tommy Lillard (Ford, in a role that was initially meant for “The Duke,” no less) on his hazardous way from Philadelphia to San Francisco, where he is to become the rabbi to a small Jewish community. Along the way, they come into contact with different “minority” cultures (Mennonites, Native Americans, Mexican and Chinese migrant workers, etc.) and have to survive many an adventure. Despite their various differences, the two men become the closest of friends by the end of this “buddy” film of sorts. In The Frisco Kid Ford gets to play another cynical role as a lonesome, self-reliant bandit with a heart of gold who discovers true friendship in the unlikeliest of candidates. As in Force Ten from Navarone and Hanover Street, Jewish/European and US stereotypical styles of masculinity are contrasted through the two main characters: Belinski is somewhat feminized as a non-violent, generous, and deeply naïve man while Lillard is constructed as a street-wise, tough, gun-toting rogue who, despite all the risks, stays by his friend’s side. As Lillard says, that is “the American way.” It is therefore through their interaction that they come to share each other’s values, and hence change their own “imperfect” styles of masculinity: the rabbi remains a generous man of peace but he also becomes sharper and gets to kill a man in self-defense, which suggests that he has adopted “the American way.” Meanwhile, Lillard sacrifices his independence and gives up a life of crime in order to become his friend’s best man and a member of the larger (Jewish) community. As depicted in The Frisco Kid, male independence ceases to be an ideal condition, even for lone rangers such as Tommy Lillard. Interestingly, this unlikely male bond displays certain homoerotic undertones, especially during the scenes in which both men snuggle up in a makeshift bed during a snow blizzard or as they frolic on a sandy beach in their underwear. Significantly, the film ends with a still photograph of Lillard and Belinski sharing a toast at the latter’s wedding, which reinforces their attachment at the expense of the bride, whom Belinksi has only recently met on his arrival in San Francisco, and the other members of the Jewish community. One could argue that these “buddy film” undercurrents are in tune with the film’s sensitive treatment of minorities. Yet the comedy framework, together with the dialogue’s infantilized sentimentality and the strong narrative emphasis placed on the rabbi’s marriage plans or Lillard’s appetite for prostitutes, can be said to betray a certain degree of anxiety about the potential “queerness” of such

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moments. However, they also serve to underscore the film’s mild but wideranging exploration of difference. Whether it chooses to focus on different ethnic groups or on diverging but compatible and equally malleable models of masculinity, the film highlights the importance of interaction, tolerance, and compromise as the best means to foster social integration and build strong communities. Even though The Frisco Kid was not a major box-office success, it allowed Ford to display interesting potential as a comic foil, which was unfortunately left unexplored for a decade, until the actor starred in Working Girl. In this sense, the Lillard character allowed the actor to expand his performing range, while also consolidating his budding persona as a maverick or a “scoundrel with a heart of gold.” Although the majority of the characters that Ford played during the 1970s shared these features, those of Bob Falfa and Han Solo remain the most significant ones in his early construction as a star. These various earlier roles are also an indication of Ford’s reluctance to become associated with a particular genre or a particular kind of audience, especially after the great impact of Star Wars. Nonetheless, several of the more substantial roles also display an underlying consistency of personality traits, being mostly as they are heroic mavericks “with an attitude” (Hanover Street or Force Ten from Navarone), or rogues who are eventually forced to display the innate nobility that is hidden behind their overly macho façade (Star Wars or The Frisco Kid). This can be seen to highlight the malleability and mutability of gender traits, since in several of these more youthful roles selfishness and immaturity eventually give way to solid dependability. In addition, the tongue-in-cheek qualities of the more comic roles also undermine the meanings attached to them, since such characteristics as rugged stolidity or overconfidence are often presented as elements of a gender performance within a film performance. It is against this particular filmic background, in which certain aspects of his earlier star persona were emerging, that Ford went on to embody the most important role in his career. Indiana Jones, a University lecturer who masquerades as an adventurer or vice versa, established the actor as one of the most important Hollywood stars for the coming decades.

3

Harrison Ford and Male Individualism in Hollywood Enter Indiana Jones Indiana Jones is an iconic character in both US cinema and US cultural history, so much so that Indy’s fedora hat and weathered leather jacket have been preserved at the Smithsonian Institution since 1989. The bullwhip was added to the collection in 1999. In 2003, the American Film Institute voted Indiana Jones the second most popular hero in the history of US film, only preceded by Atticus Finch. More recently, Indiana Jones was confirmed as the “greatest movie character of all time” by the readers of Empire magazine.1 Tom Selleck was initially contacted to play the part, but he was unable to accept it because of a previous contractual engagement. Ford was only the producers’ second choice, which is hard to believe since the names of both character and actor were eventually to become virtually synonymous. Ford’s association with the part has certainly endured until today, but it was most evident during the 1980s, the decade during which the first three films in the series were released.2 While shooting Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Ford scared director and film crew by, without warning, running across the rope bridge used in the film’s climax to test its safety. Spielberg could only quip: “What can I say? Harrison really is Indiana Jones.”3

Team Empire, “The 100 greatest movie characters,” Empire, June 29, 2015. Available at http://www. empireonline.com/movies/features/100-greatest-movie-characters/ (multiple access dates). 2 As this book is chronologically organized, this section will pay a closer look at the Indiana Jones films released during the 1980s, though some references to the latest addition to the saga, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), will also be made. 3 Information extracted from Harrison Ford’s biography section on IMDB. Available at http://www. imdb.com/name/nm0000148/bio (multiple access dates). 1

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Raiders of the Lost Ark was primarily heralded as a “Lucas-Berger”4 blockbuster production, rather than a Harrison Ford movie, but it was this role that made the actor a Hollywood icon. Ford was certainly famous before Indiana Jones came along, but it was probably thanks to this particular role that he acquired box-office clout and, hence, star power. By the end of the 1980s, Harrison Ford had set a new record, having starred in five of the, at the time, ten most financially successful films of all time, including the three Star Wars films he had appeared in, and the first two installments in the Indiana Jones saga. Thus, it could be argued that the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark was largely due to Harrison Ford’s artistic contribution. The film was released one year after Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter at the US general election and, to a certain extent, the Indiana Jones character could be read as part of the “Reagan heroes” trend that Jeffords discusses in Hard Bodies.5 These larger-than-life figures were normally associated with nostalgic notions of “individualism, liberty, militarism and mythic heroism”6 and usually considered to be “the literal embodiment of American interventionism” representing “a threateningly physical understanding of masculinity.”7 Indiana Jones is no doubt an individualistic icon of US interventionism, self-reliant, combative, and tough, and yet he can also be paternal, tender, and vulnerable, characteristics not usually displayed by other archetypal “Reagan heroes” as described by Jeffords and Tasker. In addition, his physique may not be accurately described as “threatening.” Indeed, when compared to the characters played by other major Hollywood action stars of the 1980s, such as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford stands out as a less muscular, more cerebral and articulate kind of hero. Therefore, even though Jones has obvious physical skills, tenacity, and plenty of capacity for endurance, he is also a physically vulnerable character who is visibly exhausted after each customary chase or fight. In fact, the Indiana Jones films would nicely fit Neale’s description of the contemporary action adventure paradigm were it not for its hero’s trademark physical vulnerability, which was taken to an extreme in the 2008 installment, and relatively average bodily size: 6 7 4 5

Lester D. Friedman, Citizen Spielberg (Urbana and Chicago, 2006), p. 105. Susan Jeffords, Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era (New Brunswick, 1994). Ibid., p. 16. Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema (London and New York, 1993), pp. 92; 94.

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The term action-adventure has been used […] to pinpoint a number of obvious characteristics common to [various] genres and films: a propensity for spectacular physical action, a narrative structure involving fights, chases and explosions, and in addition to the deployment of state-of-the-art special effects, an emphasis in performance on athletic feats and stunts. The hyperbolic nature of this emphasis has often been accompanied by an emphasis on the “hyperbolic bodies” and physical skills of the stars involved.8

Jones’s not-so-hard body is not what Dyer9 has described as “an achieved body, worked at, planned, suffered for” in his exploration of white masculinity in film, and the (colonial) adventure genre in particular. Indeed, if ever Jones’s (naked) body is on display, it is normally to highlight his physical vulnerability. Indeed, Jones’s body or “musculinity,” as Tasker would put it, is not as hyperbolic as Stallone’s or Schwarzenegger’s, but the action scenes in which he is involved are just as spectacular. In this sense, Jones can still be said to be a larger-than-life figure, which the films constantly emphasize through lighting, framing, camera angle (see Figure 8), as well as an overdose of exciting stunts, even if not by specifically focusing on the hero’s oversized muscles. On the other hand, the relative absence of a sustained focus on the hero’s body or muscles per se leads to an increased emphasis on his bravery and

Figure 8  “Larger Than Life”: Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) is still haunted by shadows of the past. Raiders of the Lost Ark (produced by Howard G. Kazanjian, George Lucas, Frank Marshall, 1981). Steve Neale, “Action-adventure as a genre,” in Y. Tasker (ed.), Action and Adventure Cinema (London and New York, 2004 (2000)), p. 71. 9 Richard Dyer, White (London and New York, 1997), p. 153. 8

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physical skills (and on the star’s willingness to perform such difficult stunts). The fact that Ford did not require a stuntman for many of the “physical acting” or “running, jumping and falling down” scenes, as he10 likes to refer to stunts, strongly emphasizes the actor’s skill and, more specifically, his tough, genuine style of masculinity. By the same token, the fact that Jones’s/Ford’s body is not exactly presented as an exaggerated and sexualized form of visual spectacle dispels any possible threat of objectification/feminization, while it also suggests a thoroughly masculine lack of narcissism. The result is that Jones’s/Ford’s masculinity, unlike say Stallone’s, becomes more “normal,” unforced, almost invisible, and, therefore, less conspicuous and also less worth investigating. Co-star Helen Mirren’s appreciation11 is actually widely shared: “there is no fake testosterone about Harrison. It’s just pure, natural maleness. And it’s very, very attractive” (emphasis added). Ideologically speaking, therefore, his brand of masculinity may have a stronger impact because it reflects purportedly natural, ordinary conceptions of what successful masculinity should entail. Yet as King12 concludes, From the perspective of an ideological analysis […], that which is discounted or almost invisible on the grounds of its routine familiarity is precisely the material that needs to be interrogated. This is often the stuff of dominant ideological formulations, familiar “common sense” understandings that construct very particular interpretations of the world […] but that have become sedimented into the level of “taken for granted” everyday assumptions.

Hence, as King13 goes on to explain, the overtly stereotyped, sexist, and racist characterizations present in the different Indiana Jones films, though especially in Temple of Doom, should not go uninterrogated. Wood,14 for his part, has criticized the films for their celebration of patriarchal, imperialistic male fantasies, which Sartelle15 sees as a form of compensation for US military Quoted in Lee Pfeiffer and Michael Lewis, The Films of Harrison Ford (second edition) (New York, 2002 (1996)), p. 29. 11 Hollywood Greats: Harrison Ford. 2006. Broadcast on BBC1 (United Kingdom), April 4, 2006. 12 Geoff King, Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster (London, 2000b), p. 115. 13 Ibid., p. 116. 14 Robin Wood, “Papering the cracks: Fantasy and ideology in the Reagan era,” in J. Belton (ed.), Movies and Mass Culture (New Brunswick, 1995 (1986)), p. 210. 15 Joseph Sartelle, “Dreams and nightmares in the Hollywood blockbuster,” in G. Nowell-Smith (ed.), The Oxford History of World Cinema (Oxford and New York, 1997 (1996)), p. 518. 10

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failures during the 1960s and 1970s and, more generally speaking, for the perceived social crisis of masculinity. Hence, Friedman16 concludes that Indy’s “raiding” and “last crusade” convey “a western sense of arrogance […], an implicit superiority that claims to understand and appreciate the values of other cultures better than those people who are heirs to that tradition.” Not only is the US hero free to move around and steal treasures from the developing world with the unquestioning help of many a friendly, smiley local, but after being abducted, Marion Ravenwood, Indy’s companion, complains “you can’t do this to me! I’m an American!” However, such problematic meanings may be deflected not only through the films’ post-modern, tongue-in-cheek framework, but also through the exhilarating experience provided by the overdose of rollercoaster scenes that characterize contemporary action blockbusters. In the latter case, the plot would provide a mere way of connecting the different climactic action scenes, which may involve the subordination of narrative to action-spectacle and excess. As Dyer17 might ironically put it, these films are “only entertainment,” playful pastiche recreations of past cinematic traditions that emphatically deny any kind of connection to the historical present or any serious historical or ideological implications.18 In any case, a closer reading of the Indiana Jones character suggests an interesting range of contradictory meanings and interpretations, which may be the direct result of the need for blockbusters to maximize their economic investment by appealing to a wider spectrum of the cinema-going audience. Jones’s muscles may not be remarkable or self-consciously presented for erotic contemplation―even though, admittedly, by the second installment in the saga muscle size seems to have become, perhaps inexorably, a more important concern, but his attractiveness and manly presence still play an important role in the narrative. In fact, and in a somewhat contradictory manner, the power of Ford’s early star persona, and in particular his sex appeal,

Friedman, Citizen Spielberg, p. 104. Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment (London, 2002a (1992)). 18 Here is an example. At some point in The Last Crusade, Indy declares “Nazis, I hate these guys,” but the comment has a strangely comic effect. Indy’s tone of voice, coupled with the context in which the comment is made, situates Nazis on a par with Indy’s other “pet hate,” snakes, as well as other “bothersome” groups such as, say, jobsworths, which arguably has the effect of erasing the horror of Nazi Germany from history. This scene is uncharacteristic of Spielberg’s career. 16 17

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seems to have found its way into Indiana Jones’s characterization, which provides a good illustration of Ellis’s19 definition of a star as “a performer in a particular medium [cinema] whose figure enters into subsidiary forms of circulation [mainly the media] and then feeds back into future performances.” Ford’s/Jones’s attractiveness is particularly highlighted in Raiders in a rather self-conscious manner. Not only did he manage to seduce Marion Ravenwood when she “was only a child,” but all the females in his archaeology class seem to be besotted, even though Jones, always more interested in archaeology than in women, remains perfectly oblivious to the effect that he has on them. Not surprisingly, critic Tony Crawley20 reported that, on the evidence of this particular role, “[in France, Harrison Ford is] being hailed as a turbo-seducteur, with the shoulders of John Wayne, the smile of Alain Delon, the vulnerability of Woody Allen and the intelligence of Paul Newman.” Therefore, rather than simply oversized muscles and rough brawn, it is brains, as well as great doses of charm, perseverance, courage, and humor, that characterize the particular brand of reluctant heroism embodied by Indiana Jones. In this sense, this enormously popular character has probably more in common with the classical heroic adventurers played by Errol Flynn (bullwhip substituting for sword) than with the inarticulate but physically powerful superheroes embodied by Stallone or Schwarzenegger. As already mentioned, Harrison Ford has frequently been associated with old-fashioned male heroics and compared with classical Hollywood swashbuckling stars such as Flynn himself.21 As Photoplay reported back in 1981, “Ford emerges as a matinee idol of old, with a touch of the Errol Flynns […]. Ford, with his strong offbeat features and light cynicism, has the potential to become a grand romantic hero in the line of Clark Gable.”22 The link to old-fashioned, more down-to-earth, heroics also highlights and has a legitimizing effect on Ford’s acting skills. As a result, an important gap

John Ellis, “Stars as a cinematic phenomenon,” in J. Butler (ed.), Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television (Detroit, 1991 (1982)), p. 303. 20 Tony Crawley, “Harrison Ford. The Deauville tapes, part 1,” Starburst 43 (1982a), p. 24. 21 Abele, Robert, “Last action hero. Swashbuckling star’s career continues to evolve,” Variety (2002). Available at http://web.archive.org/web/20091005093021/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/ Miscellaneous/last_action_hero.php (accessed March 29, 2011). 22 Quoted in Lee Pfeiffer and Michael Lewis, The Films of Harrison Ford (second edition) (New York, 1999 (1996)), p. 118. 19

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is created between Ford and other popular contemporary action heroes. For instance, Klein23 points out that Ford is one of few stars who receives [sic] critical respect even in the blockbuster action films that attract more dollars than Oscars […]. Like many of the great stars of the ’30s and ’40s his appeal lies in a remarkable blend of the ordinary and the heroic.

In this particular case, the parallelism with the stars of yesteryear is strengthened by the fact that the first three installments in the Indiana Jones series, which is self-consciously modeled on the popular 1930s–1940s adventure serials24 (racial and gender stereotypes included), are set in the 1930s, the period just before the Second World War, a historical era when certainties about gender roles and racial hierarchies had yet to become socially questioned. Hence, the nostalgic Indiana Jones character would stand for traditional, old-fashioned masculine ideals that would only start to become seriously destabilized in the decades following the end of the Second World War.25 The connection to old-fashioned male ideals is also reinforced by the introduction of what could be described as traditional “frontier” elements, which seems to be another important way in which the hero’s masculinity is emphasized. One could argue that the Indiana Jones character embodies the traditional “rugged-hero-as-outsider” of the quintessentially American frontier myth that, as Lichtenfeld26 and Cullen27 have suggested, continues to Andy Klein, “The thinking man’s action hero,” The Hollywood Reporter (Harrison Ford Tribute Issue) 331/14 (March 8, 1994), p. S-35. 24 See Taves for an essential analysis of the genre of “Historical Adventure Movies.” Most of the elements Taves considers integral to the genre are present in the Indiana Jones series, which pays conscious homage to the genre: “[…] period settings, exotic locales, exploration, imperialism, voyages, duels, […] colourful characters, […] love stories, abductions, pursuits and escapes, treasures, suspense, intrigue, royalty, and even a measure of politics” (Brian Taves, The Romance of Adventure: The Genre of Historical Adventure Movies (Jackson, 1993), p. 8). Taves, however, does not consider the series to be part of the genre due to its overt reliance on fantasy and the supernatural (ibid., p. 10), which are absent from his characterization of adventure. 25 The latest addition to the series is set in 1957. Although narratively motivated, the Marion Ravenwood character plays a more active role than Indy’s earlier female companions, including her younger self, which reflects evolving gender models in the US society while deflecting earlier criticism of Spielberg’s poor construction of female characters in the series. 26 Eric Lichtenfeld, Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie (Middletown, 2007), pp. 1–8. 27 Jim Cullen, Sensing the Past: Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions (Oxford and New York, 2013), pp. 53–88. 23

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pervade contemporary Hollywood cinema and blockbuster productions in particular. For instance, in critic Tony Crawley’s28 view, who was writing at the time when Raiders of the Lost Ark was released, the Han Solo/Jones/Ford/ frontier connection was already evident: “what we have in Harrison Ford (and it was noticeable since Star Wars) is a new generation version of the younger John Wayne. An average enough Joe of a hero, called upon at times to attempt extraordinary exploits.” Thus, Indy’s intervention at the villagers’ request in Temple of Doom, problematic as it is, is not far removed from those of the heroes in Gunga Din (1939) or Marshall Rooster Cogburn’s (John Wayne) in True Grit (1969). Like Han Solo, his most distinguished predecessor in Ford’s career, Jones signifies the frontier myth at several contradictory but complementary levels. Not only does this mythic hero personify many of the gender traits that are culturally associated with frontier masculinity― resourcefulness, authenticity, self-reliance, mobility, lack of heterosexual commitment, courage, determination, and “true grit”―but also his adventures invariably take place at the literal or metaphorical frontier. The first sequence (or episode) in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) is set in Utah. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) starts in Nevada. Meanwhile, the rest of this international traveler’s adventures take place in what could be read as an updated form of the “colonial frontier,” that is to say, South America, northern Africa, India, and the Middle East. Indiana Jones is also Doctor Jones, a university lecturer who masquerades as a part-time adventurer and vice versa. Given the bad name “unproductive” intellectuals and academics received during the conservative Reagan-Bush years, it is surprising to find that one of them became such a heroic icon. But of course, Dr. Jones becomes brash action-adventurer Indiana Jones as soon as he puts his jacket and fedora hat on. As a result of this transformation, any dangerous sign of challenging, or feminizing, intellectuality is safely removed. A further secret to Jones’s success is his liberal entrepreneurial spirit, which also characterized the classical imperial bounty hunter.29 While he manages to symbolically defeat the Nazis in both Raiders and The Last Crusade, the Thugee

Tony Crawley, “Harrison Ford: A superstar for the eighties,” Cinema, special issue (winter 1981), pp. 48–9. 29 Taves, The Romance of Adventure, pp. 46–55. 28

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evil empire in Temple of Doom and the Soviets in Crystal Skull, it is mainly “fortune and glory” that the character seems to be after. Hence, Indiana Jones is both a university researcher and a productive mercenary (“an obtainer of rare antiquities,” to use the euphemism employed in Raiders), which becomes patent during the first sequence of Temple of Doom but also during his visit to the Pankot Palace in the same film. It is there that we learn that he had been accused of being a grave robber in Honduras, while the Sultan of Madagascar had threatened “to cut his head off,” although an explanation for this is not offered. The sacred pieces he “recovers,” or pillages, are eventually meant to become exhibits in a museum, but only after Jones has collected his fee. This is a dark aspect of the hero’s personality that is underlined by his mannered and manicured French rival Belloq (Paul Freeman), a Nazi collaborator, in Raiders of the Lost Ark (see Figure 9). Ford30 seemed to agree and described his own character as “an overtly dark hero, […], an outright looter of native cultural and religious artefacts.” In this sense, Jones becomes a very distant cousin to the aforementioned swashbuckling heroes, described by Taves31 as essentially altruistic gentlemen “dedicated to a just cause, never seeking personal gain.”

Figure 9  The dark side of the hero is made patent by his arch-enemy Belloq. Raiders of the Lost Ark (produced by Howard G. Kazanjian, George Lucas, Frank Marshall, 1981). Quoted in Robert Sellers, Harrison Ford: A Biography (London, 1993), p. 107. The eventual (negative) impact of the character’s antics was so strong that in 1986 Ford was requested to appear in a series of TV and radio advertisements condemning the ransacking of ancient archaeological sites by amateur would-be archaeologists in the United States (ibid., p. 125). 31 Taves, The Romance of Adventure, pp. 17–18. 30

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However, within the Manichean structure of the film, Belloq’s opportunism and alliance with the “the (real) dark side” obliterate the dark side of Indy’s nature.32 The moral heftiness of this US citizen liberating the world from Nazi tyranny neutralizes the criticism. In other words, by confronting real evil, in the form of Nazis, “Commies” or sadistic religious zealots who exploit and sacrifice innocent children, and by insisting that the pieces “recovered” belong in a museum, our mercenary, but deeply “democratic,” US hero emerges as a necessary evil in a socially and morally corrupt (third) world that inevitably requires urgent US intervention. Indiana Jones is, on the other hand, a true loner whose commitment to a permanent romantic relationship with either Marion Ravenwood or Willie Scott is suggested at the end of the films, but never actualized in the next installment, which is in keeping with the frontier characterization. This adventurer’s spatial mobility matches his constant change of romantic partner. Moreover, although Indiana Jones may be presented as a sexy character, he is also presented as somewhat asexual, which is in tune with both the family-orientated “Lucas-Berger experience” and the character’s overall contradictory construction. As it happens, he falls asleep as he is about to have sex with Marion in Raiders; he is attacked before he can join Willie in her room for a night of intense “anthropological research on human mating rituals” in Temple of Doom and even though he does have sex with Dr. Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody) in The Last Crusade, this comic sequence is extremely brief and openly de-eroticized. As already pointed out, heterosexual commitment does not come naturally to autonomous, geographically mobile heroes like Indiana Jones. As if signifying the generic imperative that the frontier hero should remain independent, Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan), Indy’s child sidekick in Temple of Doom, covers his eyes at the end of the film See Roth (Lane Roth, “Raiders of the Lost Archetype: The quest and the shadow,” in C. Silet (ed.), The Films of Steven Spielberg: Critical Essays (Lanham, 2002 (1983)) for a mythical reading of Raiders of the Lost Ark focusing on the conflict between good and evil, as represented by “the shadow.” Kendrick, for his part, provides a thorough and persuasive reading of the character’s dark side, whom he considers to be “a transitional figure between the cynical antiheroes of the 1970s New Hollywood and the jingoistic hard-body heroes of the Reagan era” (James Kendrick, Darkness in the Bliss-Out. A Reconsideration of the Films of Steven Spielberg (New York, 2014), pp. 114–15). Kendrick’s focus is, nevertheless, necessarily different to mine. While my analysis attempts to read the character in the light of Ford’s evolution as star and performer, his is predicated on an analysis of the oft-unacknowledged complexity of Spielberg’s oeuvre. As a result, Kendrick rarely discusses Ford per se in his reading of the Indiana Jones films.

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to avoid seeing the hero kiss Willie, clearly refusing to admit the possibility that (frontier) heroes may engage in permanent romantic relationships and eventually settle down.33 Indy’s construction as both sexy and asexual may seem contradictory but such incoherence may be accounted for as the result of the blockbuster’s imperative to cater for all sorts of audiences. Thus, Indy’s sexiness and dependability may appeal to the female (and gay) members of the audience; meanwhile, he is heroic, independent, and reassuringly masculine, which pleases men, while he is also playful, protective, fatherly, and asexual, which may appeal to the children in the audience. In addition, he represents the average person who can act heroically in extraordinary circumstances, a mythical construct that appeals to everyone. The magic of the character no doubt resides in his ability to reconcile the tensions involved in this contradictory characterization. The headline in the February 2006 Men’s Journal front cover, featuring Harrison Ford, summed it up rather well: “Harrison Ford: the art of having it all.” Finally, Raiders of the Lost Ark confronts its action-adventure hero with one of the most important foes in contemporary US popular culture, the Washington bureaucrats, who are meant to stand for everything the frontier is not: blind adherence to rigid rules, inflexibility, insensitivity, lack of individual initiative, and subordination. It is important to highlight that by “raiding” the Ark for the United States and saving it from the Nazis, Indiana Jones manages to single-handedly inflict a symbolic defeat on Hitler’s army. However, he fails to defeat the obtuse Washington elite, which once again underlines the hero’s fallibility and, thus, his “closeness” to ordinary members of the audience. The result, the film suggests, is that the United States could have won, or even averted, the Second World War without having to resort to the atomic bomb had Marcus Brody’s (Denholm Elliott) warnings about the “unspeakable powers” of the Ark, and its power to make armies invincible, been heeded. Instead, the Ark and its magnificent powers are tragically confined to a government depot where it will only gather dust.

By finally having Indiana marry Marion, the mother of his child, in Crystal Skull Spielberg certainly paid homage to the fans, who had been longing for this reunion since 1981.

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The success of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the subsequent two films in the saga also coincided with Harrison Ford’s relationship with and eventual marriage to scriptwriter Melissa Mathison34 in 1983. The couple decided to set up home far from the Hollywood madding crowd, from which the actor has traditionally detached himself.35 Ford’s increasingly frequent periods of seclusion in his ranch, which were a direct consequence of his strong desire for privacy and anonymity, also granted him a long-held reputation for being distant, unapproachable, and uncooperative, especially as far as the press is concerned, which contrasts with the everyman qualities he has usually portrayed on the screen and that constitute such an important part of his overall image. It is also significant that the Fords chose a large 800-acre estate in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as their first residence, as this is one of the Midwestern states, together with Montana, Utah, and Idaho that, for historical and demographic reasons, are usually associated with the frontier mentality and way of life. As it happens, Wyoming is also known as “the cowboy state.” Jenkins36 offers the following description of the town of Jackson Hole in the 1980s, at the time when the Fords moved there, More than a hundred years into its history, the town […] was still winning its war with an outside world that was determined to mould it into something that it was not. In the early 1980s, genuine cowboys still walked its raised wooden sidewalls, and elkhorn-fronted, frontier-style shopfronts still sold hardware and victuals. The town resembled nothing less than the set of a John Ford western, only for real.

Meanwhile, Sellers37 has described what Ford is “really” like when he is off Hollywood duty in the following terms, The late Melissa Mathison was best known for her Oscar-nominated script for E.T.: The Extraterrestrial (1982). Ford played a cameo role as Elliot’s headmaster but the scene was deleted from the final cut. However, it is accessible on YouTube (Humberto Manlio, “Harrison Ford in ET the lost escene[sic]/alternate ending,” YouTube.com, May 7, 2007, http://youtube.com/ watch?v=Xs8PxiYT8Z07 (accessed December 3, 2011)). 35 The first reference that I have found to Ford’s desire to leave Hollywood, move to “the frontier” and become a “new Wester,” as Johnson (Michael L. Johnson, New Westers: The West in Contemporary American Culture (Lawrence, 1996), would put it, is in Crawley (Tony Crawley, “Harrison Ford,” Starburst 53 (1982b), p. 46). In this interview, the actor expresses his wish to live “outside the boundaries of the silly state, [in a] place like Colorado, Wyoming or Idaho, where all the neighbors are distant.” 36 Garry Jenkins, Harrison Ford: Imperfect Hero (New York, 1998 (1997)), p. 216. 37 Robert Sellers, Harrison Ford: A Biography (London, 1993), p. 208. 34

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Off duty, Ford invariably wears “Marlboro Man” clothes: blue jean jacket, denim shirt and dirty Levis. If it weren’t for the sunglasses, protection against chance recognition, he could be mistaken for just another ranch hand coming into town to stock up on provisions.

In addition, the fact that Ford, whose sustained work for environmental causes is well known,38 has pledged to preserve most of his land for conservation closely aligns the star with the Waldenesque or the Native American ideals of close communion with nature that the contemporary environmentalist frontier mythology embodies. In fact, Ford has donated a part of his estate, which is home to more than sixty-five different species, to the Jackson Hole Land Trust so that it will be protected from developers, or the inheritors of those who helped to “build the West.” As the actor39 has declared, he appreciates the value of his land much more than its price, I have more a sense of stewardship than ownership. I really want to preserve it for my kids, to let them know what is dear to me rather than a pile of money in the middle of the floor. I can’t think of a better legacy than to do what you can to protect a small piece of wilderness (emphasis added).

Ford’s conservationist philosophy is not without contradictions. He is, after all, a landowner, which goes against Native American philosophy, which emphasized a fusion with the land that was far removed from the notion of private property. In addition, the location of his ranch, Jackson Hole, is a clear manifestation of the transformation “from rough-and-tumble western town to glitzy new resort” populated by “townies […] [seeking] a piece of paradise in the rapidly shrinking frontiers.”40 In any case, Ford’s attitude is still a far cry from the “Manifest Destiny” ideology that encouraged early pioneers to ruthlessly “tame” and exploit the “Promised Land” to their self-serving advantage. It certainly goes against the kind of (ecological) imperialism that has been depicted in many a Western and adventure film, in which the liminal

Ford is vice chair of Conservation International and has received numerous awards for his support of environmental causes. He has also had an ant (Peidole Harrisonfordi) and a spider (Calponia Harrisonfordi) named after him in honor of his conservation work. 39 Quoted in Jenkins, Harrison Ford, p. 311. 40 Johnson, New Westers, p. 341. 38

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space between the untamed wilderness and civilization, that is, the (imperial) frontier, features prominently.41 It is precisely in this respect that Ford’s concept of the land diverges crucially from traditional representations of the West. Campbell and Kean,42 quoting Tompkins, suggest that the immense Western landscape of hills and desert has frequently been represented as barren, arid, and harsh, a suitable setting for the tough lone ranger. In their view, however, this constitutes a subjective portrayal which excludes “as myths do so well, the other formations of the land that promise ‘fertility, abundance, softness, fluidity […],’ for these may be confused with other, feminine qualities.” Harrison Ford, for his part, has usually presented himself in an environment that is just as vast as “John Ford’s country” but also lush, fertile, and full of wildlife, thereby projecting a newer, somewhat gentler version of masculinity and of man’s relation to the land. Therefore, it could be argued that Ford’s association with the idea of the frontier is an updated one that signifies both tradition and innovation, continuity and change. On the other hand, Byrge43 has described Ford’s idyllic Jackson Hole home, which he designed and helped to build, as follows: The house itself is simple, big and roomy. It’s the kind of place John Book might have built in Witness had he stayed around to marry Kelly McGillis’ character. It has simple majesty […], not a wasted angle or any frou-frou, baroque commotions. It is utilitarian American design […]. A small herd of elk stand in the noon glimmer just behind wood-pole fences that gingerly line the perimeter of the big yard.

The description of Ford’s plain dwelling, coupled with the actor’s love for outdoor activities, such as catch-and-release fishing (the environmentally friendly option), canoeing, horse-riding, and cross-country skiing, further underlines the (new) frontier elements in Harrison Ford’s star image. His environmental concerns and love of nature, however, have also been These early pioneers’ attitude to the land is vividly described by Whipple: “[they] were like alien invaders [who] came and raped a continent, and called it progress, civilization. They treated the country savagely … they tortured and enslaved it” (quoted in Campbell and Kean, American Cultural Studies, London and New York, p. 30). 42 Ibid., p. 132. 43 Duane Byrge, “Home on the range,” The Hollywood Reporter (Harrison Ford Tribute Issue) 331/14 (March 8, 1994), p. S-28. 41

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complemented in recent years by his interest in “solo” flying and motorcycling, which involve a very intense, though also more problematic, because polluting, communion with nature. The star has attempted to offset criticism by both fellow environmentalists and climate change deniers by ironically declaring that he only flies “one of [his] seven planes at a time.”44 As can be seen, Ford’s image and attitude to the environment are not without contradictions. It is also worth pointing out that the rare photographs that have been taken of the star at his Wyoming estate are almost always set in the natural outdoors. If Ford is pictured indoors, then he is probably working actively at his workbench and only very rarely do the photographs suggest any links with domesticity. Dixon45 has argued that the careful presentation, or staging, of the stars’ “domestic ecologies,” or their dwelling, can be read as an extension and a reinforcement of their overall public image. In addition, he has claimed that “a star’s masculinity as displayed through décor provides a measure of Hollywood’s gendering of domestic space.”46 If this is so, Ford’s carefully constructed masculinity is clearly closer to simplicity than sophistication and much closer to nature than civilization, thereby emphasizing, yet again, the frontier elements that can be associated with long-established masculine norms and traditional US values as well as, quite significantly, creating a wide gap between the proverbial corrupting effects of a decadent civilization― Hollywood, to be precise―and the kind of active, plain, natural way of life he would rather lead. The way Ford sees it, this kind of life is not without excitement as it is far removed from the dullness and monotony of civilization. As he has declared, There is nothing for me to do in LA when I get up in the morning except sit by the pool and shop. […]. [In Jackson Hole] I’ll fix a fence, repair a piece of equipment or plough the driveway if there’s snow. There’s always plenty of work to do.47

Nicholas Ballasy, “Harrison Ford to green critics: ‘I’ll walk everywhere when they walk everywhere’, ‘I only fly one’ of my 7 planes ‘at a time’,” CNSNews.com, April 28, 2010, http://www.cnsnews.com/ news/article/harrison-ford-green-critics-i-ll-walk-everywhere-when-they-walk-everywhere-ionly-fly (accessed April 24, 2015). 45 Simon Dixon, “Ambiguous ecologies: Stardom’s domestic mise-en-scène,” Cinema Journal 42/2 (2003). 46 Ibid., p. 81. 47 Quoted in Jenkins, Harrison Ford, pp. 213; 269. 44

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The fact that Ford’s public image has strong links with the frontier, hard work, and a simple way of life in contact with nature also suggests a close association with traditional values, morality, and authenticity. King48 has pointed out that the frontier myth and its values are greatly valorized in US culture and thus “frontier tropes are a favoured medium for any argument that wishes to claim the moral high ground through appeals to […] the ‘essence of America’ in ideal/historical terms.” On the other hand, the frontier tradition has often been rooted in deeply conservative ideals, despite the fact that this liminal space could potentially become “a place of radical critique, implicitly or explicitly condemning aspects of contemporary culture, politics, ideology or society.”49 While not necessarily associated with right-wing positions, during the 1980s Ford’s persona started to develop closer and closer links with moral issues, but it was actually during the 1990s that he became an icon of upright morality and dependability. As director Mike Nichols50 grandly declared during the AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony in 2000, “[Harrison Ford] is a genuinely good man [that] embodies some quality of absolute decency […]. Everything in his performance expresses goodness and fairness.” Meanwhile, Atkinson51 has described the star’s appeal thus: “the secret to Ford’s success is that everyone trusts him. He is authoritative Patriarchy made safe and reliable.” Ford is therefore closely associated with the new frontier philosophy and, at the same time, his image is strongly linked to traditional moral values, which during the Reagan-Bush Sr. years became virtually synonymous with family values. By closely aligning himself with the traditional, mythical space of the frontier, while simultaneously presenting himself as a devoted father and husband (at least while his second marriage lasted), Ford also managed to debunk traditional masculine constructions that emphasize male independence and a lack of commitment to family life, thus bridging the gap between the frontier mythology, moral values, and family values. Still, Ford’s carefully constructed image remains somewhat inconsistent, given the conspicuous absence of Ford’s family from the different graphic documents King, Spectacular Narratives, p. 14. Ibid., pp. 22; 40. 50 American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award Show (2000), https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zzQYzeVWS5Y (accessed February 25, 2009). 51 Michael Atkinson, “Bomb Proof,” in The Guardian (1999). Available at https://www.theguardian. com/film/1999/jan/23/features (accessed December 21, 2011). 48 49

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I have been able to access. After all, the frontier is no place for women and children! In any case, during the 1990s, the actor still managed to present his ranch as the family home, a safe place where his younger children could play and not be afraid, rather than his own personal retreat. This is how the actor52 described himself back in 2000: [All I want to do is] devote myself to my family, to my small [!?] ranch, to repairing my Harley motorbikes, which are my passion, and to eating hamburgers with my kids in some nearby McDonald’s. Basically, I just want to be an average American family guy. I have no other secret. (My translation)

Thanks to Harrison Ford’s crossover appeal, the public could have it both ways.53 As can be seen, frontier tropes figure prominently, albeit differently, in the construction of Ford’s star image and in the Indiana Jones character. They are both good updated embodiments of the frontier mythology that, with all its contradictions, continues to inspire Hollywood narratives, and although the myth might establish a close connection with other popular self-reliant Reagan heroes operating on the margins of man-made law, Indiana Jones also departs from their typical characterization due to his physical, and even psychological, vulnerability, which sometimes borders on the comic. As a matter of fact, comedy is an essential ingredient in the whole series. Moreover, Indy’s penchant for disguises also stresses the series’ tongue-in-cheek playfulness, while at the same time highlighting the performativity involved in Hollywood’s construction of male heroism. The character is without a doubt brave; he punches but he also gets punched, and, crucially, he does not hesitate to run away from his adversaries if necessary (witness Indy’s fight against the temple guardians in Temple of Doom), which, in the context of the film, creates humor rather than confusion and distress because of the hero’s everyman qualities. In this respect, Jones has more in Quoted in Eric Frattini, “Harrison Ford: la sencillez del héroe,” Oro 52 (December 2000), p. 8. As explained above, even though in the 1980s and 1990s Ford became a self-confessed family man, he was hardly ever pictured with his family, possibly as a result of the star’s desire to preserve their privacy. However, his eventual divorce in 2004, at the time the most expensive one in Hollywood history and which he (infamously) celebrated in Mexico threw into question the validity of his previously carefully constructed image as the US father par excellence, laying bare the mechanisms of star construction. Ford has since then formed a new family with fellow actor Calista Flockhart and their adopted son Liam, his fifth child.

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common with the kind of unlikely heroism embodied by another average guy of the (action) movies, Jackie Chan, than with the invincible hard bodies that Jeffords and Tasker have extensively analyzed. Like in the Indiana Jones saga, in Chan’s films elements of (slapstick, physical) comedy intermingle with action-adventure narratives, which, Gallagher54 suggests, subverts dominant Hollywood renditions of heroic, and hard-bodied, masculinity: Chan’s persona offers a progressive version of masculinity that combines skilful but playful physical dexterity with comic self-effacement. […]. As Chan’s films demonstrate, […] Hollywood’s typology of the action hero, despite its prominence, does not reign worldwide.55

Even though there are obvious differences between Chan’s and Ford’s star personas, one could still read the not-so-hard-bodied—but never softbodied—Indiana Jones character as equally “subversive” of Hollywood representations of heroic masculinity, thereby creating a different kind of action hero, one that provides a tongue-in-cheek commentary on other contemporary renditions of heroic masculinity. However, while this rendition of male heroism incorporates a parodic tinge, its overall “subversiveness” should be taken with a pinch of salt, as a cursory look at the characterization of other characters suggests. While the women (even Marion in Raiders) are either mocked or relegated to the background, the various men who feature in the series are portrayed as sadistic, cowardly, or ineffectual in comparison to the hero. On the other hand, both Indiana Jones and several of the characters that Chan has played have close connections with children, whether in the narrative or in the audience, which mellows down and grants fatherly attributes to both.56 Moreover, and in keeping with the hero’s contradictory characterization, Jones’s personality also incorporates childlike elements, such as his aforementioned talent for disguise or intense fear of snakes. Jones’s childlike nature becomes quite literal in The Last Crusade, where not only do we meet Indiana Jones Mark Gallagher, “Rumble in the USA: Jackie Chan in translation,” in A. Willis (ed.), Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond (Manchester, 2004), p. 119. 55 Ibid., 114–15. 56 The Chan connection becomes literal in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom through Short Round’s kung fu fighting. Quan, the child actor playing Short Round, mentions Chan as his inspiration in the film’s “Making-of ” documentary. 54

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as a teenager, but his father’s attitude toward him literally turns Jones into a child, that is to say, “Henry Jones, Junior.” No wonder Ford confessed that “playing Indiana Jones is every boy’s dream. It’s like having the best toy box in the world.”57 The family trope, which recurs in various ways in the saga, also highlights its connection with the melodramatic mode. Spielberg58 once declared: “I don’t think I’ve ever not made a melodrama” (emphasis in the original). Jones’s characterization is intensely melodramatic, for his suffering, whether physical or psychological, is never hidden from view. In this sense, the Indiana Jones saga would easily confirm Linda Williams’s59 thesis regarding the intimate link shared between melodrama and the action film. The hero’s victimization and vulnerability have become essential ingredients in the Indiana Jones mythical brand of heroism, and by extension, in the construction of Ford’s persona. As will be highlighted in the next sections, having played a key part in Ford’s production of his own star franchise, it is not difficult to observe how Jones’s trademark vulnerability and melodramatic sensibility have recurred in the various characters Ford has played throughout his longstanding career. Thus, Indiana Jones is a remarkable, and very complex, mythic hero, for, like other “Lucas-Berger” characters, he is both child and adult, independent and reliable, tough and tender, and most importantly, heroic and vulnerable, which arguably establishes a closer link between the character, the star who portrays the character, and the spectator. Indeed, Indiana Jones manages to persuade the spectator that heroes can be normal guys who have to improvise and do not always have an action plan60 and, most importantly, who suffer and are in severe pain after a spectacular chase or a violent fight (see Figures 10 and 11). As Ford has stated, “it was always as much fun for the audience to see me get beat [sic] up as it was to see me

Quoted in Sellers, Harrison Ford, p. 247. Quoted in Friedman, Citizen Spielberg, p. 65. 59 Linda Williams, “Melodrama revised,” in R. Browne (ed.), Refiguring American Film Genres. Theory and History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1998). 60 Here is a classic example. When in Raiders of the Lost Ark Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) asks Indy what he is planning to do after Belloq and his Nazi bosses have managed to steal the Ark from them and load it on a lorry bound for Cairo, Indy answers: “I don’t know. I’m making this up as we go along.” This moment leads to one of the most spectacular stunts in Hollywood history, the lorry chase, after which Indiana Jones manages to recover the Ark, only to lose it once again. 57 58

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Figures 10 and 11  “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage”: physical, and psychological, vulnerability are essential components of Indiana Jones’s brand of everyman heroism. Raiders of the Lost Ark (produced by Howard G. Kazanjian, George Lucas, Frank Marshall, 1981)

beat somebody up. That’s kind of unique. Part of the appeal of Indiana Jones is that he was always in over his head. He always hurt.”61 Jones incorporates the elements of imperfection, vulnerability, and heroicness like no other contemporary Hollywood action hero. His proverbial fear of snakes sits alongside his tenacity and courage, and these personality traits have inevitably become incorporated into Ford’s everyman public image, which critics emphasize over and over again. Conflating the man and the roles, Levy62 has described the star’s appeal and characteristic trademark as follows, Michael Fleming, “Harrison Ford: The Playboy interview,” in Playboy Magazine (2002). Available at http://archive.li/DFeJc (accessed December 7, 2011). 62 Rochelle L. Levy, “The achievement of Harrison Ford,” in American Film Institute (2000b). Available at http://archive.li/00gZ (accessed February 5, 2008). 61

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Unique among action heroes, Harrison Ford brings to the screen believable, flesh-and-blood men, flaws and all. Invariably sympathetic and relatable, Ford relies on his intelligence and wit, rather than on manufactured superpowers, to defeat his foes. Whether he’s playing a doctor, lawyer, archaeologist, CIA agent or even the president of the United States, all of Ford’s characters share his humanity, warmth and most significantly, his vulnerability (emphasis added).

This unique trademark humanizes the normally larger-than-life action hero and brings him down to earth, thereby establishing a closer connection with the audience. It also makes the hero’s triumphs all the more pleasurable, because they cannot always be taken for granted (witness the epilogue of Raiders of the Lost Ark). This is no doubt the source of Indy’s success, and by extension, the basis for Ford’s broad box-office appeal, which contradicts Gallagher’s63 broad contention that “US action film conventions―which construct heroes as hypermasculine fantasies―presume an emotional gap between performer and viewer.” The emotional continuity that is established between the character and the spectator is directly related to realism and authenticity, and it can also be said to apply to the star and his fans and the audience in general. It is a wellknown fact that, much to the chagrin of the director, and of the insurance companies, Harrison Ford insisted on playing his own stunts in order to add realism to the various spectacular scenes in which Indiana Jones was involved. The fact that the actor was willing to play several stunts, despite the obvious risks, certainly granted an aura of bravery and authenticity to Ford’s public image, as it does to Chan’s.64 What is more, just as Jones is not reluctant to display his physically vulnerable side, Ford did not hide the fact that he tore several ligaments and ruptured two discs while shooting the Indiana Jones films, thereby further enhancing his claim to authenticity and establishing a stronger emotional connection between the star, the character, and the audience.

Gallagher, “Rumble in the USA,” p. 131. Leon Hunt, “The Hong-Kong/Hollywood connection: Stardom and spectacle in transnational action cinema,” in Y. Tasker (ed.), Action and Adventure Cinema (London and New York, 2004), p. 276.

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It has often been argued65 that blockbusters’ formulaic plots provide a mere linking device or “carrier wave” leading to the different climactic action sequences characterizing such films. In this sense, “high concept” action blockbusters have become “the new Hollywood cinema of attractions.”66 As in primitive cinema, in these movies narrative and character complexity or social commentary, which were so prominent during the Hollywood Renaissance period, have been superseded by the visual and aural spectacle provided by action sequences. On the other hand, action scenes in the new cinema of attractions are usually described as pure excess providing the kind of spectacular pleasure that some members of the audience demand, but adding very little in terms of narrative progression or characterization. As Lichtenfeld67 says, “action speaks louder.” In the Indiana Jones series, however, action stunts are quite significant for narrative construction as it is through them that crucial aspects of the hero’s characterization are revealed. In Spielberg’s68 own words, The best moments of Indiana Jones’s personality […] come within an action sequence. A look and expression after a punch … It’s all part of the same panache, so it’s very, very important that Harrison does get involved in some of the fisticuffs.

Spielberg’s words imply that action stunts and action scenes provide ample ground for the display of Ford’s acting skills, as nuances in the character’s construction can be conveyed through a smile, a shrug, or a grimace while the star is both performing the stunt and performing in the stunt. This would not be possible if the physically demanding action sequences were always to be performed by stuntmen. Thus, the director’s words serve yet again to vindicate Ford’s performing abilities within a genre that is not usually considered appropriate ground for the display of such skills. Ford’s desire not Thomas Schatz, “The new Hollywood,” in J. Collins, H. Radner and A. Preacher Collins (eds), Film Theory Goes to the Movies (New York and London, 1993), pp. 29; 33 Lawrence Gross, “Big and loud,” in J. Arroyo (ed.), Action/Spectacle Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader (London, 2000 (1995), pp. 6–7. There is no consensus on this matter, however, as several critics have put forward convincing arguments contradicting this widely held idea (Warren Buckland, “A close encounter with Raiders of the Lost Ark,” in S. Neale and M. Smith (eds), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (London, 1998)) (Yvonne Tasker, The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film (Malden and Chichester, 2015)). 66 Geoff King, “Ride-films and films as rides in the contemporary Hollywood cinema of attractions,” CineAction 51 (2000a), p. 8. 67 Lichtenfeld, Action Speaks Louder. 68 Quoted in Brad Duke, Harrison Ford: The Films (Jefferson and London, 2005), p. 154. 65

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to be classified as an action star or an action hero may have to do with his aspiration to be considered as a serious actor with a wide performing range, which he is keen to display even when performing “just” stunts in action or action-adventure films. Despite Ford’s undeniable credentials as an action star―or a physical actor, as he is keen to remark, it is probably thanks to his desire to display his acting skills and a wider register by choosing to perform in a variety of genres that he has been able to remain more active than other former action men of the 1980s. As Indiana Jones might put it, “it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.” The legacy of Indiana Jones is still with us, whether in the form of rollercoaster rides in theme parks, toys, books, costumes, board or computer games, or fan videos. Most important, the success of the fourth installment in the saga (the fifth installment is scheduled for 2021) confirmed that almost thirty years after Raiders of the Lost Ark was released audiences were ready for more,69 despite the fact that Harrison Ford (aka Indiana Jones) is now a greyhaired grandfather in his seventies. Moreover, the relatively recent successful comeback of other popular 1980s heroes such as John McClane, Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, and other “expendables” has confirmed that in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks the cultural meanings they embodied are far from gone and forgotten. This legacy has remained firmly in place in Ford’s evolution as an actor, a star and a Hollywood trademark. While this may have proved financially positive, in artistic terms this legacy has proven somewhat detrimental. As a result of the success of the series, the actor was never entirely “allowed” to let go of the character in his ensuing roles, which had a tremendous impact on his evolution as a performer.

Broadening the Range: Blade Runner and Witness It was precisely Ford’s desire to be taken seriously as an actor that attracted him to the role of Rick Deckard in Blade Runner (1982).70 In the past, Ridley Scott had offered Ford the Captain Dallas role in Alien (1979), but he turned According to Box Office Mojo, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was the second top-grossing film at the international box office in 2008. 70 This analysis is based on the “Director’s Cut” edition of the film, which was released in 1992, but references are also made to the “original” version that was released commercially in 1982. 69

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it down in an attempt to avoid becoming typecast as a hero in hyperspace. Apparently, what drew Scott to Ford were not his popular clean-cut heroic antics but the more low-key, sinister characters that he had played in such films as The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, as well as the ambivalent, sensitive potential contained in some of his earlier roles.71 Ford was drawn to the role because it offered him an important change of register and an opportunity to display his acting skills: There’s a lot more character in a film like [Blade Runner] than is either necessary or desirable in a film like Raiders. […]. I have been associated with a lot of successful entertainments. I don’t necessarily want to be taken seriously, but I would like to do some serious roles. Unfortunately one must be thought of as serious before he’s offered serious roles.72

Ford was therefore keen to achieve a higher degree of acting sophistication by working alongside Scott, a British director who was steadily gaining a reputation for artistic craftsmanship in Hollywood. The fact that this kind of film may not necessarily appeal to the mainstream audience did not seem to matter to Ford: [E]very film you make has to have potential to make its money back and make a fair enough profit, so that people don’t feel they’ve wasted their time. So yes, I want that. But I’d also like to make films for a smaller segment of the audience.73

Yet it was precisely Scott’s aesthetic vision and desire for perfection that drove a wedge between the director of the film and its main protagonist. As a result, the actor protested “I felt more a pawn than a partner.”74 Despite his name featuring prominently in promotional materials, reflecting Ford’s increased ability to “open” a film, the actor’s role and input in the production of the film seem to have been rather limited. A long-standing controversy about the film has centered on whether or not Deckard is a replicant (i.e., the rebel humanoid slaves who blade runners try to exterminate). Scott and Ford clashed famously on this issue. Whereas Scott 73 74 71 72

Phil Edwards and Alan McKenzie, “Interview with Ridley Scott,” Starburst 50 (1982), p. 29. Quoted in Ralph Applebaum, “Motivation,” Films 1/10 (1981), pp. 8; 9. Quoted in Crawley, “Harrison Ford,” p. 46. Quoted in Jenkins, Harrison Ford, p. 212.

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favored the idea that Deckard should be a replicant, Ford contended that the audience deserved a “human” point of entry into what he considered to be an extremely bleak film. Loosely based on Philip K Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the film “replicated” Dick’s proverbial interest in the narrowing gap separating the human from the technological as well as “the philosophical interrogation of reality [and] the decline of human and social values.”75 One could speculate that, as a result of Ford’s developing persona becoming increasingly associated with notions of authenticity and “everymanness,” the star had some misgivings regarding Deckard’s uncertain status. An important result of the star-director confrontation was Ford’s eventual decision to get more actively, and contractually, involved in the production of the subsequent films in which he was to star, given that his star power was now on the increase. As a matter of fact, it was Ford who selected Peter Weir to direct his next film, Witness. Even though Blade Runner went on to acquire cult status, it was not a commercially successful film. Different explanations may be offered for its initial poor reception, but a very plausible one would be that the audience’s expectations regarding a “Harrison Ford film,” which both the promotional poster and theatrical trailer announced, were seriously disappointed. Unlike Indiana Jones, Deckard was a brooding neo-noir antihero who could hardly be described as relatable. As influential Starburst critic John Brosnan76 tellingly reported, Blade Runner is a masterpiece, much to my surprise. When I first heard that Phillip D. Dick’s novel […] was being filmed […] with Harrison Ford as its star I presumed that little of the book would make it into the screen and that the emphasis would be instead purely on action [but] Harrison Ford/Han Solo/Indiana Jones fans are going to have some difficulty in accepting their hero in a movie that actually requires them to think a little at the same time as they chew their gum.

Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, “The apocalyptic vision of Philip K. Dick,” Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies 3/2 (2003), p. 189. In Dick’s novel, Deckard is a married android bounty hunter who craves to own a real animal, instead of the electric ones he already possesses. Real animals have become extinct as a result of a cataclysmic nuclear disaster, which has also led many humans to flee Planet Earth. 76 John Brosnan, “Blade Runner,” Starburst 50 (1982), p. 12. 75

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However, while on the surface Deckard had little to do with Indiana Jones, he appeared to have things in common with other characters in Ford’s filmography. More specifically, what seemed to make Ford a good casting choice for Scott was the aura of “macho-style” detachment that had characterized some of his earlier roles, which certainly fitted the film’s noir credentials. As Dempsey’s77 visionary account of the film reported, Harrison Ford fits the part almost perfectly because there is often something faintly zombie-like about him on the screen, an aura of deep-down detachment from what he is doing, which he first employed in the enigmatic corporate front man in The Conversation, and which rises to the surface even when he does dreamboat romantic roles […] and perpetual-motion kiddie matinee heroics. This time […] he actively uses this quality for its overtones of thick, stunted apathy and strives […] to convey a palpable sense of a benumbed life force struggling to regain vigour in a poisoned world.

Interestingly, what these conflicting views bring to the fore is the stars’ “structured polysemy,” that is, their ability to encapsulate various, though finite, conflicting meanings and elicit different responses from different members of the audience, even at a relatively early stage of their careers. By 1982, Ford’s persona seemed to have acquired enough complexity, accumulating such notions as sexiness, detachment, individuality, manly ruggedness, endurance, heroism, and vulnerability. Hardly a dashing hero, Deckard demonstrates weakness in various ways: he is blackmailed into accepting his boss’s assignment as he is reminded that he is “little people,” has a penchant for alcohol, shoots replicant Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) in the back, needs to be saved from certain death by replicant Rachael (Sean Young), and is clearly second best in his final confrontation with Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), on whose final “more human than human” mercy he literally depends. Blade Runner, unlike Star Wars, offered a dystopian vision of the future in which humans had become the victims of their own perfect clones. The kind of atmosphere depicted could hardly be said to reflect the utopian technological dreams widely disseminated by the Reagan administration and

Michael Dempsey, “Blade Runner,” Film Quarterly 36/2 (1982), p. 36. Dempsey’s review is based on the 1982 version of the film, which included Ford’s infamous voice-over narration, a trope directly borrowed from film noir. The voice-over has been removed from subsequent versions of the film.

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was indeed in stark contrast with the feel-good factor that Reagan’s election had generated and that Indiana Jones, with all his contradictions, could be said to echo. As mentioned above, Ford was keen to change register by playing a difficult character in the classical mold of a noirish antihero, but his insistence that the film should still provide a glimmer of hope by not turning Deckard into a replicant confirmed his desire to construct a character with whom audiences could still establish an emotional connection in the midst of ecological disaster, bleakness, and despair, thereby retaining traces of earlier, more likeable characters, while simultaneously reinforcing the more popular side of his persona. In this sense, it is worth mentioning that the original poster for the film also emphasized the continuity that may be established between the role and the actor: “Harrison Ford is Blade Runner.” As already mentioned, this kind of actor-role analogy has been repeatedly established throughout Ford’s career and is typical of the star-as-professional category, which Ford can on the whole be said to represent. Within this mode, the popularity of the star is directly related to, and to a large extent dependent upon, the continuity that is established along a string of roles that have a number of features in common, which in turn become the star’s trademark. As a result, the actor-role analogy is frequently established, which is the reason why the actors who belong in the “star-as-professional” category are keen to control film characterization, as it has a direct impact on their overall public image and their personal brands. In effect, this practice turns the star into an auteur of sorts. This may provide an explanation for Ford’s intense disagreement with Ridley Scott’s vision, which resulted in Blade Runner becoming one of the actor’s least pleasurable filming experiences. Regularly voted one of the best science fiction films in Hollywood history, Blade Runner is still regularly discussed as an auteurist piece, thereby emphasizing Scott’s vision over and above any other aspect, or stakeholder, including its star, in its production. In any case, as a result of its initial poor reception at the previews, the ending was changed and any obvious hint that Deckard was a replicant safely removed from the original final cut, thereby leaving the door open for the audience to sympathize with the star and with the happy couple, who escape to the incongruously lush, unpolluted countryside north of Los Angeles. A voice-over was also introduced, which conveniently informed the audience

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that Rachael, a cutting-edge experimental model, was the only replicant that had not been built with a four-year life span. Ironically, it was both the happy ending and Deckard’s noirish voice-over narration that film critics derided upon the release of the film. Despite the disagreements among the different parties involved and the film’s relatively poor box-office takings,78 Blade Runner went on to become one of the most influential cult films of the post-modern 1980s.79 The 1992 release of the “Director’s Cut” was an event in itself, with Scott’s original vision (i.e., Deckard was a replicant) gaining some ground. In addition, the conclusion became ambiguously happy at best for while it still presented the doomed couple escaping from Deckard’s apartment, it also left the ending open to various readings and interpretations. Rachael and Deckard form an odd couple in this visionary film. Even though, as long as we understand Deckard to be human, they provide an early example of the diversity and fluidity that increasingly characterize personal relationships in contemporary societies, their pairing is still somewhat problematic. Science fiction narratives, especially in film, are intensely masculinist in outlook,80 a feature they share with the film noir genre, and are frequently set in the “new frontier,” a rugged, dangerous space culturally coded as masculine where exploration and the need to survive leave little room for romance. As a result, romantic pairings are rare in the genre. Not surprisingly, Deckard and Rachael’s liaison is initially portrayed as rough and violent, which reflects the genre’s difficulties in dealing with love and affection. Deckard first meets Rachael at the Tyrell Corporation, where he discovers that she is a replicant, even though she is an advanced model that has been deceived into thinking that she is human by her master, Dr. Tyrell. When Deckard insensitively informs Rachael about her “real conditions of existence,” she runs away from the Tyrell Corporation. She then becomes strangely Considering the figures available on Box Office Mojo and IMDB, Blade Runner barely broke even during its initial release and the film never achieved blockbuster status, despite the talent involved. On an estimated budget of $28m, the three alternative versions of the film released to date (1982, 1992, 2007) have made approximately $32m at the US box office. Figures for international box-office takings were not available at the time of writing. 79 Doel and Clarke have perceptively pointed out that the film “has […] achieved the oxymoronic status of a canonical post-modern cultural artefact” (quoted in Varun Begley, “Blade Runner and the postmodern: A reconsideration,” Literature Film Quarterly 32/3 (2004), p. 186). 80 Rocío Carrasco-Carrasco, New Heroes on Screen. Prototypes of Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema (Huelva, 2006), p. 92; Barry Keith Grant, Shadows of Doubt. Negotiations of Masculinity in American Genre Films (Detroit, 2010), p. 121. 78

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dependent on Deckard and eventually develops a romantic bond with him. However, as Rachael is a replicant, she is not meant to have feelings of her own. Her feelings and memories are artificial implants that now she has begun to mistrust. It is because of her intense confusion that Deckard manages to manipulate her feelings. In the harsh love scene at Deckard’s apartment, which has been graphically described as a “corridor rape scene,”81 she initially refuses to kiss him, but Deckard makes her confront her conflicting feelings by forcing her to say “kiss me” and “I want you.” Thus, Deckard reasserts his masculinity, which, as a result of his vulnerability, is repeatedly questioned during the film. The result is a “love scene” with sadomasochistic undertones that, in true noir fashion, emphasizes Deckard’s difficulty to engage in a “normal” romantic relationship. Still, while these sinister undercurrents are underlined by the noir-lite employed to shoot the scene (see Figure 12), the sensual music signifies Rachael’s capitulation while also serving as a counterpoint to the scene’s actual sordidness.

Figure 12  “No means yes?” Deckard and Rachael’s intensely unsettling love scene symbolizes the breakdown and dislocation of romance and affection in the modern/ future world. Blade Runner (produced by Michael Deeley, Hampton Fancher, Brian Kelly, 1982). Deely, quoted in Yago García, “La forja del héroe en nueve lecciones,” Cinemanía 138 (March 2007), p. 94.

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Yet this is entirely in consonance with the dystopian world projected in the film, in which human relationships have disintegrated, and all that humans have been left with are poor substitutes such as photographs and toy robots. Some of the humans remaining on Earth, such as Deckard, have become isolated, alienated, and inured to pain. This contrasts, on the one hand, with the intense loneliness that human “rejects” such as J. F. Sebastian (William Sanderson), who has been declared medically unfit by the migration authorities, are forced to endure against their will. On the other, Deckard’s dejected attitude also contrasts with the rebel replicants’ (literal) lust for life and desire to become masters of their own destinies. As Ryan82 suggests, their thoughts of mortality give them “a motive for taking life seriously, [which] asks us to contemplate a dying culture in which the characters who demonstrate the most intensity and understanding for life are not human beings at all.” Interestingly, Deckard regains his humanity thanks to the fake humans. Because of their physical perfection, their capacity for empathy, and their desire to hang on to life, the replicant others are portrayed as “more human than human,” although their monstrous otherness is still underlined through their murderous brutality. It is therefore through his direct interaction with the artificial clones that Deckard redeems himself by empathizing with the doomed rebels. It is actually Batty who compassionately spares Deckard’s life at the very moment when the latter’s vulnerability has become apparent. It is at moments like this one that dichotomies like human/humanoid or hero/villain lose their validity. As a result of his newly regained morality, and humanity, Deckard gives up his mission to “retire” any remaining rebel replicants, with whose cause he now wholly empathizes. After helplessly watching Batty die one of the most poetic deaths ever filmed, Deckard decides to escape with Rachael to an uncertain happy future, although not before newly reasserting his masculinity and leading role by making Rachael express her blind faith in him. “Do you trust me?,” he asks before escaping, to which she unhesitatingly responds “I trust you.” Rachael’s submission to Deckard is thus made manifest. Long gone is the tough Mildred Pierce look-alike who we were introduced to at the beginning of the film. It seems as if her identity crisis has triggered a radical David C. Ryan, “Dreams of postmodernism and thoughts of mortality: A twenty-fifth anniversary retrospective of Blade Runner,” in Senses of Cinema (2007). Available at http://sensesofcinema. com/2007/feature-articles/blade-runner/ (accessed May 14, 2009).

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shift in her femininity. Noting the straight-jacketing of female roles in the film, Wisniewski83 notes, “Rachael moves from one gender-stereotyped identity to another, (de)constructing the very meaning of the fatale stereotype,” which also suggests that femininity/gender, whatever its configuration, is a mask, or an implant, so to speak, that can be put on and taken off at will. Indeed, Rachael’s mature assertiveness turns to childlike helplessness once she becomes aware of her own artificiality. Meanwhile, Deckard’s own progressive reawakening suggests a desire to escape from his characteristic cynicism and individualism. Even though he may enjoy his newly found happiness with Rachael “for a limited period only,” the ending suggests that these fleeting moments of happiness are still worth living because they are all there is left for them/for humanity to enjoy. As Gaff (Edward James Olmos) shouts at Deckard at the end of the film, “It’s too bad she won’t live, but then again who does?” Empathy and a new appreciation of life and love, despite its initial problematic nature, turn Deckard into more sympathetic kind of hero. On the other hand, the shift in Deckard’s masculinity suggests, as in the case of Rachael, that gender traits are flexible and malleable. What this psychological shift emphasizes after all is the fact that gender roles are the product of our artificial, culturally and historically specific socialization, which we are pre-programmed to internalize and perform. Gender, as a social category, can be learned and is not biologically determined. In a sense, the pre-programmed acquisition of gender roles brings humans close to replicants. What distinguishes us from them, nonetheless, is our increased capacity to de-program or re-program ourselves. As Bukatman84 concludes, “the value of Blade Runner […] is that it makes us unreal—we are forced, or at least encouraged, to confront our own constructedness, and by confronting our selves, to remake them” (emphasis in the original). Even though the Nexus-6 replicants are gifted enough to become aware of their artificial intelligence and status as slave subjects, they have no power to de-program themselves and short-circuit their four-year life span, hence their deeply melodramatic characterization. This determinism contrasts with Deckard’s freedom of choice, which eventually leads him to Kevin A. Wisniewski, “The reinvention of the femme fatale: Science fiction and the future female in Blade Runner,” Genre 25 (2004), p. 230. 84 Scott Bukatman, Blade Runner (London, 2002 (1997)), p. 80. 83

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rebel against authority as a result of both the empathy he has developed with the rebel slaves and his attachment to Rachael. Finally, the blade runner’s decision to embrace “the other” and live on the edge, so to speak, is rather courageous, and despite the possibility that Rachael and Deckard’s happiness may only be short-lived (Deckard will not be able to prolong her life, after all), it still represents a hopeful ending to a very desolate film. Nevertheless, Deckard’s awareness that their bliss will not last for long also suggests that this would be the only kind of personal relationship that he might be able to sustain, whether with a human or a humanoid. Therefore, while the brand of dystopian (anti)heroism embodied by Deckard was at odds with much of Ford’s earlier output, this latter aspect contributed to emphasizing the aura of rugged individualism that had also characterized many of Ford’s earlier roles, from David Halloran to Indiana Jones. His next role in the well-liked Witness intensified this particular side of his star persona, while also stressing another important aspect of Ford’s developing brand, that is, manly vulnerability. It is also a deep sense of justice, a desire to side with the helpless, and even a touch of vulnerability that characterize John Book, the law-abiding police officer in Witness. This role entailed a further move toward more “adult,” dramatic parts and it garnered Ford the best reviews of his entire career. His acting work was rewarded with nominations for the Oscars, the Golden Globes, and the BAFTA awards, and it helped to cement Ford’s growing reputation as a serious actor who could single-handedly carry a script with no spectacular special effects or stunts involved. However, it must also be conceded that widespread recognition of this kind has been rare in Ford’s long-standing career, which confirms McDonald’s85 view regarding the existence in the field of cultural production of a strong “anti-commercial logic which shapes artistic valorisation.” Ford’s role in Witness can be said to provide a certain degree of continuity with previous roles, while also offering some progression. Book’s initial (mild) cynicism and overconfidence recall Han Solo’s. Moreover, his vulnerability and eventual need for independence bring Indiana Jones to mind, while his willingness to protect the vulnerable also aligns Book with the Deckard character. However, the John Book part also added a new moral or melodramatic Paul McDonald, Hollywood Stardom (Malden and Chichester, 2013), p. 268.

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dimension to Ford’s persona that would eventually become an essential ingredient of his artistic trademark. It was precisely the moral dimension of the Witness story, reinforced as it was by the depiction of the strict Amish lifestyle, that attracted Ford to the role. Indeed, Book, unlike earlier characters, is an unambiguously moral and thoroughly law-abiding officer. Book’s sister Elaine (Patti LuPone) stresses this aspect of his personality when he is accused of having murdered the undercover police officer at Philadelphia’s railway station: “Everybody who knows John knows that is a goddamn lie,” says she. This accusation is part of a plot against Book organized by a group of bent cops, which includes Chief Police Inspector Paul Schaeffer (Josef Sommer). Thus, the film stages a crucial confrontation that is meant to establish a portrait of the decent, ordinary yet also ideal cop à la Serpico (1973), while simultaneously asserting the fundamentally positive role played by the police force. In a conservative society that was becoming increasingly paranoid about “the alien within” and the protection of decent families against criminals, the good cop became a new male icon, and a father figure, offering much-craved security to ordinary US citizens. Rafter86 has argued that by the 1970s, the ordinary, though heroic, cop had already started to replace the lonesome cowboy, the sheriff, and the private eye as the figure onto which ideal models of masculinity were being projected. Indeed, it is through the powerful character of John Book, and the different ways in which he is contrasted with various other characters in the narrative, that the film (re)constructs its ideal model of masculinity, that is, a father figure and a man of integrity who is “plain,” as the Amish might say, but also very competent at everything he does (whether policing, detecting, protecting, woodworking, barn building, car fixing, milking, seducing), courageous, very sexy, and capable of showing his more sensitive side. In a sense, Book is an essential precursor of the Bush heroes that Jeffords discusses in Hard Bodies, that is, (family) men whose masculinity is defined through their inner, rather than outer, strength, that is to say, through a powerful display of moral values and a capacity for protection, sacrifice, and empathy with the most vulnerable. As Hamad87 argues, the then-emerging

Nicole Rafter, Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society (Oxford, 2000), p. 73. Hannah Hamad, Postfeminism and Paternity in Contemporary US Film: Framing Fatherhood (New York, 2014), p. 15.

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transitional figure of the heroic father has in the contemporary post-feminism era become the Hollywood male archetype par excellence, or “the default position from which to negotiate hegemonic masculinity,” which may help to explain the enduring popularity of Harrison Ford as a Hollywood icon. It can be argued that the success of the film encouraged Ford’s close associations with morality and decency, which eventually led to a string of very popular roles during the late 1980s and 1990s structured around the Manichean conflict between good and evil. The film can be said to be roughly divided into two parts. The first one portrays a slice of Amish life and culture, as well as Book’s life as a cop in the big city, while the second presents Book as an outsider among the Amish who falls in love with the mother of the child witness who he is trying to protect, Samuel Lapp (Lukas Haas). Because the second part is the most prominent and memorable one in the film, critics like Roger Ebert88 have considered the film to be first and foremost a love story. Effectively, this means that Book’s masculinity is outlined in different ways throughout the narrative, depending on the (generic) context in which it is placed. The first sequences introducing us to John Book and the final showdown belong to the police/thriller/action genre, whereas the long interlude among the Amish is more easily analyzed as a romantic drama. The shift from one genre to the other is marked by Book’s symbolic surrender of his gun (i.e., his masculinity as defined in the police/ thriller/action genre) to Rachel (Kelly McGillis) (see Figure 13). Since the rigorous Amish profess non-violence as a religious principle, Book will have to find other ways to preserve his masculinity and, eventually, win Rachel’s love. In the first part of the film, Book is conventionally presented as a tough, somewhat cynical cop who introduces himself to Rachel Lapp in the James Bond fashion: “Book, John Book.” In addition, we learn that he has no family of his own since, according to his sister Elaine, he is not mature enough to handle the responsibility. However, she complains that he is always trying to be a father to her own children. Moreover—and always according to his sister— Book enjoys policing “because he thinks he’s right about everything and he is the only one who can do anything.” However, the narrative quickly invalidates

Roger Ebert, “Review of Witness,” in The Chicago Sun-Times. Available at http://rogerebert.suntimes. com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19850208/REVIEWS/502080301/1023 (accessed June 25, 2008).

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Figure 13  Framing underlines John Book’s vulnerable position among the Amish. While he is forced to surrender his city-style masculinity in the form of a phallic gun, he will soon find other ways to reassert it. Witness (produced by Edward S. Feldman, David Bombyk, Wendy Stites, 1985).

Elaine’s point of view by presenting her as an irresponsible single mother who regularly changes partner and brings them to the house even when the children are around, to which her brother objects openly. Thus, the audience is meant to sympathize with Book’s cynical attitude toward his sister’s comments and side with him nonetheless. During the first part of the narrative, Book also has to come to terms with the corruption of some members of the police department. Certain high officials have become involved in a drug ring and they will do whatever it takes in order to carry on with business as usual. After an innocent policeman is murdered as a result, Book starts searching for his assassin, with the only help of Samuel, the Amish child witness. Even though, as pointed out above, Book is described as immature by his sister, he is also able at this stage to show tremendous generosity and sensitiveness toward the child, whom he starts growing fond of. The fact that there seem to be two somewhat contradictory sides to Book’s personality—i.e., the independent, tough, and at times violent cop on the one hand and the caring, fatherly one on the other—seems to be entirely consistent with Ford’s intricate star persona. When Book discovers who is responsible for the murder, the corrupt high-ranking officials set him up and try to kill both the child and Book, thereby precipitating his escape to Amish country with the child and his

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mother. In the meantime, Book has proven his worth, and masculinity, by risking his life to protect them. Hence, despite the initial criticism voiced by Book’s sister, the hero’s masculinity is still clearly defined by presenting the character as a courageous, sensitive, and morally committed officer who is not afraid of exposing the corrupt leaders in the police department. Certainly, these elements are underscored even further through the depiction of his adversaries as cowardly and dishonest to a fault. Book’s combination of heroism, selflessness, and morality manages to instill the police force with a positive aura that restores faith in the institution, which according to Rafter89 or Leitch90 had been heavily damaged during the previous decades as a result of scandal, corruption, and the excessive brutality displayed to dismantle civil rights protests. This change in public perception was no doubt in tune with the US citizens’ renewed faith in traditional values and institutions following Reagan’s access to power.91 The restoration of faith in the police institution, however, is marred by Book’s independence and isolation from the Force. The fact that he does not wear a uniform but a suit, even though he is a police officer, establishes him as an outsider. This is a generic convention of the “good cop” subgenre, as these films tend to “blur the distinction between the police gang and the criminal gang in order to recast the solitary heroic cop in the mould of the lone-wolf private eye who can be trusted precisely because he is not part of the corrupt establishment.”92 Yet, if it is up to isolated good cops like Book to maintain the public’s faith in the institution intact, their task becomes monumental, virtually unachievable, and therefore, mythical. In any case, it is significant that Book, unlike disenchanted Serpico, decides to remain in the Force. Book’s decision to “stay put” testifies to changing attitudes toward the police force during the 1980s. Still, Witness seems to have inspired fewer followers, since, as Kord and Krimmer93 maintain, Hollywood films of the 1990s and beyond have been characterized by a Rafter, Shots in the Mirror, pp. 74–5. Thomas M. Leitch, Crime Films (Port Chester, 2002), p. 229. 91 As Gallup reports, in 1985 Reagan’s popularity rate peaked, routinely receiving ratings in the 60 percent range, which confirms the public’s trust in his administration (Frank Newport, Jeffrey M. Jones and Lydia Saad, “Ronald Reagan from the people’s perspective: A Gallup poll review,” Gallup. com. June 7, 2004. Available at http://www.gallup.com/poll/11887/ronald-reagan-from-peoplesperspective-gallup-poll-review.aspx (accessed August 28, 2015)). 92 Leitch, Crime Films, p. 226. 93 Susanne Kord and Elisabeth Krimmer, Contemporary Hollywood Masculinities. Gender, Genre and Politics (New York and Houndmills, Basingstoke, 2011), pp. 14–15. 89 90

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severe shortage of good, decent cops, which, they argue, mirrors a general post-Rodney King distrust in “any form of systemic justice in general and the police in particular.” Even though during his stay among the Amish Book tries to adapt to their lifestyle, he is never entirely able to relinquish his city-life baggage. During the first night, while he is still delirious in bed, he cannot stop swearing as he has nightmares about his confrontation with the criminals who he has been chasing. In addition, during a visit to a nearby town, the Amish group he is with are harassed by a bunch of yobs who are perfectly aware of the pacifism of the Amish, always willing to turn the other cheek. This time around, however, Book is among them and he is not willing to follow “the Amish way,” but rather Tommy Lillard’s “American Way.” This sequence suggests that for “true” men of action like Book, who inhabit the “real” world, the non-violence philosophy that minorities like the agrarian Amish profess is a virtual impossibility. Therefore, the narrative upholds the largely conservative view that violence is necessary in order to “serve and protect” decent citizens and maintain the peace they deserve. Yet it is precisely by asserting his identity difference, that is, fighting back “like a man” and never turning the other cheek, that Book makes himself stand out from the rest of the group, despite his Amish attire and his companions’ awkward assurance to the locals that he is actually “an Ohio Amish.” It is in fact after this notorious episode that Book’s enemies are able to locate him. The final showdown brings us back to the action genre. Unaware of the dangerous situation he is in, Book is not carrying his gun but manages to use an Amish “weapon” to kill the first of his adversaries by luring him into a silo and letting tons of corn asphyxiate him. He is then able to use the dead man’s gun to kill his second adversary. The horror in Book’s face confirms both his “average guy” credentials and the fact that when he kills, he does it in self-defense, never in cold blood. As he finally confronts his corrupt boss, who is holding Rachel hostage, a group of Amish men arrive at the Lapps’ home. It is then that Schaeffer surrenders his weapon and admits defeat. It is not only that he is now alone and surrounded by dozens of men of peace but also Book’s strongly moral, almost godlike intervention as he shouts “It’s over. Enough; enough!” prompts his instant surrender. Hence, the final confrontation provides the ultimate proof of Book’s mythical, almost supreme, moral standing.

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As mentioned above, during the romantic drama interlude separating these initial and final events, Book has to adapt to life among the Amish while recovering from his injuries. Having surrendered his gun and with the bullet holes in his body still open, his position is extremely vulnerable. This is also underscored in a funny sequence, in which he has to wear Rachel’s dead husband’s (rather small) clothes. Although the sequence generates laughter (not least because the audience like to watch stars poking fun at themselves), it also symbolically signifies both Book’s inevitably superior status as regards the other men around him (even the wall mirror is aptly placed below his eye level) and the fact that his eventual place is definitely not among the Amish. Indeed, it is Book’s vulnerability that attracts Rachel to him. She has recently been widowed, although a member of her community, Daniel Hochleitner (Alexander Godunov), has started to show a romantic interest in her. From the start of the film, however, the script has conveniently warned the audience that Hochleitner is not meant to be a good match for Rachel, as during her husband’s funeral he laughs at the fact that his father had tricked Rachel’s husband into buying a horse with a ruptured testicle. Apart from underlining his dubious morals, the script presents Hochleitner as inferior to Book in various other ways. On the one hand, Hochleitner does not seem to be much fun or able to sustain conversation. In addition, he is a much worse woodworker than Book is. While he presents Samuel with a small, poorly carved horse figure, Book makes a fancy, articulate wooden toy for the boy, virtually the Amish equivalent to the latest hi-tech toy. In this particular case, the plot is selfconsciously drawing on Ford’s well-known credentials as an accomplished carpenter, thereby underlining the notion that Harrison Ford really is John Book and vice versa.94 Moreover, Hochleitner is played by Alexander Godunov, a Russian exile who in real life used to be first male dancer at the Bolshoi Ballet Company. It goes without saying that in Western culture ballet dancing is far removed from conventional notions of masculinity. Moreover, back in 1985, communism, which Godunov represents by virtue of his nationality, was still a real threat for the United States. Hence, the intertextual connection that may be established with both performers’ biographies and nationalities juxtaposes

There is another moment in the film when Ford’s carpenter days are echoed. Before building the barn, Hochleitner tells Book, “I hear you are a carpenter” to which Ford answers, “It’s been a while.”

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two very different styles of masculinity, while invariably underlining Book’s superior standing in this respect. Finally, the narrative presents Book as the sexier character. Apart from the fact that we are able to see Book’s naked, well-toned torso on various occasions, which the wounds provide an alibi for, Book’s wild, exciting sexuality is signified in a very subtle manner. Hochleitner, his shirt all buttoned up, has come to visit Rachel and they sit together at the porch sipping lemonade quietly. Book strolls in front of them, and Hochleitner notices how Rachel is looking at his rival. He tries to put his arm around her, though he quickly removes it. Rachel seems to feel uncomfortable. When Hochleitner leaves, Rachel brings some lemonade to Book, who is busy doing some woodwork in the barn. Book’s torso is visible under his unbuttoned shirt and he is noticeably sweating. He is obviously thirsty and so drinks Rachel’s lemonade eagerly, while some of it pours down his damp face and throat. Rachel, who is clearly not used to such (sublimated) displays of masculine passion, gapes in amazement as she watches Book drink her lemonade with such gusto. Seldom has such an innocent action proven so sexy in contemporary cinema. Since Hochleitner is clearly a poor rival for Book, the latter is free to pursue his romance with Rachel. The film is full of subtle, and not so subtle, moments that establish the couple as perfect for each other, despite the cultural/religious gap separating them. Following the conventions of the romantic comedy, the script is able to signify their compatibility at various levels, just as it is able to portray the rivalry between Book, the right partner, and Hochleitner, the wrong partner, in various other ways. Whereas Hochleitner does not seem to be much fun for Rachel, Book is able to make her dance and laugh, which is a conventional indication of their compatibility. The scene in which the two dance in the barn is arguably one of the most sensually charged scenes in contemporary cinema. As they both dance and laugh together, Book sings to Sam Cooke’s old-fashioned Wonderful World, which is how he implicitly declares his love for Rachel. Shot-reverse-shots are used in combination with close-ups of the two would-be lovers together, which emphasizes both their attraction and gigantic separation (see Figures 14, 15, and 16). The mood during this celebrated scene can positively be described as electrifying, and it is also a very good indication of Ford’s performing abilities. Even though

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Figures 14, 15,  and 16  “Don’t know much about history, don’t know much b ­ iology …,” but Weir clearly knows “what a camera is for,” as his “A-student” use of framing in Witness indicates. Witness (produced by Edward S. Feldman, David Bombyk, Wendy Stites, 1985).

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I disagree with her unenthusiastic assessment of the star’s ability to express vulnerability and emotions in general, I believe Geraghty’s95 description of Ford’s excellent performance in this scene is worth reproducing here, Part of the power in the dance scene in Witness lies in the way in which Ford is transformed, the shift from the thriller to romance being marked through performance. As he approaches Rachel […], his face is stiff and his eyes intense. Then his eyes widen, a smile breaks up the planes of his face […]. The intense, impassive expression returns as the pair nearly kiss […]. The tenderness of the scene depends upon the revelation, through gesture, of feeling which is normally hidden behind the Ford mask.

This beautiful love scene, however, is interrupted by Rachel’s father-inlaw, who in the context of the film, is meant to stand for patriarchal sexual repression. In a way, then, the whole scene becomes a representation of a coitus interruptus. During the stormy night the following day, Rachel intentionally leaves the door open so that Book can see her shower half-naked. The forces of nature, however, only become unleashed outside the house as Book kisses Rachel but decides not to cross the line and have sex with her, despite the mounting passion between them. The following day he justifies his refusal by stating “if we’d made love last night I’d have to stay … or you’d have to leave.” Book’s restraint may signify that he has started to become aware that his place is not among the Amish and that Rachel would have to renounce her cultural identity were they to go away together. As a man of strong moral values, Book cannot conceive having  a mere one-night stand with her.96 In addition, he knows that Rachel would be shunned by her community were they to become sexually involved. However, Book’s sacrifice also seems to suggest that he is not willing or able to surrender his manly independence, which recalls many of Ford’s earlier ruggedly independent roles. As the film ends, he stands outside Rachel’s house, under the porch with the road behind him, while Rachel is finally contained within the frame of her domestic space. It appears that her need for both her Christine Geraghty, “Re-examining stardom: Questions of texts, bodies and performances,” in C. Gledhill and L. Williams (eds), Reinventing Film Studies (London, 2000), p. 191. 96 Dyer considers sexual restraint or indifference to be an essential characteristic of ideal constructions of whiteness, which in cultural terms denotes higher spirituality and the ability to master “dark” desires (Dyer, White, p. 3). That Book appears to be more virtuous than even an Amish woman is yet another indication of his mythical standing. 95

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son and herself to hold on to their cultural roots has proven stronger than her sexual drive or desire for independence. They stand silently and do not say goodbye to each other but both half smile, even though they are about to cry, which seems to suggest that they masochistically accept their lot as inevitable in this romantic drama of sorts. If the final showdown scene can be said to be reminiscent of High Noon (1952), the Amish substituting for the Quakers, the film’s epilogue visually recalls various famous moments in other Western classics, such as My Darling Clementine (1946) or The Searchers (1956). Like in the Indiana Jones films of the 1980s, the mythic hero’s need for autonomy, modeled as it is on that of the classical Western hero, is thus underlined. Samuel Lapp, for his part, seems to be almost as sorry to see Book go as Joey was in Shane (1953). In a reversal of fortunes with the traditional Western narrative, however, Book returns to “civilization” (i.e., the corrupt city) where his courage and strong moral values are much more needed than among the Amish, whose peace he has disturbed. As Leitch97 suggests, the cop hero is not, after all, very far removed from the Western hero since the lonely isolation of the Hollywood cop is the most immutable of all the genre’s conventions. […] Like the western hero, the police hero is deprived of a domestic life in order to marginalize him from the social body he is supposed to be defending, even as his alienation reinforces his professional dedication.

This analogy certainly establishes a further connection with the frontier elements that characterized many of Ford’s earlier roles and the star’s overall public image. As final dénouements go, nonetheless, this one comes as a disappointment inasmuch as it upholds traditional gender norms, or female, maternal sacrifice, and male mobility and independence. In many a romantic drama, the lovers separate “in a blaze of glory,” after having rebelled against the patriarchal strictures that manage to keep them apart. Not so in Witness. Despite the possibilities opened by the melodramatic narrative, the eventual maintenance of the social and gender status quo confirms that frontier mythology, in its different contemporary cinematic manifestations, tends to be politically Leitch, Crime Films, pp. 222–3.

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reactionary in its assertion of the freedom of the (male) individual. At the same time, the generic switch that characterizes the final sequence of this multifaceted film still manages to present the hero’s final isolation as an act of selflessness and a necessary price to pay so that the rest of society can benefit from the mythic hero’s protection. John Book, one of the most memorable parts in Ford’s career, allowed the star to establish himself as a serious performing artist. Most importantly, while helping to cement earlier elements in his popular trademark, the role contributed fundamentally to instilling Ford’s persona with a melodramatic aura of morality that he has managed to sustain throughout the years, as Ford’s roles in the more recent Crossing Over (2009), Extraordinary Measures (2010), and 42 (2013) all attest.

Weir (Again), Polanski, and a Look at the Dark Side Blade Runner may have been Ford’s least satisfying filming experience, but The Mosquito Coast was one of the most pleasurable ones. The film’s very poor critical and box-office reception came as such a shock to the star that he took the unusual step of writing to the press in defense of the film. Although reviewers frequently remarked on Ford’s impressive acting skills (the actor went on to earn his second Golden Globe nomination in two consecutive years), they condemned the film, and especially its main character, for failing to strike a chord with the audience. The film’s poor results98 contrasted with the star’s fondness for Allie Fox, a character that “says more in one scene than other characters [he’d] played said in the whole film.”99 Indeed, Allie Fox had a lot to say, both literally and metaphorically, which contrasted with Ford’s own trademark taciturnity and that of some of his most prominent earlier roles. Ford seemed to be relishing the opportunity of expressing and exposing himself in a safe, controlled environment through a character that he had come to consider his own surrogate figure. As he100 admitted, With an estimated budget of $25m, it went on to make around $14m at the US box office (no international box office data are available). 99 Quoted in Sellers, Harrison Ford, p. 194. 100 Quoted in Pfeiffer and Lewis, The Films, p. 155. 98

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I’m a father and a son, so I can recognize the dynamics of that relationship. I’m a person who has worked with his hands, so I can understand that part of it. And I don’t accept things the way they are, so I can relate to the criticisms of how American life has come to be. There’s no lack of understanding between myself and Allie Fox. It’s really a matter of degree: he goes much further than I might go.

However, Fox’s “rants” about the decay of the United States were generally considered to be repetitive and excessively anti-United States for a mainstream Hollywood product. In Reagan’s United States, The Mosquito Coast constituted a risky project indeed. Despite the success of Paul Theroux’s original novel, nobody seemed to believe in the business potential of the film version of the story, to be directed by Peter Weir, who had just arrived in Hollywood from his Australian homeland. Jack Nicholson’s and Robert de Niro’s initial interest in the film made it more attractive but they eventually decided to pull out. In the meantime, Weir went on to direct the more conventional Witness out of sheer necessity. It was after the success of Weir’s first Hollywood film that the studios became interested and quickly secured the financing necessary for the movie. By then, Weir had also managed to embark Harrison Ford on the project, which made it even more attractive to the studios. Even though Ford was not the first choice for the part, Weir believed he was perfect for the role: “he evokes a very American quality ―strength, leadership―just by walking onto the screen. All of which made me believe we would follow him into the jungle and believe what he said.”101 Ironically, Ford’s powerful persona only contributed to the film’s overall negative reception. Despite Ford’s fatal attraction to the honestly motivated but also rather abrasive Fox, audiences did not manage to find a point of entry into a character that, according to its literary creator, was meant to be liked and disliked in equal measure. If they had gone to the cinema in search of an Indiana Jones-like adventure in the Honduran jungle, their hopes were disappointed. Reviewer David Denby,102 falling into the usual trap of equating the man and the role, criticized an overly narcissistic Ford/Fox for failing to establish an emotional connection with the cinemagoer: “Ford never develops Quoted in Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 130. Quoted in Jenkins, Harrison Ford, p. 249.

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the slightest complicity with the audience. He’s out there by himself, fulfilling his actor’s dream of intransigence. He doesn’t bring us into his way of looking at things and we don’t care what happens to him.” The Mosquito Coast may have been Ford’s first important though unsuccessful “vanity project,”103 but it provided a clear indication that, in the eyes of the public, and some critics, Ford had already developed a powerful― but also very specific―brand that incorporated such aspects as heroicness, decency, honesty, and great doses of charm. Hence, despite the critical appreciation for Ford’s bold choice and performance, the general public were unwilling to accept him in a narrative that self-consciously subverted the role of the likeable all-American hero―which Ford had by then come to embody. As Sellers104 remarks, Like [Gary] Cooper he lacks malice and the disposition to appear dishonest. Endlessly typed as the good guy, perhaps in perpetuity, Allie Fox […] is the closest Ford will ever come to playing a villain. […] However intelligent [and] provocative, […] Weir’s tale […] was too unsettling and nasty for mass consumption. The world was not ready for a movie in which the immortal Indiana Jones ends up lying in a river boat with a bullet in his back.

As a result, the film became Ford’s first important commercial failure as a major performer, but a failure that he remains proud of to this day. In retrospect, it might be easy to speculate whether the reception of the film might have been different had it been marketed as a Weir-directed, Paul Schrader-scripted art-house film, or had de Niro or Nicholson, two actors who have successfully played unpleasant characters in mainstream films in the past, agreed to play the role. Maybe Ford was not an inspired casting decision for an extremely risky film that mainstream audiences found difficult, if not impossible, to digest. Still, the film deserves appreciation for its brave depiction of the dark side of the American Dream, leadership, and heroism. Likewise, Ford deserves credit for his willingness to play so obviously against type, thereby adding a certain degree of unpredictability to the character. Without a “Vanity project” is the term employed within the industry to refer to those films that, although not deemed potentially successful by the studios, are financed in order to secure a star’s or director’s later engagement in projects that the industry considers might become blockbuster material (Michael Allen, Contemporary U.S. Cinema (Harlow, Essex, 2003), p. 125). 104 Sellers, Harrison Ford, pp. 122; 206–7. 103

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doubt, Allie Fox added a new, problematic dimension to his persona that has often been overlooked in favor of those more mainstream elements that have led Ford to be considered by many as “the people’s actor.”105 Nevertheless, such unpalatable ingredients should also be taken into account in order to tease out some ambiguous aspects in the actor’s overall production. After the success of Witness, Ford was keen to collaborate with Weir once again. Both director and actor cherish the hard-work ethic and approach filmmaking as a craft rather than an art, or what Weir bluntly calls the “let’s cut all the crap and get down to turning out a workmanlike product, giving value for money” attitude.106 Ford’s artistic input was considerable and welcomed by the director, who considered Ford “more than just an actor, a filmmaker.”107 As in Witness, Ford’s manual skills were once again self-consciously employed to establish a closer connection between the character and the actor, although certainly not as effectively as in his previous film. In this case, not only did Ford actively work on the on-screen building of the Jeronimo community, but he also designed some of the contraptions used in the film, such as the bicycle washing machine.108 The Mosquito Coast tells the story of Allie Fox, a father of four and a brilliant but also very arrogant inventor with several patents who dropped out of Harvard University to “get an education.” Such is the social deterioration he can appreciate around him―erosion of the work ethic, crime, rampant consumerism, apathy, corruption―that he cannot understand the appeal that the United States still holds for migrant workers, with whom he would gladly trade places in the jungle. Fox considers himself to be the only person left on the planet who still cares about the current state of his once-great country, which he believes to be on the brink of civil war and nuclear holocaust. Because he cannot bear to watch it “going to the dogs,” he decides, without Ray Bennet, “Tall, dark and bankable,” The Hollywood Reporter (Harrison Ford Tribute Issue) 331/14 (March 8, 1994), p. S-38. Harrison Ford is a recurrent answer for “favourite movie star” in the US Harris poll. In the latest poll available, carried out in 2015, he was fifth choice overall, second choice in the men’s group, only after John Wayne, and first choice for Gen Xers (Larry Shannon-Missal, “Tom Hanks is America’s favorite movie star, followed by Johnny Depp and Denzel Washington,” theharrispoll.com, January 28, 2016. Available at http://www.theharrispoll.com/health-and-life/ Tom-Hanks-Favorite-Movie-Star.html (accessed June 29, 2016)). 106 Quoted in Kenneth Turan “Harrison Ford wants to be alone,” in GQ Magazine (1986). Available at http://www.apartment42.com/gq_nov86.htm (accessed July 6, 2008). Link no longer available. 107 Quoted in Sellers, Harrison Ford, p. 205. 108 Allan Hunter, “Harrison Ford,” Films and Filming 389 (February 1987), p. 26. 105

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previous consultation with his family, to leave everything behind and pursue his own version of the American Dream on virgin land, the Mosquitia Coast in Honduras. In many ways, Allie’s trajectory recalls that of the classical empire/frontier adventurer, since they are motivated “as much by a desire to retreat from [their] own world as to conquer new ones, and the remote environment of a colonial region offers the best opportunity to realize those hopes and ambitions.”109 Thus, Fox follows his “Manifest Destiny,” but his is an individualistic dream that will inevitably fail simply because he is not alone. Since Fox is immune to negotiation, he will try to impose his will on his dependents, with disastrous consequences. Allie Fox was the first actual father role in Harrison Ford’s career, and it is ironic that for an actor who went on to become the über-father of the movies in the 1990s, Fox proves to be such a disastrous role model for his children. Still, one can observe a continuation from earlier significant roles in Ford’s filmography, which had been consistently characterized by self-reliance and the final reassertion of individualism, even if run amok, as in this case. In a way, Allie Fox is a good incarnation of the conflicting values that characterized Reagan’s politics, in which the preservation of both (male) individualism and family values constituted an explosive combination. As Harwood110 contends, “the privileging of individual freedom and fulfilment, […] foregrounded in the individualistic values of the eighties, directly undermined the family unit.” Without a doubt, Fox embodies the strong work ethic and (male) individualistic frontier values that featured so prominently in many of Ford’s earlier heroic roles, as well as in his public image. He is a self-made man whose patriotism, initiative, skill, and self-reliance are unquestionable, while his criticism of complacency―what he calls the “I just work here attitude”―is rather blunt. Most importantly, he decides to move to what can still be considered to be the last actual frontier on the American continent, that is, the uncharted jungle, where he manages to buy a piece of land on which he will strive to make his colonial/imperialistic dream of “rebuilding a civilisation from scratch” come true (notice how even the name of the “town” he founds, Jeronimo, evokes the mythical territory of the frontier). It is thus that the Foxes’ “pioneering effort” Taves, The Romance of Adventure, p. 179. Sarah Harwood, Family Fictions: Representations of the Family in 1980s Hollywood Film (Houndmills and London, 1997), p. 38.

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starts. Thus, the film capitalizes on Ford’s heroic persona, only to subvert and criticize it by focusing on the negative aspects of the character’s untrammeled individualism and its tragic consequences. Allie’s regressive frontier-like philosophy is also contained in one of his many pontificating utterances: This is the kind of education every American should have gotten. When America’s devastated and laid to waste by nuclear holocaust these are the skills that are gonna save them, not finger painting or home economics or what is the capital of Texas, but survival! Rebuilding a civilization from a smoking ruin!

However, this is a colonizer’s dream that Allie Fox will construct in his own terms, imposing his own values on others. Even though he pledges not to be authoritarian and just work for the original inhabitants of Jeronimo, their lack of education and total bemusement, as well as Allie’s own over-enthusiasm, befit his plans. This, of course, hardly constitutes an ideal democratic environment, which exposes the dubiously democratic politics contained within the frontier mythology when rampant individualism is let loose. As Ebert111 pointed out, “[Fox] wants to create a society in which men [sic] will be free, but free only in the way he thinks they should be free.” On one of the rare occasions that his wife (Helen Mirren) complains, he retorts, “I’m not doing anything to us. I’m our salvation. I rescued us.” As a result, Fox emerges as a dictatorial individual who would rather risk the lives of his wife and four young children, and those around them, than give up on his frontier dream. He is even capable of murder and arson in order to preserve his carefully constructed, patriarchal version of utopia. Fox exemplifies that, contrary to Reaganite mythology, the preservation of male individualism depends on the constant subjugation of those that depend on you. Had Fox undertaken this enterprise on his own, his tragic demise would perhaps have constituted a personal tragedy à la Heart of Darkness, but the presence of his family and the radical measures he takes to protect his “utopian” community inevitably change the spectator’s perspective. Allie Fox arrives at the jungle with the hope that his brilliant mind will help create “a superior civilisation; just the way America might have been.” Initially, Roger Ebert, “Review of The Mosquito Coast,” in The Chicago Sun-Times. Available at http:// rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19861219/REVIEWS/612190302/1023 (accessed June 25, 2008).

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he aims to improve the quality of life of his family and the inhabitants of his newly acquired land by generating ice from a temple-like refrigerating machine he has invented. As he likes to say, “ice is civilisation. That’s why I am here, that’s why I came.” Even though Allie means well, he considers himself a kind of savior with a mission that he did not manage to carry out in his homeland. Instead, by applying his many skills, and with the invaluable selfless help of those around him, he strives to save the underdeveloped but also incorrupt jungle from chronic poverty and deprivation, albeit always in his own terms. It is therefore ironic that his pioneering effort results in utter devastation and widespread pollution. Fox’s delusions of grandeur become apparent when, referring to his ingenious achievement, he declares “it’s the first time since Creation that ice has melted down here.” Yet, for all his eagerness and God-like creative impulse, Allie’s hyperactivity conceals a large degree of immaturity, since it reflects a constant need to be admired, perhaps idolized, by his family and others around him. On several occasions, he asks his doting older son Charlie (River Phoenix) “how am I doing, boy? Am I doing ok?,” always eliciting a positive response. This signals Allie’s need for attention, rather than approval, in order to continue with his colonial master plan. The fact that he calls his wife “Mother” is a further indication of his childish, arrested development, which is the source of his utterly insensitive, sometimes cruel, behavior toward his family. Even though he claims to have left his homeland behind to protect them from its corrupting effects, it becomes increasingly evident that Father is far too despotic to sacrifice himself for the sake of his family, whom he is unable to look after. It is for this reason that he fails both as a father and as a leader and, since he seems to be beyond redemption, the narrative presents his death as the only possible solution for this US Robinson family’s tragedy, the only way in which they can free themselves from their misguided patriarch and finally return to safety. The film ends on a rather somber note, as it suggests that individualism and leadership are an explosive combination that may easily lay bare the shortcomings of seemingly democratic systems, no matter how unsophisticated. Inasmuch as Ford’s persona had come to embody certain all-American values such as imperialism, the spirit of adventure, individualism, and leadership through his earlier work, the film constitutes a self-conscious attempt to deconstruct the meanings contained therein, and the adventure genre more generally, by exposing the hidden, “collateral damage” that is inflicted on those on the margins,

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that is, Fox’s family and the local population, who become displaced after their land and water become polluted because of Allie’s failed machinations. Hence, since The Mosquito Coast is set in a foreign land, such meanings may also be extrapolated and interpreted as a general critique of US foreign policy and its attempts to impose the democratic values of “the free world” on the foreign frontier. This kind of ideology, which is at the heart of US values, informed the “Manifest Destiny” of the pioneers in the nineteenth century and has continued to inform US foreign policy in general terms, and more specifically, the belief in the US “mission” to promote and defend democracy around the world. During the twentieth century, it was the international and space frontiers that needed to be tamed and subjugated. Ronald Reagan’s112 1984 State of the Union Address made it clear: “My fellow citizens, this nation is poised for greatness. […]. The Second American Revolution [is] a revolution that carries beyond our shores the golden promise of human freedom in a world at peace” (emphasis added). The current state of international affairs only attests to the prevalence and enduring negative effects of the Second American Revolution. Indeed, as Kord and Krimmer113 declare, “even today, the frontier and its crossing […] serve to justify modern conquests.” Brian Taves114 has amply discussed how this ideology, and what he calls “the American Experience” more generally, pervades the Hollywood genre of historical adventure: Adventure in the cinema deals primarily with liberty and overcoming oppression as a historical phenomenon. […]; the goal provides a reason for the sacrifice and the taking of life, the willingness to resort to warfare. […]. Adventure is important not only as a major Hollywood genre but also because it deals with the western world’s past attempts to broaden civilization and to develop responsible self-government in a political philosophy that reflects the American experience. Through the vehicle of adventure movies, Americans see aspects of their own development and national virtues reflected in the portrayals of other countries and their systems. Adventure becomes a metaphorical depiction of the American Revolution, casting the Ronald W. Reagan, “The Second American Revolution,” in W. H. Chafe and H. Sitkoff (eds), A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America (New York and Oxford, 1995 (1984)), p. 442. While Theroux’s novel was first published in 1982, the film version was released in 1986. 113 Kord and Krimmer, Contemporary Hollywood Masculinities, p. 62. 114 Taves, The Romance of Adventure, pp. 200–20. 112

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conflict’s essential issues in various times and places to indicate the timeless need for liberty and freedom.115

The Mosquito Coast, however, differs from the films that Taves analyzes in many significant ways, not least because it is not set in the historical past and because its protagonist displays none of the qualities that characterize the heroes in the classical genre, such as “[altruism], gentlemanliness, chivalry and honor,” or their capacity for social integration and moral regeneration.116 Still, the “American Experience” trope that Taves focuses on is clearly present and relevant in this contemporary narrative. Nevertheless, Weir’s rendition of the colonial experience, unlike most exemplars of the classical adventure genre, does not shy away from portraying its tremendously pernicious impact, which, in my view, is the film’s greatest asset. Certainly, The Mosquito Coast constitutes an anomalous chapter in Ford’s career, both financially and thematically, but it is also a good indication of the instability of the phenomenon of stardom, and of the important role played by audiences. Fans strive to close the gap between the star’s persona and the actual person by accessing information about the performer’s off-screen life. However, stardom is essentially a constructed phenomenon, which is why the “actual truth” about the star can never be fully ascertained. Nevertheless, because the whole phenomenon depends on the maintenance of “the lie” or “the façade,” it is unusual to find a performer who is willing to be frank about it. Referring to the relatively little biographical information circulating at the time, Ford117 stated: I’m thrilled that it seems to have sufficed so far. They’re old, well-worn tales and they keep me from having to go any deeper into any of this stuff. And they seem to serve the public with enough signposts of recognition that they think they know who they’re dealing with. And yet it’s not enough information so that they can decide that they absolutely know who they’re dealing with. I’m not one of those people who go around promoting mystery around themselves but on the other hand I’m not about to completely open myself out. Though those stories don’t finally represent what I think the experience has been like, I’m not willing to […] say: “this is the puzzle, no pieces are missing.” Ibid., pp. 13–14. Ibid., pp. xii; 12. 117 Quoted in Turan, “Harrison Ford.” 115 116

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Ford seems to be describing here his own fantasy of complete control over audiences’ responses to his star image. However, the fact that the public rejected Ford in a difficult role that the actor described as being very close to his heart suggests that Ford’s image, as perceived by his fans and the general public, had little to do with Ford’s perception of himself. Therefore, The Mosquito Coast provided clear evidence of the power that the audience has in privileging some meanings over others in star construction. It is as if, in the “star-as-professional” category, in which role continuity plays a key part, the audience had the upper hand. In a nutshell, Ford now “belonged” to them. In order for a performer not to alienate the mainstream audience, it is important that his or her trademark essentials are not excessively tampered with. For a popular performer who has always claimed to be a conscientious worker in “a service occupation,” this proved to be a powerful lesson to learn. As if trying to compensate for Allie Fox’s dreadful parenting skills, Ford chose to somehow revert to type and star in Roman Polanski’s Frantic as familyloving, prestigious heart surgeon Dr. Richard Walker, who travels to Paris to attend a conference and enjoy a second honeymoon, only to find his orderly world shattered by his wife’s mysterious disappearance. The surgeon’s initial confusion turns into a complete nightmare as a result of both the Parisian police detectives’ insensitiveness and the incompetence of US bureaucrats. Consequently, Dr. Walker is forced to rely on his own instinct and resources― as well as those of his young female helpmate Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner)― in order to find his wife. When the film was only a project, Walker did not have a definitive occupation, but Polanski chose to make him a respected surgeon as he felt this suited the eventual protagonist’s standing and personality.118 As a heart surgeon, Dr. Walker is meant to be meticulous in his work and very much in control of his actions, which certainly parallels Ford’s methodical personality, which sometimes borders on the obsessive. As Sellers119 points out, Polanski recognized this flaw in the Ford persona, his meticulousness, crankiness and coiled anger and exploited it. Walker is […] accustomed

Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 140. Sellers, Harrison Ford, p. 229.

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to functioning in an environment of minute detail, and is then dropped headfirst into a dangerous underworld of which he has no knowledge.

Ford managed to convey the surgeon’s disorientation in a city that, far from being portrayed as the romantic City of Lights, turns out to be dark and menacing for the “innocents abroad” the Walkers are meant to be. Dr. Walker may well be in command in his professional field, but since he is no largerthan-life Indiana Jones, he loses control and becomes “frantic” when he is not on his home turf. Hence, as far as character construction is concerned, Frantic and its unofficial detective hero are clearly indebted to the classical thriller, and Hitchcock120 in particular. Despite the broad differences that may be established with some of his earlier roles, Ford did not seem to be an entirely inappropriate casting choice given the star’s “average guy” credentials and associations with classical Hollywood acting and stardom. Dr. Richard Walker was the second husband/father role in Ford’s career, even though this part was dramatically different from Allie Fox. Unlike the latter, Walker is portrayed as mature and caring and although they share large doses of resourcefulness and mistrust of others, Walker is not the obstinate individualist Fox is. While the latter refuses to accept any form of external help, Walker is keen to seek help initially, although he fails to obtain it. Thus, the film presents the audience with a confused, indeed frantic, man who becomes a self-reliant hero despite himself. In many ways, Walker involved an important shift in Ford’s career as this particular part was the first in a string of popular roles in which Ford plays an ordinary family man who becomes enmeshed in dangerous circumstances that he did not create, only to find a hero inside himself. Ordinariness and authenticity have always a played key role in Ford’s public image. Seller’s121 words convey this idea quite adequately: Too much exposure to Hollywood make-believe and Ford urgently requires at least a six-month “fix” of real life. While some of us go to the movies

Frantic clearly recalls The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and North by Northwest (1959), two narratives featuring ordinary men that become heroes despite themselves. 121 Sellers, Harrison Ford, pp. 215–16. 120

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to escape from humdrum existences, Ford loves nothing better than temporarily abandoning the actuality of being a film star to become one of us, a faceless member of the public. The things we find so tedious about our lives Ford wallows in; those little household errands we try so desperately to avoid are what he most enjoys doing when not working: unblocking the sink, polishing his shoes, keeping a tidy sock drawer. The paradox is intriguing (emphasis added).

However, it should not be forgotten that Ford’s “ordinary,” yet very comfortable, existence is usually set against quite extraordinary natural surroundings. Moreover, in many of Ford’s films “ordinariness” involves nothing but a white, upper-middle class existence that would not be considered to be “average” by many people’s standards and is in stark contrast to Ford’s frequent claims to a “blue-collar” status. Hence, what is truly intriguing and paradoxical is that, when it comes to Ford’s persona, class is entirely taken out of the equation. This is one more contradictory aspect to add to Ford’s public image. Despite his obvious affluence and privilege, both on-screen and off-screen, he is “still the same as he ever was” and he is still “one of us.” In the actor’s122 own words, I would like to do what I’m doing for as long as I can make a living at it […]. But I need balance. I need to be in a situation where my every whim is not attended to, where I have to fetch my own nails, do my own shopping and wash my own dishes. Being normal is a kind of victory. The pleasure of life is that, however long it takes to make a movie, when it’s over, I’m back to reality. Back to the banal tasks where I belong.

For all the comforts his money and status might afford Ford and his family, his mystique has remained resolutely middle-class, working-class even, hence his crossover appeal. As Eimer123 contends, his continued popularity rests on his ability to embody “a vision of hard-working, all-American maleness.” In

Quoted in Rochelle L. Levy, “In his own words,” in American Film Institute (2000a). Available at http://www.afi.com/tvevents/laa/laasite/tribute.asp?lname=Ford&fname=Harrison&id=4426&file= In_His_Own_Words$H_Ford.txt (accessed February 5, 2008). Link no longer available. 123 David Eimer, “Harrison Ford. Actor,” Total Film 28 (1999), p. 28. 122

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this particular respect, Ford exemplifies quite accurately the democratic ideal of the American Dream as the tenacious “working actor” and carpenter who went on to become one of the most significant Hollywood stars of all times, almost despite himself. Apart from his “ordinariness,” what also characterizes Dr. Walker is a strong sense of moral responsibility. While Deckard’s moral reawakening and Book’s sense of duty had made important contributions to the construction of the actor’s persona in this particular respect, it was partly thanks to his character in Frantic that “family values” started to become an essential component in Harrison Ford’s unique trademark. In a conservative era when traditional moral/family values had become a “must have” and a central political issue, it is no wonder that these emerging associations had an enormous impact on Ford’s popularity and market value. What could provide a more potent image than the archetypal autonomous US hero excelling at being a father and a husband? As a true maker of myths, Ford managed the feat of making what had so far been considered a virtual impossibility appear manageable indeed. Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in True Lies (1994) had to lead a double life in order to keep his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) in the dark about his job as a secret agent. Yet many of Ford’s characters seem to be able to combine action heroics and family bliss in a way that had never been seen before. According to Stella Bruzzi,124 action heroes seldom make good fathers since, in her view, “action signals a representational dependence on the body, physicality and strength, all attributes that the father […] lacks.” Yet, as I have already argued, Harrison Ford’s brand of action heroism has not exactly been predicated on the display of powerful physical attributes. As a matter of fact, some of his earlier action roles, namely Indiana Jones and John Book, had already veered toward the paternal in certain ways. In addition, Ford has always attempted to maintain a safe distance from other action-adventure stars, whether by openly dismissing the “action man” label, choosing to work in different genres, or presenting himself as a gentle, nonviolent human being:

Stella Bruzzi, Bringing Up Daddy: Fatherhood and Masculinity in Post-War Hollywood (London, 2005), p. 132.

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There was a time when I worried about losing my anger, worried that losing that edge would hurt my work. But when I married Melissa, I found that it was such a pleasure not to be angry and not to have that bitterness running around my system […]. I don’t get crazy any more.125

As a result, Ford’s eventual transition during the late 1980s and the “caring” 1990s from independent national hero to responsible “father of the nation” proved to be smoother than for other action heroes, almost a natural process that inevitably comes about with maturity and signals healthy masculine normality. It is perhaps no accident that the filming of Frantic also coincided with the birth of Ford’s third son, Malcolm. Having recognized his failings as a young father, the actor was keen to get a second chance at parenting. Nevertheless, I would suggest that this transition was not without ambiguities. Even though Dr. Walker is portrayed as a responsible family man ready to take any risk in order to rescue his wife Sondra (Betty Buckley), one could argue that certain important elements of Ford’s earlier, well-established persona, such as a drive for independence and an ambivalent attitude toward commitment, are still discernible in Walker’s characterization as an unofficial detective hero searching for his wife in the dirty Parisian underworld of dark streets, neon lights, and garbage trucks. At the beginning of the film, Walker is portrayed as a man who is in many ways dependent on his homely, discreet wife. For example, she runs the doctor’s agenda and asks for his calls to be withheld when they arrive at their hotel. Moreover, unlike Sondra, Walker cannot speak French and does not know how to use the telephone to call home. Hence, while the doctor is meant to be extremely competent in his work, he seems rather helpless outside the professional arena. Therefore, when he is forced to act alone after Sondra’s disappearance he is utterly disorientated. While Ford’s uneasy performance reveals the doctor’s anguish accurately, the frequent awkward camera angles also manage to convey his dislocation. Polanski’s usual concerns—i.e., isolation, disorientation, and random violence—126are thus faithfully represented in

Pfeiffer and Lewis, The Films, p. 26. J. P. Telotte and John McCarty “Roman Polanski,” in filmreference.com (no date). Available at http:// www.filmreference.com/Directors-Pe-Ri/Polanski-Roman.html (accessed October 3, 2008).

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Frantic. On the other hand, Polanski’s self-conscious use of film noir tropes conveys Walker’s initial naiveté, which generates some moments of humor. As if guided by the conventions of the hard-boiled detective stereotype à la Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly (1955), which Frantic also seems to be indebted to, the doctor offers some money to the hotel concierge for his information, which he rejects. Later, he is easily knocked out by an Israeli agent, when he tries to threaten him and his mate, who are chasing after his helpmate Michelle. “Don’t mess with me. I am an American127 and I am crazy!,” he shouts. This signals Walker’s (initial) inability to live up to the ideal of tough male competence that detectives like Hammer stand for. Moreover, the use of noir lite continually keeps the protagonist “in the dark,” so to speak, which imbues the narrative with large doses of uncertainty and paranoia. As is typical of film noir, in its both classical and contemporary manifestations, (male) powerlessness, paranoia, and disorientation are recurring themes in Frantic. For instance, the film starts with a long traveling shot of the indistinctive Parisian banlieue. The West Indian taxi driver is listening to reggae music on the radio. The Walkers barely recognize Paris and, in fact, they could be approaching any city center in the industrialized world. On the other hand, Dr. Walker feels misunderstood and humiliated after the hotel staff, the police officers, and the US embassy officials all suggest that his wife might simply be having an affair with an old Parisian flame. His feelings of vulnerability, indeed emasculation at this stage, are thus exacerbated. It is after his manhood has been publicly questioned by the various ineffectual men in authority to whom he has turned for help that Walker decides to take on the task of finding his allegedly unfaithful wife himself, thereby proving his competence/masculinity to those (men) who have questioned it and, most importantly, to himself. In Frantic, masculinity is not presented as a given, but as having a volatile status that must be fought for and asserted. This was certainly a new development in Ford’s career, populated as it had been by such cool, though also imperfect, male icons as John Book, Rick Deckard, and

This comment is possibly an intertextual allusion to Marion’s equally ineffectual complaint “You can’t do this to me. I’m an American!” in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

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Figure 17  Although still unaware of it, Dr. Walker is holding the power of “the great whatsit” in his own hands. The same (phallic) visual metaphor will be replicated at the end of the film. Frantic (produced by Tim Hampton, Thom Mount, 1988).

Indiana Jones. It is perhaps not coincidental that a phallic Statue of Liberty holds “the great whatsit”128 that everybody is after (see Figure 17). This empowering fantasy works to turn victimized Walker into a mythical, suffering “Father Courage” figure, while also allowing Ford to retain and rework some of the most powerful aspects of his persona. Even though vulnerability and sensitiveness have always been essential ingredients of Ford’s trademark, never, with the partial exceptions of Hanover Street or even Star Wars, had any of his characters’ sense of manhood been so openly questioned and made fun of. Hence, it is through Walker’s powerlessness and desperation that the crisis of masculinity, even if it is finally overcome, becomes a new element to be taken into account when taking the Ford trademark into consideration. Walker’s over-dependence on his wife on certain matters may be read as an indication of his subordination to her, which can also be said to emasculate him. For this reason, Sondra’s disappearance has been read by critics such as Klein129 or Woodward130 as Dr. Walker’s wish-fulfillment fantasy, allowing the “The great whatsit” is how Velda (Maxine Cooper) refers to the nuclear artifact in Kiss Me Deadly, which in the context of this classic film stands for unbounded (phallic) power. 129 Klein, “The thinking man’s.” 130 Steven Woodward, “No safe place: Gender and space in Polanski’s recent films,” in M. Pomerance (ed.), Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls: Gender in Film at the End of the Twentieth Century (Albany, 2001). 128

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character to circumvent his anodyne existence and revert to an earlier stage of youthful rebellious adventure and sexual excitement unimpeded by the demands of marriage and commitment. Indeed, the dark, “exotic” Parisian locale would allow for the enactment of the character’s unconscious wishes. In addition, the fact that Walker falls asleep exactly when his wife is being kidnapped might also support this kind of reading.131 On the other hand, the publicity poster for the film was careful to stress the role that “danger, desperation [and forbidden] desire”—i.e., Michelle—play in Walker’s fantasy of male empowerment. Whether or not one chooses to accept this kind of psychoanalytic reading, the result is still the same: Walker’s search for his missing wife is also the search for his lost masculinity. On the publicity poster, Walker’s sensual, leather-clad helpmate is placed behind him and partially hidden by shadows. It is as if her existence was nebulous, a projection of Walker’s forbidden desire for excitement and adventure on a foreign land and a reminder of the passion he shared with his wife on their romantic honeymoon in Paris twenty years earlier. Thus, Michelle, a free spirit with a sensual voice, unbound sexuality, and a penchant for drugs, can be read as an extreme, younger doppelganger version of Sondra springing from Walker’s uninhibited id. Martin132 has written that Polanski considers film “the ideal medium for picturing what [the director] call[s] a ‘landscape of the mind’—a world of sensation in which we can no longer clearly distinguish external stimuli from internal imagination.” Frantic seems to fit this definition almost perfectly. As Woodward133 reminds us, the representation of illicit sexuality and forbidden desire is a recurrent theme in Polanski’s work (and biography).134 Michelle is a night owl who is at ease in the criminal Parisian underworld, unlike Walker, which is why he needs to rely on her. Walker becomes dependent According to Klein, this also suggests the existence of a dark element behind Ford’s everyman persona: “Ford’s performance suggests some of the same uneasy undercurrents that marked James Stewart’s character in [The Man Who Knew Too Much]. For all his concern over his wife, Ford’s Dr Walker is also enjoying himself. The film’s plot only really makes sense if we see it as the hero’s dreamlike wish fulfilment.” Klein, “The thinking man’s,” p. S-37. 132 Adrian Martin “Landscapes of the mind. The cinema of Roman Polanski,” in Senses of Cinema (2001). Available at http://web.archive.org/web/20010801173903/www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/15/ biff_polanski.html (accessed January 14, 2011). 133 Woodward, “No safe place,” p. 19. 134 In the context of Frantic, this kind of association becomes rather more disturbing as the script establishes an uncanny connection via the soundtrack between Michelle and Walker’s daughter, that is, another “younger version” of Sondra. As it happens, they both love to listen to Grace Jones’s song “I’ve Seen That Face Before.” 131

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on his companion not only for the resolution of the mystery of Sondra’s disappearance, but also for the restoration of his fragile sense of manhood. However, as the story develops, the attraction between them increases, a fact that the film hints at through various misunderstandings with other characters, though a full-fledged affair never actually materializes. Michelle is thus firmly placed within the realm of Walker’s manhood-affirming fantasy. While at a nightclub, Michelle, who is sporting a red mini-dress that leaves the top of her stockings visible, wants to attract the attention of the Arab terrorists who they are after by dancing seductively in front of the doctor. Such is the excess of her performance, which is also meant to seduce Walker himself, that he becomes openly embarrassed and anxious, unable as he is to contain her sexuality. This throws his already unstable masculine cool into further disarray. It is as if Walker’s transgressive dreamlike concoction was getting out of hand. His dreadful dancing skills and his desperate attempts to maintain a safe distance from Michelle border on the pathetic. Because Michelle/the phallic woman is uncontainable, she will need to be expended for narrative order to be restored by allowing the hero to regain control by reuniting with his wife. It is precisely after their conversation with the Arab agent at the club that Walker demands that the final exchange take place in his own terms. In his steadfast refusal to become victimized/emasculated as he tries to solve the mystery that the authorities should be solving instead, Dr. Walker becomes the archetypal everyman hero of Hollywood movies that Ford has often portrayed: just an average guy who refuses to give up when everybody else has and comes victorious in the end. In a post-modern era in which individual agency and decision power have been compromised, Ford has certainly specialized in playing unlikely heroes who surmount all kinds of obstacles against all odds. As has already been noted, Ford’s strength lies in his ability to humanize conventional heroics. Therefore, what makes him utterly compelling is the fact that, in Ford’s world, hope still remains that one can be master and commander of one’s destiny, despite the many hurdles in the way. As Leitch contends, within a cinematic tradition that has always been fascinated with violence, this allows the audience “to fulfil [their] fantasies of heroic retaliation against the forces of evil.”135 The fact that the typical Ford Leitch, Crime Films, p. 86.

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character tends to be able to do so without compromising his morality is one more powerful aspect of the star’s persona. Still, in spite of the happy ending that Frantic proposes, the narrative leaves sufficient clues that question the protagonist’s ability to remain in control, which constitutes one more ironic commentary of Ford’s by-then well-established trademark. As in Frantic, the average Ford character’s transition from everyman to hero usually takes place in a setting populated by ineffectual government officials or by-the-book police officers, which leads him to seek justice through his own unofficial (but still morally acceptable) means. The symbolic confrontation between the myopic authorities’ adherence to the rules, which is culturally coded as un-masculine, and the hero’s independence of action is often instrumental in the protagonist’s articulation of masculinity. In Frantic in particular, Dr. Walker’s instinct is eventually proved right and not only is he able to rescue his wife, but also the entire world from the threat of a nuclear attack at the hands of terrorists. However, as is typical of a Harrison Ford film, the hero’s imperfection is revealed as he fails to avoid his helpmate’s death. Despite the ambiguities that the narrative may have generated through Walker and Michelle’s pairing, the final moments of the film work not only to restore the doctor’s masculinity, but also to repress any potentially disquieting messages and safely return the doctor to his initial position as a devoted husband and father. Here, however, lies the film’s basic contradiction: while married life is meant to signify Walker’s emasculation, Sondra’s final rescue signifies the restoration of both the family unit and Walker’s sense of manhood. The prominent use throughout the film of the phallic image of the figurine of the Statue of Liberty, and of the statue’s replica in Paris, especially at the end of the film, suggests that, as the couple are reunited, Walker can once again lay claim to all-American manhood. As dawn approaches and the world of darkness is left behind, Sondra and “the great whatsit”―carried by Michelle―are finally interchanged. Once the Walkers are reunited, order is restored in their world and so is Dr. Walker’s sense of manhood. The gap in his family picture, which paradoxically stood for both Walker’s desire to transgress and his need to conform, has now been filled. Hence, whereas Sondra’s disappearance provides an “alibi” for Walker’s transgression of family values, her rescue firmly places Walker’s traditional sense of manhood within the same bounds. Thus, Michelle’s demise is also presented as necessary for the hero’s conventional masculinity to be fully

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recuperated, for she represents the unconscious desires that are incompatible with the values of married life and commitment. It is precisely at the end of the film that a direct connection between the two women, one representing convention, the other representing excitement and adventure, is established through the mise-en-scène, as both women seem to be wearing strikingly similar red dresses. With Michelle’s disappearance, Walker’s id subjects itself to the demands of the superego, or social propriety, represented by the return to a conventional married existence. In this particular respect, Dr. Richard Walker’s plight is not far removed from Professor Richard Wanley’s (Edward G. Robinson) in The Woman in the Window (1944), or George Bailey’s (James Stewart) in It’s a Wonderful Life and Mildred Pierce’s (Joan Crawford) in the eponymous 1945 film, which interestingly suggests that the frustrations that affect contemporary middle-aged men “in crisis” are comparable to those affecting both men and women in the past. In this sense, Frantic can certainly be described as “a melodrama of beset manhood,” as Nina Baym136 put it, in which the male protagonist triumphs in the end, but is forced to accept a return to his previous, conventional existence by his wife’s side. In Frantic, masculinity is regained even as the “emasculating” world of fatherhood and the family is affirmed. Through its final affirmation of Walker’s masculinity, the film partook in the trend for the “Restoration of the Father” that critics such as Robin Wood137 identified in certain 1980s films. However, one cannot help but wonder, given the traces left by the narrative and by Ford’s earlier powerful star persona, whether Dr. Walker’s (unconscious) desire for action, (sexual) excitement, and adventure have been entirely contained. While Peter Weir’s The Mosquito Coast staged the dramatic consequences of a man’s failure to reconcile family life and a strong desire for individual fulfillment, Roman Polanski’s Frantic presented the audience with a middle-aged man’s (unconscious) wish to find excitement away from, but ultimately within, a conventional married existence. The family was thus portrayed as both the problem and the solution to the protagonist’s plight. The representation of such conflicting desires ultimately suggested

Nina Baym, “Melodramas of beset manhood,” American Quarterly 33/2 (1981). Wood, “Papering the cracks.”

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an uneasy shift toward the possibility of marital commitment in Harrison Ford’s complex on-screen persona, a possibility that the actor’s return to more conventional, non-auteur-led Hollywood material during the 1990s would, at least on the surface, manage to dispel.

Working Girl: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life After several years of trying, Harrison Ford’s manager Patricia McQueeney finally managed to persuade him to accept a lead role in a romantic comedy, a genre that he had not been involved in before. As soon as Ford accepted the part, people in the industry started to wonder whether he would be up to the challenge. Yet Ford was keen to stress that he had done plenty of comedy before, and with great success, indeed. If, as discussed earlier, certain conventions of the romantic comedy had been displayed to great effect in Witness, their deployment was no less significant in both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies. Needless to say, none of those films can be considered to be full-fledged romantic comedies, since in them romance is invariably superseded by action and manly heroics. Nevertheless, Ford’s increasing association with a “post-feminist,” caring style of masculinity made it easier for him to star in a romantic narrative than for other contemporary stars associated with the action genre. The production process of Working Girl was not without problems. Sigourney Weaver complained openly about the difference in salary between the male lead and his two female co-leads, even though Ford’s contribution is restricted to the second part of the film. This controversy made two Hollywood mainstays evident. On the one hand, it confirmed female performers’ long-standing pay discrimination; on the other, it corroborated the massive investment that the Hollywood industry makes on A-list stars like Harrison Ford. Such performers are considered worthy of their salaries on the basis of their perceived ability to “open” a film successfully and insure it against failure. Sigourney Weaver―or rising star Melanie Griffith, for that matter―was clearly not perceived as an A-lister. The Hollywood Reporter’s critic Ray Bennet138 quoted Hollywood producers Loeck and Wilkinson on Bennet, “Tall, dark and bankable,” p. S-10.

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the enduring market value of “the people’s actor”: “He is one of those actors who has [sic] enormous public appeal and marquee value. There’s no question that he will do an enormous amount to open a film across generations and with both sexes. Harrison Ford sells.” Despite the fact that Ford’s previous two films had not been runaway successes, the film’s producers’ faith in their male star was confirmed by their decision to give Ford first billing in both the film’s credits and publicity posters although, clearly, he was not the main protagonist of the story. In fact, the Jack Trainer role, initially little more than a cameo, was rewritten and made more narratively prominent as soon as Ford became involved. Moreover, in order to take full advantage of the film’s main economic asset, the narrative self-consciously exploited the popularity of the star, and his sex-appeal in particular, by having various diegetic characters admire Ford’s attractive looks or remark on his “cuteness.” While Ford sympathized with Weaver’s complaints, he was also keen to stress the important burden that A-listers like him have to bear as far as the financial success of the projects that they are involved in is concerned. In an interview with Horkins,139 however, Ford expressed his awareness of the contingency of such a high-risk investment and of the crucial value of other elements in a film production: They think they have a better shot with me. That’s bullshit, anyway. There is some insurance for a film by hiring a movie star, but it’s wrong to think that you get anything more than an opening weekend. If it’s not a good movie, it doesn’t matter at all and it will be bad for the actor next time.

Working Girl, nevertheless, went on to become both a critical and a box-office success that propelled Ford into a new stage of his career in which his attitude to romance and intimacy appeared to be less fraught with ambiguity than in most of his earlier productions. As in Ford’s earlier film Frantic, the Statue of Liberty, this time the real one in New York, features prominently, though somewhat differently. The values that are traditionally ascribed to this national treasure are iconic symbols of US culture: freedom, democracy, and equal opportunities for all those arriving on New York’s shores. In short, the statue stands for the Quoted in Tony Horkins, “In conversation with Harrison Ford,” Empire 202 (April 2006), p. 138.

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US constitutional principles of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This upward-mobility theme is underscored by both Carly Simon’s Oscarwinning song “Let the River Run” and by the opening sequence on board the Staten Island ferry transporting various members of the working class to their (presumably) low-paid, dead-end jobs in Manhattan. The grim atmosphere aboard the overcrowded ferry recalls the hordes of immigrants arriving from Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, although the upbeat song provides a counterpoint that signals that there is still hope for everyone on the land of freedom and opportunity. The lyrics of the song, which was originally entitled “Wall Street Hymn,”140 are certainly a paean to both New York―or Manhattan in this case―and US foundational myths, skillfully recuperated by the existing Reaganite/Protestant socioeconomic philosophy. In other words, those who work hard at becoming wealthy, honorable members of a productive society, no matter what their origin or class, will inherit the earth. Nevertheless, the film focuses precisely on the problems that the invisible class barrier―the one that “does not exist” in a meritocratic society like the United States―poses to hardworking secretaries like Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith), the film’s main character. However, for all its initial insistence on class issues, the film was still “classed” by some141 as a “feminist fairytale,” which erases the notion of class in favor of the notion of gender. In other words, it is not so much a working-class girl as a girl (or a woman, rather) that eventually makes it in the world of high finance, which is certainly an all-male world, but also a very privileged, upper-middle-class one. It was rather fitting that a performer like Ford should have been cast to play the role of high-flying investment broker Jack Trainer, since the star can safely be said to personify the Horatio Alger story, as well as the value of hard work and perseverance by virtue of his own biography. In fact, the tagline of the film, “for anyone who’s ever won; for anyone who’s ever lost; for anyone who’s still in there trying,” might equally be applied to Ford’s beginnings in Hollywood. By the same token, the fact that Ford’s public image has also managed to remain devoid of (upper-) class connotations, as noted in the previous section, Information extracted from the film’s trivia section on IMDB. Available at http://www.imdb.com/ title/tt0096463/trivia (accessed March 13, 2010). 141 Sellers, Harrison Ford, p. 243; Jenkins, Harrison Ford, p. 258. 140

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eventually nullifies the class-conscious structure of the Wall Street world that his benevolent character represents, thereby placing the uncomfortable burden of class on both phoney aristocratic outcasts like Tess’s boss Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver) and the Staten Islanders who upwardly mobile Tess McGill is happy to leave behind. Within the context of the film, therefore, Ford’s role as Jack Trainer stands for, among other things, the values encapsulated within the ideology of the American Dream, which will certainly prove instrumental for Tess’s final triumph. In fact, Working Girl is very much the story of Tess, the striving thirty-yearold secretary who has been forever trying to get into the entry program for junior managers within her company, but has repeatedly failed to be accepted because of her class origins. As Nadel142 points out, Tess, like Ariel in The Little Mermaid (1989), wants to be “part of that world,” but her superior reminds her that it is impossible to compete with Ivy League graduates. He, the narrative makes clear, does not so much value Tess’s motivation and business talents as her physical ones. This leads to a sexual harassment incident, after which Tess resigns from her post and is given a last chance by the head of Human Resources in the Mergers and Acquisitions department headed by Katharine Parker, a tall, confident Ivy Leaguer who turns out to be as exploitative as Tess’s previous boss. Even though the character of Jack Trainer does not appear until the narrative is well underway, the events and the characters portrayed before provide the background against which Ford’s part should be interpreted. Analyzing the film pre-Trainer and after-Trainer, therefore, becomes equally important. From a structural perspective, the Trainer character can be analyzed by paying as much attention to what he stands for as to what he does not stand for. This is particularly relevant when Tess’s boyfriend Mick (Alec Baldwin) is considered. Moreover, an understanding of the character of Trainer’s partner, Katharine Parker, and her relationship with both Trainer and Tess, is equally important in order to grasp his style of masculinity. Indeed, the film presents the audience with two very different styles of femininity and Trainer’s final choice speaks volumes about the film’s discourse on both gender roles and gender relations.

Alan Nadel, Flatlining on the Field of Dreams. Cultural Narratives in the Films of President Reagan’s America (New Brunswick and London, 1997), p. 97.

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It is for this reason that in the analysis of this particular film I shall be putting strong emphasis on the film’s depiction of the two female protagonists, as well as their relationship to the male lead. As Kathleen Rowe143 has suggested, Working Girl provides a good indication of the fact that, as far as the depiction of women is concerned, the romantic melodrama and the romantic comedy are only inches apart: Romantic comedy usually contains a potential melodrama, and melodrama a potential romantic comedy. Melodrama depends on a belief in the possibility of a romantic comedy’s happy ending, a belief that heightens the pathos of its loss. Similarly, romantic comedy depends on the melodramatic threat that the lovers won’t get together and that the heroine will suffer the fate of becoming a spinster or of marrying the wrong man.

The first part of the film depicts both Tess’s struggle at work and her life by her current boyfriend’s side in a rather melodramatic manner. The barriers that both class and sex discrimination pose to Tess’s professional aspirations are illustrated during this section. Not only does Tess’s boss fail to appreciate her professionally, but life at home does not appear to be faring much better. Boyfriend Mick, who is unfaithful to Tess, resents her larger investment in work and further education than in himself. Like her boss, Mick seems to be more appreciative of Tess’s body than of her intellect and business talent. Thus, for her birthday, Mick gives Tess some kinky―and rather tacky―underwear that is meant to provide him, rather than her, with visual/sexual pleasure. Feeling objectified, like a “working girl” indeed, she complains “just once, I could go for a sweater or some earrings, a present that I could wear outside of this apartment.” We are certainly meant to remember this moment when, much later in the narrative, Jack gives Tess a new briefcase as a present. Trainer, unlike Mick, treats her with respect and as an equal. He values her personal and professional aspirations―even though it is her looks, not her business skills, that first attract him to her. In this context, life with Mick represents the melodramatic world of patriarchal domination and professional frustration. Tess’s complaint to Mick sums it up well: “I’m not steak; you can’t just order me!” By contrast, life with Trainer represents the utopian, fun, benevolent world of

Kathleen Rowe, The Unruly Woman. Gender and the Genres of Laughter (Austin, 1995), p. 110.

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the romantic comedy, in which the lovers are liberated from oppression and repression and allowed to grow as individuals and express themselves as they really are, even if it is through simulation and masquerade.144 Within what Deleyto145 terms “the space of romantic comedy,” both partners are equally free to fulfill their aspirations, whether romantic, professional, or both. With Jack, Tess can have her cake and eat it too. If Jack represents liberation for Tess, albeit within the bounds of heterosexual coupling, Katharine represents the brand of high-powered femininity that was becoming discredited at the time. Even though Tess initially idolizes Katharine because of her success, the film constantly ridicules this backlash female stereotype through several mechanisms. Even before Katharine’s deceitfulness becomes evident to Tess, the narrative has left sufficient clues for the audience to suspect her friendly attitude toward Tess. In a scene comically replicated in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Katharine’s cold authoritarianism is revealed as she walks into her department. As soon as she makes her entry, the team of secretaries rush to their posts and pretend to be concentrating on their work. Sigourney Weaver’s image as a smart, powerful woman of patrician origins with an Ivy League education and an imposing height certainly suits her comically exaggerated portrayal of the larger-than-life boss-from-hell Katharine Parker.146 Even though she tells Tess that their relationship is going to be “a two-way street” mentorship, it is made clear from the start that power dynamics dominate this relationship. As Katharine reminds busy Tess at the party the latter has organized for her, “you can’t busy the quarterback with passing out the Gatorade.” These moments serve to alert the audience toward both Katharine’s snobbish superiority and Tess’s naïve faith in her alleged mentor. In an upwardly mobile fantasy like Working Girl, the audience is meant to side with the hard-working members of society like Tess, whose right to self-improvement and social advance is marred by members of the upper class such as Katharine, whose unfair privilege springs from inheritance For a cynical reading of simulation narratives within the genre of romantic comedy, see Frank Krutnik, “Conforming passions? Contemporary romantic comedy,” in S. Neale (ed.), Genre and Contemporary Hollywood (London, 2002). 145 Celestino Deleyto, The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy (Manchester, 2010). 146 For an account of Weaver’s star persona, see Linda Ruth Williams, “Sigourney Weaver,” in L. R. Williams and M. Hammond (eds), Contemporary American Cinema (Maidenhead, 2006), pp.  308–10 and Chris Holmlund, “Sigourney Weaver: Woman warrior, working girl,” in R. Eberwein (ed.), Acting for America. Movie Stars of the 1980s (New Brunswick and London, 2010). 144

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and lineage, rather than the ethics of hard work, democracy, and individual value that Tess symbolizes. While Mick stood for the pressures of sexism and patriarchal repression, Katharine does much the same in the name of class discrimination. Despite his hypothetical capacity to do so, Trainer, on the other hand, refuses to claim either of those prerogatives in his relationship with Tess, with whom he forms a perfectly balanced team. As a result of his non-classist, non-sexist standing, Trainer emerges as a male model for the “post-feminist” era of equal opportunities, that is, a New Man. Katharine also happens to be Jack Trainer’s current partner, but his lack of aristocratic manners and his initial lack of self-confidence clearly distance him from her. Indeed, the narrative presents Trainer as a humble man of principles who prides himself on never having cheated to get ahead in his business career. Even though Jack has apparently been thinking about breaking up with Katharine, she has very different plans for the future of what she calls their “partnership.” She has organized a romantic skiing weekend in Europe as she is convinced that Jack is going to “pop the question.” However, Katharine’s wording of the situation indicates that she, like Miss Swallow (Virginia Walker) in Bringing Up Baby (1938), is unable to draw a line between work and intimacy, business and romance, which suggests that their marriage would be based on (Katharine’s) convenience, rather than mutual love. Marriage to Jack Trainer is just another item to tick in Katharine’s busy agenda. In other words, their merger, as Katharine puts it, is bound to fail as it is based on self-interest, rather than romantic love and mutual consent: Tess: What if he doesn’t … pop the question? Katharine: I really don’t think that’s a variable. We’re in the same city now, I’ve indicated that I’m receptive to an offer, I’ve cleared the month of June … and I am, after all, me.

This is not the only evidence that the film provides of the fact that Katharine and Jack are not meant for each other. The film draws on Weaver’s star persona in a very self-conscious manner to construct its particular version of Jack Trainer’s “wrong partner.” Katharine’s “wrong” or phallic femininity is portrayed in a stereotyped fashion, focusing on unfeminine aspects that made Weaver an unlikely action star in the Alien series, but seem to be out of place within the egalitarian, benevolent world of the romantic comedy. As

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mentioned above, Katharine’s excessive investment in work and the public sphere makes her unable to separate the private and the public arenas. Hence, she is unfit to sustain an intimate relationship away from the masculinized world of work. In addition, she treats Trainer like an employee, constantly bossing him around and telling him to “shut up” in front of other people, thereby publicly compromising his manhood. Trainer, for his part, is out of place within the business scene. On the night when he meets Tess at a business function in which she is impersonating Katharine, he refuses to talk about “mergers and acquisitions,” which he finds extremely boring. Unlike Katharine, Trainer is keen to separate the public from the private. During the business function, Jack, who is actually pretending not to be himself, just as Tess is pretending to be someone else, insists they should meet like straightforward, ordinary people: “No names, no business cards, no you must know so and so, no résumés. Let’s just meet like human beings.” This implies a critique of the pretense of the contemporary business world, where successful deal-making seems to depend more on the ability to put on a façade than in the old-fashioned values of integrity, hard work, and perseverance that both Tess and Trainer―and Ford himself― stand for. Even though through her impersonation of a top business executive Tess would appear to be as deceitful as Katharine is treacherous, the narrative portrays the latter’s pretense as predatory and exploitative, whereas Tess’s is liberating and leads to both her own emancipation and Trainer’s professional salvation. As Tess says: “I’m not gonna spend the rest of my life working my ass off and getting nowhere just because I followed rules that I had nothing to do with setting up, OK?” In other words, in Tess’s case, the end justifies the means, whereas in Katharine’s case, it leads to her downfall. As Trainer delivers his final Solomonic judgment, poetic justice is achieved by stressing Tess’s mischievous innocence over and above Katharine’s manipulation. Trainer’s characterization therefore establishes a clear gap between himself and the sleazy business sharks populating Wall Street or Katharine’s parties. When two of his colleagues suggest trying hard tactics on a rival company, he dismisses them with a bored “yeah, yeah! Anybody thirsty?” Trainer could be described as a fair, once-very successful businessman with a few recent failures in his portfolio that is getting more and more disillusioned with contemporary business ethics. In a broad sense, Trainer would be to

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1980s’ deregulated Wall Street what Mr. Smith was to Washington in Capra’s classic film (1939). Not only does he dismiss his colleagues’ callous proposal, but, despite the personal risks involved, it is also thanks to his scrupulous, Solomonic intervention that the film’s master plan is finally shown to be Tess’s brainchild, which vindicates the heroine, while precipitating her rival’s downfall. Unlike Katharine, Tess looks up to Jack. For her, he is “an ace […], the best,” the only one who can help her put the dream business deal together, which can only boost Jack’s failing male ego. From a broad business perspective, it seems as if Trainer, the male mentor, is as necessary to close the deal as Ford, the male star, is to secure the success of the film. On the evidence provided by the film, one could argue that Trainer’s professional crisis has also resulted from a more personal one. As a divorced man involved in an unsatisfactory relationship with a domineering woman, his predicament seems to be magically resolved through his soothing involvement with an ambitious yet gentle woman who is willing and able to cherish him and restore his male self-esteem while also securing herself a rewarding business deal. In this sense, Trainer/Ford is the very opposite of Michael Douglas, whose fictional characters’ penchant for masochistic liaisons with powerful women became proverbial during the 1990s. As noted at the beginning of this section, it is through Trainer’s final choice of business and romantic partner that the film’s stance on gender relations becomes apparent. In fact, the contrasting portrayal of the two women in Trainer’s life is heavily predicated on their differing brands of femininity. Even though blonde Tess is professionally ambitious, she is also meant to be playfully innocent and unthreatening (to men). This is in stark contrast with dark-haired Katharine’s representation of manipulative, aggressive femininity―or female masculinity. It is significant that the first thing Trainer notices when he sees Tess for the first time is her legs. Within Hollywood cinema, film noir has provided ample evidence that women’s legs are a symbol of sexuality and desirability, and Working Girl seems to take its cue from this cinematic tradition, only to invert it. In its biased and polarized view of good/bad, light/ dark, real/fake, accommodating/threatening femininity, the film, like film noir, places a heavy burden on women’s bodies, and especially their legs, for the representation of its appropriate version of femininity and desirability.

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There is a particularly striking example at the beginning of the film. As the two women converse in Katharine’s office, the camera is positioned in such a way that Tess’s thoroughly feminine legs are in the foreground, whereas Katharine’s thoroughly unfeminine―read undesirable―nature is stressed by means of the hard, rigid skiing boots that she is wearing. As the two women are wearing similar clothes, the contrast between Tess’s implied softness and Katharine’s phallic rigidity becomes even more evident.147 Tess and Katharine’s contrasting portrayals, together with their sexual connotations, also caused Tess/Melanie Griffith to be compared to characters in fairy tales and, significantly, to Marilyn Monroe, the epitome of unthreatening sexuality in classical Hollywood.148 Reviewers149 remarked on such features as Griffith’s high-pitched, breathy delivery, reminiscent of Monroe’s, as well as her evocation of childlike innocence and purity, despite the heavy emphasis that the film places on her naked body.150 Just as Monroe represented healthy, harmless female sexuality during the 1950s as a counterpoint to the threatening sexuality of the femme fatale of film noir, so does Tess represent the ideal “postfeminist”―but also pre-feminist―dream of a working girl, as opposed to the castrating female characters, such as “bony ass” Katharine Parker, that the Hollywood backlash of the 1980s often fabricated. Even though Tess represents traditional notions of femininity à la Marilyn Monroe, she adamantly refuses to give up her rights in the professional arena. In this sense, she can in fact be considered to be an early precursor of the contemporary “post-feminist”

This visual metaphor will be further underscored on another two occasions. After her skiing accident, Katharine has her leg plastered, which reinforces the notion of rigidity. Later on, she will have to wear clutches, another indication of her excessive, phallic nature. Tess’s legs by contrast will feature prominently, excessively even, on several more occasions. 148 For an extensive reading of “Monroe and sexuality,” see Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies (New York, 1986), pp. 19–66. 149 Desson Howe “Review of Working Girl,” in The Washington Post (1988). Available at http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/workinggirlrhowe_a0b1d6.htm (accessed October 31, 2011); Rita Kempley (1988), “Review of Working Girl,” in The Washington Post. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/workinggirlrkempley_a0c9d9. htm (accessed October 31, 2011). 150 A particularly interesting instance of the excessive display of Tess’s body takes place when she is portrayed vacuuming Katharine’s flat almost completely naked for no other apparent reason than providing the (male) spectator with visual pleasure. It is as if her nakedness or vulnerability, and the fact that she is performing housework, is meant to assuage male anxieties about female socioeconomic emancipation. Perhaps in order to compensate for its excessive representation of the female body, the film also offers Jack Trainer’s own moment of semi-nakedness, when he changes his shirt in front of an appreciative female audience. 147

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ideology.151 At some point in their conversation, Tess seductively tells Trainer, “I have a mind for business and a bod for sin, is there anything wrong with that?,” which leaves him almost speechless. As if trying to neutralize the Monroe or dumb blonde stereotype, the narrative tries to emphasize both sides of Tess’s personality, her intelligence, and her sexiness. However, rather than her intelligence, what initially mesmerizes Trainer is Tess’s Monroesque presence and her sexual allure, which he does not seem to find among the other professional women that he works with. As a compliment on her arresting femininity, he tells her: Jack: You’re the first woman I’ve seen at one of these damn things that dresses like a woman, not like a woman thinks a man would dress if he was a woman […]. I’m sure you’re an ace at whatever it is that you do do. But how you look! Tess: Thank you, I guess.

As mentioned above, as a man in crisis, Trainer’s preference for smart but accommodating, sexy women like Tess, over and above emasculating women like Katharine, suggests his fear of being dominated by a powerful female. This particular characteristic of Jack Trainer’s character would establish a common link between Working Girl and some of Ford’s earlier films, in which his characters’ relationship to powerful, independent women―say, Princess Leia, Marion in Raiders, or Michelle in Frantic―was often problematic because they compromised the hero’s sense of manhood. Life with Tess, on the other hand, is all sweetness and light and uncomplicated fun, just as life with Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) might have been for Isaac (Woody Allen) in Manhattan (1979). And just as Ford has often been described as a throwback to the stars of yesteryear, in terms of both his performance style and his representation of “genuine” masculinity, so has his liaison with Tess/Griffith in Working Girl been likened to classical Hollywood romances. While the film’s evocation of classical screwball comedies is manifest, its updating of old-fashioned, straightforward romanticism is no less evident. As Kempley152 put it, By “post-Feminism” I understand the ideology that renounces feminist activism, while incorporating the social goals that the feminist movement has brought about―equal opportunities, divorce and reproductive rights, and so on. In other words, post-feminism incorporates, and takes for granted, the goals that feminism still declares to be provisional. 152 Kempley, “Working Girl.” 151

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Working Girl has a heady 1940s atmosphere. […]. Ford and Griffith seem to enjoy each other’s company as they tear into the first-ever sexy scene involving briefcases. It’s a tastefully torrid moment with an old-fashioned coda: an urgent kiss that triggers the high-heel reflex.

Despite its obvious display of the female body, Working Girl initially figures the lovers’ sexual compatibility through an evocation of the kind of decorous displacement typical of classical Hollywood screwball comedies, such as It Happened One Night (1934) or Bringing Up Baby. Unbeknownst to Jack, the pair gate-crash a wedding party in order to secure a meeting with Oren Trask (Philip Bosco), the business mogul who is meant to benefit from Tess’s master plan. Although at first Trainer is deeply embarrassed, he soon joins the masquerade, which turns out to be a great success, not least because he becomes the source of many a female guest’s visual pleasure, including the one he invites to dance so that Tess can flirt―and “negotiate” a meeting― with Trask. During this crucial screwball sequence, the film self-consciously exploits Ford’s credentials as a reluctant sex symbol for comic effect, as Trainer learns to make use of his most flirtatious self. As a result of this novel business experience, for which Trainer needs to get drunk first, he feels exhilarated, aroused even: “it was great. I had fun, and you were brilliant.” As Neale153 has suggested, in romantic comedy the moments of play shared by the emerging couple signal their compatibility and, in this case, are meant to contrast with Jack’s refusal to join Katharine for a romantic weekend at the beginning of the film. In addition, they also serve to place the two lovers on an equal footing as far as the completion of the business deal (and by extension, their romantic partnership) is concerned. If Jack has the business acumen and contacts, so does Tess have the drive and spirited imagination that he lacks. Hence, the democratic ideal that the film espouses crystallizes around the emerging cross-class couple. Nevertheless, Working Girl seems to depart from classical, and even contemporary, representations of the mating game by allowing the two lovers to engage in full sexual intercourse before the story is over. Preston154

Steve Neale, “The big romance or something wild? Romantic comedy today,” Screen 33/3 (1992). Catherine L. Preston, “Hanging on a star: The resurrection of the romance film in the 1990s,” in W. W. Dixon (ed.), Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays (Albany, 2000).

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has argued that although sexual attraction is certainly a structural feature in romantic comedies, the representation of actual sexual encounters was not so frequent in mainstream romantic comedies of the late 1980s and 1990s. While Preston does not mention Working Girl as an exception to this broad generic convention, she qualifies her argument by mentioning other notable mainstream exceptions such as Pretty Woman (1990) (where sex is a narrative necessity) and When Harry Met Sally (1989). All in all, however, contemporary mainstream romantic comedy seems to have remained fairly “chaste” as a genre.155 Be that as it may, the moments of sexual intimacy shared by Trainer and Tess also serve to foreground Jack’s―and Ford’s, by extension―sensitive, New Man nature. As they lie in bed post-coital, Tess asks Jack where he got the scar in his chin. Trainer adopts a stereotypically macho stance and responds that it was the result of a fight. Yet he does not sustain the masquerade and confesses that the situation was rather more mundane. He was having his ear pierced by his girlfriend when he fainted and hit himself on the toilet.156 While this “confession” provides another measure of Trainer’s honest credentials, it also comes about in a moment of sheer intimacy, in which the hero’s true self—i.e., his ordinariness and new-man vulnerability—is revealed. Yet Trainer’s “coming out” moment, during which he also confesses that he is still Katharine’s partner, is not matched by Tess’s, which, as Krutnik157 suggests, puts the ideal status of their relationship within inverted commas. Tess’s inability to “come out” and confess her true identity to Jack betrays both her intense desire to meet her business objectives and her lack of faith in the future of their cross-class relationship. Later on, however, and just as the business deal is about to be completed, Katharine reveals Tess’s true identity, much to her embarrassment and everyone else’s. Despite the initial confusion, during which Trainer turns his back on Tess lest the deal falls through, he is finally able to see through Katharine’s imposture, and it is thanks to his wise intervention and almost godlike prerogative to pass judgment on Katharine that Tess is finally vindicated. The impossible magic of romantic comedy finally drives Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre (London, 2007), p. 97. The famous scar was the result of a car crash in the 1970s, in which Ford hit a streetlight on his way to work. The “plain truth,” therefore, reinforces neither his sensitivity nor his toughness. 157 Frank Krutnik, “Love lies: Romantic fabrication in contemporary romantic comedy,” in P. W. Evans and C. Deleyto (eds), Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1980s and 1990s (Edinburgh, 1998). 155 156

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out the possibility of a melodramatic ending via Trainer’s deus ex machina intervention, thanks to which Cinderella emerges from her ashes. The fact that Trainer is willing to sacrifice his stake in the deal in order to save Tess is a sign of his love, but also of his infinite, almost mythical, decency, which is entirely reminiscent of John Book’s in Witness. On the other hand, it also signifies Tess’s final dependence on the timely intervention of the man the narrative has presented as her mentor, despite his professional flaws. This final repositioning destabilizes the balance that the narrative had so far carefully constructed. Yet this is not the only way in which the narrative compromises the egalitarian nature of the newly created couple as throughout the film, Tess has been subjected to what could be described as a process of infantilization. Her aforementioned playful idiosyncrasy is only one of the various devices that the narrative employs in order to do so. Although Neale158 has argued that the infantilization of the lovers is a mainstay of the genre, Working Girl seems to place a higher emphasis on Tess’s childlike qualities than on Trainer’s, which are only temporarily induced by the situation in which she has placed him. Tess may already be in her thirties but her behavior and performance can often be accurately described as childlike: she often bites her lip nervously, sticks her tongue out at Katharine, and of course enjoys playful charades. Tess’s infantilization also comes about narratively. At some point, Trainer warns Tess that she “needs him” in order to close the business deal they have started to put together. This implies that, despite her intelligence and initiative, she is still in need of mentorship, which she acknowledges ―notice the symbolic connotations of Jack’s surname. In addition, her impersonatory skills, which, as Tasker159 suggests, would put Griffith’s own mother’s in Marnie (1964) to shame, are this time rendered as innocent and devoid of neurosis. On the other hand, during the meeting in which the deal is going to be closed, business mogul Oren Trask tells an anecdote about a little girl’s brilliant solution to a traffic problem, and he compares Tess’s achievement and imaginative approach to business to the girl’s practical solution. However, perhaps the definitive sign of her infantilization comes about at the end of the film. Jack and Tess have now moved in together and are sharing a hasty breakfast. While Tess is busy Neale, “The big romance,” p. 299. Yvonne Tasker, Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema (London and New York, 1998), p. 42.

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getting ready for her first day at her new workplace, Jack has prepared her a school lunchbox complete with milk money, Twinkies, pencil, and ruler. As they say goodbye to each other, he asks her to be a good girl, play nice with the other kids, and make sure that she is home before dark. Even though Trainer’s caring disposition toward his partner conforms to Ford’s overall public image as a new man for a new era, the end result is still the same. All these prominent narrative features, together with the heavy investment the film places on the portrayal of Tess’s vulnerable body and accommodating nature, suggest that, despite the film’s happy ending, Tess and Trainer may not necessarily be on a par after all. As a popular episode within the Hollywood backlash against feminism, Working Girl offers a post-feminist resolution providing a certain measure of vicarious pleasure to women seeking to find space and consolidate their position within the professional arena, while also assuaging male anxieties about actual female empowerment and emancipation. Thanks to this popular role, Ford was able to reinforce his star power within the Hollywood industry, which had become somewhat tarnished as a result of the economic failure of his two previous films. As far as his star persona is concerned, the role reinvigorated Ford’s close associations with morality, while also reinforcing notions such as democracy, equal opportunities, and other traditional US values. Meanwhile, the character’s new-man features also foregrounded the sensitive elements that had already become evident in earlier roles. Most important, Trainer initiated a trend in Ford’s career in which his drive for independence, which had proven so problematic in films such as Blade Runner, The Mosquito Coast, or Frantic, gave way to a more positive, hasslefree attitude toward romantic love and commitment, which would be generally sustained during the 1990s, though, once again, not without contradictions. While Frantic’s uneasy stand toward commitment was revealed through its ambivalent positioning of the family as both the problem and the solution to the male crisis, Working Girl, a romantic comedy after all, embraced romantic love and commitment wholeheartedly, albeit to the right kind of woman, as the answer to the hero’s predicament. Without leaving his powerful action hero persona aside, the actor managed to sustain his increasing associations with family values during the 1990s, a decade during which the actor impersonated fathers and/or husbands in a variety of films belonging to different genres, which the next chapter of this book will analyze in detail.

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Harrison Ford, Hollywood’s Favorite Father Presumed Innocent: Is This Man as Innocent as He Looks? In High Concept Justin Wyatt1 claims that Hollywood stars create an excess of meaning in the narratives they participate in. Since their personas often represent types, the connotations attached to them threaten to supersede the meanings of the narrative itself. In his own words, Star persona [limits] the boundaries between which a character may be defined. […] This emphasis often overwhelms the character being portrayed so that the character is identified more strongly with the star than as an integral part of a unique story.

It is my contention that in the particular case of Alan J. Pakula’s neo-noir Presumed Innocent, Harrison Ford’s powerful heroic persona clashed with the film’s narrative development in such a remarkable way that most readings of the film failed to appreciate the ambiguous implications of Pakula’s film and, consequently, their impact on Ford’s developing persona. This section, therefore, aims to read the character of District Attorney Rusty Sabich against the grain of Ford’s persona but also against the background of film noir. Thus, replicating the headline in the October 1990 issue of US People Magazine I ask myself, “Is this man as innocent as he looks?” Presumed Innocent, based on Scott Turow’s 1987 bestseller, was the first film to star Harrison Ford in the 1990s. It took a while for Ford to accept the role as Rusty Sabich was a morally ambiguous anti-hero at best. Following the poor box-office results of Blade Runner, Frantic, and The Mosquito Coast, Ford’s collaborators warned him against accepting the challenging role Justin Wyatt, High Concept. Movies and Marketing in Hollywood (Austin, 2006 (1994)), p. 54.

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of a flawed married attorney who is accused of raping and murdering his ex-lover. Ford accepted the role as he was keen to push his own limits as an actor by playing yet another morally ambiguous role in a film that does not fully reveal his degree of involvement in the murder until the very last moment. As for the lack of action sequences, the actor did not regard this as a barrier, but as a renewed opportunity to vindicate himself as a performer with a broad acting range. Indeed, Presumed Innocent earned the actor wide praise for his performance, despite the fact that Ford’s role in the movie, especially as the murder trial gets underway, is often reduced to the level of a passive bystander. Several contemporary reviewers2 noted that the actor had made a clear point of underplaying and reacting quietly by repressing his emotions through body language in the various difficult situations in which the character was placed. Although broadly similar to his performance in Witness, this subdued acting style certainly added a significant new angle to Ford’s range. The actor, nonetheless, strove to vindicate the significance of this non-action part: “listening is never nothing […]. Listening is an active activity,”3 thereby papering over any possible contradictions in his established action-man credentials. Yet accustomed as we are to seeing Ford play the brash, confident hero in his most popular films, this “unnatural” self-effacing performance style effectively highlights the repression that Rusty Sabich, who we feel might explode at any moment, is subjected to. Indeed, Ford’s low-key performance suggests at times that self-effacingness may be the conscious result of self-repression, a key element in Presumed Innocent to which I will turn later on in this analysis. On the evidence of what has been discussed in previous chapters, Ford seemed to share with the character of Rusty Sabich an utter, and thoroughly manly, lack of narcissism or interest in physical appearance.4 It was actually Ford’s idea to get an unglamorous haircut in order to enhance this side of Sabich’s personality, much to Pakula’s chagrin. The “uproar” that the infamous Roger Ebert, “Review of Presumed Innocent,” in Rogerebert.com (1990). Available at http://www. rogerebert.com/reviews/presumed-innocent-1990 (accessed June 5, 2008); John Pym, “A lawyer’s tale: Presumed Innocent,” Sight and Sound 59/4 (April 1990), p. 279. 3 Quoted in Brad Duke, Harrison Ford: The Films (Jefferson and London, 2005), p. 165. 4 In an interview with Horkins, Ford bluntly confirmed his apparent lack of narcissism: “I would love to be bald. I love what it looks like. You don’t have to fuck with hair. I hate hairdressing” (Tony Horkins, “In conversation with Harrison Ford,” Empire 202 (April 2006), p. 138). 2

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haircut created prompted Ford, forever the reluctant star, to complain about his by-now virtual lack of control over his own image: Nearly every article and review had some reference to my haircut. […] I guess I finally began to understand that people felt they owned me, in a way. I understand this is a service occupation [but] my occupation is assistant storyteller. It is not icon. And they were saying “this is not what we want our icon to look like” (emphasis in the original).5

As was the case with the unpopular The Mosquito Coast, the power that both critics and the audience are able to exert over a star’s public image, especially  one considered to be attractive, was demonstrated. For certain “stars-as-performers,” it is acceptable to make themselves look less attractive or glamorous in order to enhance their Method-influenced characterizations, but this seemingly banal haircut proved to be a serious problem for Ford. Two of the main reasons why Ford was cast for the Sabich role were his popular everyman persona and his by-now established associations with traditional morality and decency―despite his various incursions into “the dark side” through the various problematic, albeit less popular, roles analyzed in previous sections. Pakula,6 however, was keen to capitalize on both sides of Ford’s persona through the ambiguous characterization of Rusty Sabich: Someone asked me who I wanted for Rusty and I had no idea. Maybe Henry Fonda as he was forty years ago, because he had that decency, and he looked like the average American, and yet you felt like there was something dark and repressed (emphasis added).

Given Fonda’s “unavailability,” Pakula went on to cast “the only modern leading man who could present the same qualities, [including] an aura of repressed rage,”7 that is, Harrison Ford. In order for the story to create the intended suspense, it was important to cast a performer who the audience could sympathize with, while also allowing for the possibility that he might be guilty after all. Ford’s undemonstrative acting style was therefore suitable for a character that must be credible as both a killer and an innocent man. Once again, Ford’s ability to Quoted in Lee Pfeiffer and Michael Lewis, The Films of Harrison Ford (second edition) (New York, 1999 (1996)), p. 188. 6 Quoted in Garry Jenkins, Harrison Ford: Imperfect Hero (New York, 1998 (1997)), p. 279. 7 Ibid., pp. 279; 281. 5

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reconcile incompatible aspects, à la Henry Fonda, was being invoked. Yet the dark side of Ford’s persona has rarely been foregrounded. Already unearthed in previous chapters of this book, it is this dimension of Ford’s involvement that this section will pay special attention to. By focusing on this, I hope to highlight nuances in both Ford’s complex persona and performance that, despite the star’s best efforts, have largely been ignored throughout his career in favor of the more palatable, mainstream ones that were forged during his successful incursions into the family adventure genre. While this kind of analysis allows for the actual complexity of the star to stand out, it certainly means reading against the grain of Ford’s mainstream persona. As already mentioned, Ford was chosen for the role partly because of his average-guy credentials. The typicality of the character was highlighted in order to arouse the audience’s sympathy from the start despite the part’s many ambiguities, which constantly hint at the possibility that Sabich “did it.” As a result, large amounts of narrative tension are generated through the contrast established between the mounting evidence presented against Sabich and his characterization as a vulnerable, ordinary victim who seems incapable of murder. Despite the fact that Ford’s star persona as a clean-cut, all-American guy would seemingly rule out Sabich’s guilt, the narrative constantly toys with the possibility that he might have murdered his lover. Even though all the knots seem to have been tied by the end of the narrative thanks to Rusty’s acquittal and his wife Barbara’s (Bonnie Bedelia) confession, the plot’s ambiguities and the film’s careful use of mise-en-scène leave the door open for various interpretations. Thomson8 has argued, following Carol Clover, that in many a Hollywood courtroom drama the audience is implicitly invited to decipher the crime along with the diegetic investigator, a strategy maximized through camera movement in the opening and closing sequences of Presumed Innocent, which present a dark, empty jury box resembling an empty cinema auditorium. As Clover9 states: It is as if we are being ushered into that empty courtroom, directed to those empty chairs, and sworn in. […]. At no time during the film’s two hours do we catch so much as a glimpse of the jury actually trying the case― Kirsten Moana Thompson, Crime Films: Investigating the Scene (London, 2007), p. 85. Carol J. Clover, “Judging audiences: The case of the trial movie,” in C. Gledhill and L. Williams (eds), Reinventing Film Studies (London, 2000), p. 250.

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an omission all the more striking in light of the attention lavished on the empty seats in the beginning and again at the end. The point could hardly be clearer: we are it.

As a result, we inevitably become “viewers with a job to do,”10 and, as spectatorship theory claims, the fact that spectators come from different backgrounds, share different interests, and have various degrees of cinematic knowledge and insight will necessarily give rise to a range of differing interpretations, including, for the purposes of this analysis, those against the grain of the film’s proposed ending and Ford’s mainstream star persona. Ford’s character is an assistant district attorney who is assigned to the investigation of the rape and murder of his former lover, Carolyn Polhemus (Greta Scacchi), an ambitious woman who did not hesitate to use her powers of seduction to meet her professional objectives, only to find himself accused of her murder. Clearly, Polhemus is an updated version of the sexualized femme fatale of film noir, who is able to manipulate the various men in her life, crucially Rusty Sabich, a seemingly upstanding family man.11 However, like the fatal women of the past, Carolyn is punished/ murdered for her transgression of patriarchal norms. Still, her power is constantly invoked throughout the narrative, even from beyond the grave. As Thompson12 claims, the dreadful powers of some of the femmes fatales proliferating during the 1990s bordered on the supernatural, almost to the point of parody.13 In any case, the fatale’s ability to catch her prey can be said to foster compassion for the emasculated victim. Arguably, this is especially the case when the victim is played by a star whose persona usually elicits the audience’s sympathy. As Pfeiffer and Lewis14 put it, “in essence, Harrison Ford is playing an everyday man―basically decent but capable of spontaneous acts of selfishness when confronted with an overwhelming sexual temptation.” Even though it seems evident that in any given sexual Ibid., p. 246. For Pfeiffer and Lewis, Sabich is “a pillar of the community,” (Pfeiffer and Lewis, The Films, p. 183), while Plaskin describes him as “the confirmed family man” (Glenn Plaskin, “Review of Presumed Innocent,” Time Out 26/1048 (1990), p. 18. 12 Thompson, Crime Films, p. 74. 13 Julianne Pidduck, “The 1990s Hollywood fatal femme: (Dis)figuring feminism, family, irony, violence,” CineAction 38 (1995). 14 Pfeiffer and Lewis, The Films, p. 187. 10 11

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liaison it takes two to tango, Sabich was let off the hook because his flaws were not considered to be inherent, but the consequence of female manipulation. This is an intensely backlash proposition that, as Gates15 suggests, updated classical parameters and became a staple of the neo-noir cycle during the 1980s and early 1990s. Thus, Presumed Innocent could be considered to be a hybrid narrative in which the conventions of the neo-noir film and the courtroom drama/thriller intermingle. Several structural and thematic elements in the film update classic noir parameters: a femme fatale, a (notso-innocent) male victim-cum-investigator, and a rogue cop are all present in this typically convoluted narrative that refuses to reveal “the truth” until the very last moment. All these narrative features, coupled with an intensely “noir lite” (see Figures 18 and 19) and a flashback structure, point in the direction of the classical genre. Incidentally, this was not Ford’s first incursion into the genre. While Rick Deckard has become an enduring neo-noir icon, certain generic conventions were also differently but fruitfully employed in both Frantic and Working Girl. The references to certain noir staples in those films introduced new elements in Ford’s persona, especially as regards his problematic relations to sexually active, powerful women, which pointed in the direction of the contemporary crisis of masculinity, a thorny feature that hardly features in accounts of Ford’s clean-cut star persona. Certainly, the ambiguous character of Rusty Sabich can be said to embody the conventional male (anti-)hero in crisis of classical noir―and many a contemporary neo-noir. Sabich’s passivity and emasculation are certainly underscored by Ford’s uncharacteristic performance style in the film, in which the deliberate repression of feelings plays a prominent part. Cohen16 finds this particular kind of acting in keeping with the performance requirements of film noir: Film noir needed a different kind of male actor, men of reaction, not action, as self-confident heroism turned into paranoia; [actors who] brought to the screen a new, largely, beneath-the-surface acting style that combines force and vulnerability. Phillipa Gates, Detecting Men. Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective Film (New York, 2006), pp. 100–15. 16 Quoted in Andrew Spicer, Film Noir (Harlow, Essex, 2002), pp. 93–4. 15

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Figures 18 and 19  As in classical noir, low-lit rooms, Venetian blinds, and awkward camera angles stand for morally distorted realities and the characters’ ambiguous motives. Presumed Innocent (produced by Sydney Pollack, Mark Rosenberg, Susan Solt).

Needless to say, “force and vulnerability” have remained constant elements in Ford’s complex persona ever since Han Solo made him an unlikely star in the 1970s. Although Ford’s characters’ vulnerability usually fosters the audience’s sympathy, in Sabich’s case vulnerability is also linked to emasculation and victimization. As he loses control over his life, Sabich’s dark side becomes more and more visible. Certainly, Sabich’s angry disposition does not seem to be far removed from the characterization of other family men/antiheroes/ victims of film noir, such as Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) in Scarlet Street (1945).

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As already suggested, the Sabich role is deliberately ambiguous. Although the character has consistently been described positively, on the actual evidence provided by the film, Spicer’s17 portrait of the male “victim” of film noir rings truer in this case: “this figure is not admirable or innocent but morally weak, apparently helpless in the throes of desire and attempting to escape the frustrations of his existing life.” In classical examples of film noir, such as Double Indemnity (1944), Laura (1944), Out of the Past (1947), or Scarlet Street, the emasculated male usually sought to restore his sense of manhood by killing or attempting to kill the treacherous woman, whose excessive sexuality and desire for independence from patriarchal strictures had to be contained. As will be shown in what remains of this section, Presumed Innocent partakes in this violently misogynistic cinematic tradition in a particularly uncertain manner, which could be related to Martin’s18 reflections on the ubiquitous dark, violent world of post-modern noir: [contemporary neo-noirs] reflect deeply entrenched racial and sexual tensions in contemporary American society, rejecting the idea of political correctness [and] rebelling against the notion of the “caring nineties” […]. The noir universe is not a dark, mythical underworld domain into which the protagonist must descend, but rather it is the world we live in, a daylight world of vice and criminality, explosive violence, universal corruption, paranoia and psychosis […]. It constitutes the externalization of the darkest recesses of the collective American psyche, presenting a world of patriarchal corruption, racial and sexual bigotry, and irrational masculine violence (emphasis added).

On the other hand, the film’s noir influence is also in keeping with the narrative’s whodunit/investigative structure. Film noir narratives, murder mysteries, detective films, and police thrillers all typically return to the past by means of flashbacks in the hope of finding the truth and restoring order. In a typical Hollywood narrative, justice would prevail, the mystery would be solved, the real offender identified and punished, and everything, and everyone, would go back to their proper place. However, the more uncertain Presumed Innocent, with its never-ending presentation of sinister characters, Ibid., p. 85. Richard Martin, Mean Streets and Raging Bulls: The Legacy of Film Noir in Contemporary American Cinema (Lanham and London, 1997), pp. 121; 122; 123.

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red herrings, and narrative surprises, participates in the dark cultural pessimism of contemporary neo-noirs, imbued as they are with the postmodern logic of paranoia and relativism. Hence, for all its “presumably” happy ending, the generic connotations brought about by the narrative, as well as Ford’s ambiguous construction of the character, clearly destabilize the star’s seamless façade as a reliable, devoted family-man for the 1990s, which suggests that there is more to his persona, and to this character, than meets the eye. The kind of gloomy environment that neo-noir portrays also finds fertile ground in the courtroom drama. Both Leitch19 and Rafter20 have described a tendency toward pessimism and cynicism in the evolution of the genre since the lawyers in most contemporary legal thrillers, even those who are seemingly incorruptible, eventually appear to be as flawed as the recurrent characters in neo-noirs.21 Moreover, the ambiguity of many a resolution, including that of Presumed Innocent, casts a shadow of doubt over the infallibility of the justice system, and reflects an increasing loss of faith in social institutions. Rafter22 links this pessimistic undercurrent to the US public’s loss of faith in authority and the Law, which has grown exponentially since the 1960s.23 Pakula24 seemed to be well aware of the US citizens’ lack of faith in their institutions for this is clearly the kind of environment that Presumed Innocent gradually presents to the audience: corruption affects all levels of the justice system, not only police officers, but also probation officers, attorneys, and judges, for whom the effective provision of justice has become a secondary concern. As a matter of fact, by the end of the narrative, the murder has simply not been solved, despite the final confession. When Sabich’s lawyer (Raul Julia) threatens to expose the judge’s own corruption, the case is hastily dismissed for “lack of clear incriminating evidence.” Within this context, the innocence of Rusty Sabich can only be presumed, but hardly proven. Thomas M. Leitch, Crime Films (Port Chester, 2002), p. 251. Nicole Rafter, Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society (Oxford, 2000). 21 According to Leitch (Crime Films, p. 245), however, fair, uncorrupted lawyers still abounded in Hollywood during the 1990s, but they were presented as either young lawyers in the making, maverick lawyers, or just anti-lawyers. That is to say, these heroic characters were not to be read as “official” representatives of established legal institutions. 22 Rafter, Shots in the Mirror, p. 107. 23 Knight has reported that before the 1960s three-quarters of US Americans had faith in their institutions, although by 1994 only one-quarter believed in them. (Peter Knight, Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to the X-Files (London and New York, 2000), p. 36). 24 Quoted in Plaskin, “Presumed Innocent,” p. 19. 19 20

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Sabich is an assistant district attorney effectively playing the role of an investigator set to discover the truth about the woman who he has been obsessed with. During his investigation, he is aided by Detective Lipranzer (John Spencer), the actual noir rogue cop in the film who would rather save his friend’s neck by withholding crucial, potentially incriminating evidence, than help identify the murderer of the actual victim in the film, Carolyn Polhemus, and thus solve the case. As Lipranzer insists, Carolyn is/was just “bad news”―even though she has been dead from the outset. Narratively speaking, this entails that she would have to be eliminated in order for the status and reputation of her male victim, presumably the all-American guy next door, to be salvaged. In order to foster audience identification with the male victim, Carolyn is denied a point of view (she is dead, after all), while Sabich’s is privileged throughout most of the narrative. As is the case with other contemporary (and classical) cinematic examples, it is her beauty, independence, and active sexuality that fatally mark her as a femme fatale. Yet even if Polhemus resorts to such unconventional means to achieve her professional aims, Sabich cannot be simply let off the hook. Therefore, while it is evident that Polhemus manipulates men, it is no less true that Sabich is more than willing to go ahead with the seduction game, which compromises his morality. As a married man in an unhappy relationship, Sabich actively seeks satisfaction away from his wife, who is equally frustrated with her role as mother and, as she says, “bed maker.” Sabich’s crucial transgression is that, in a much more obvious way than Dr. Richard Walker had done in Frantic, he seeks sexual satisfaction away from the sphere of the family, the sphere in which sex is morally sanctioned in our culture. While Sabich’s infidelity/transgression precipitates the collapse of affection and sex within the family, the longestablished border separating the domestic from the professional arena is also breached, a transgression for which somebody will have to pay. Hence, the dark and dangerous atmosphere of the film’s only sexually explicit scene on Carolyn’s desk represents nothing but Rusty’s doomed fate. This scene (see Figure 20), which, in true noir style, presents (illicit) sex and danger as one and the same thing, is in fact the most sexually explicit one in Ford’s entire career, which, arguably, intensifies the character’s transgression while also allowing for shady undertones to make an impact

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Figure 20  The explicit representation of sexuality in Presumed Innocent conforms to generic parameters but introduces new meanings into Ford’s clean-cut persona. ­Presumed Innocent (produced by Sydney Pollack, Mark Rosenberg, Susan Solt).

on Ford’s public, increasingly family-orientated image. It clearly contrasts with Ford’s previous, but still exceptional, sex scene in the more demure romantic comedy Working Girl, despite the fact that he is performing the role of an unfaithful man in both cases. Nevertheless, the different generic affiliations of either film inevitably suggest very different readings of similar circumstances and of the role that Ford’s persona plays in them. In any case, the fact that explicit sexuality is almost absent from Ford’s oeuvre implies that his untroubled, cross-over brand of masculinity is heavily predicated upon the absence of the complications that the direct representation of sexuality seems to entail. While in Raiders of the Lost Ark Indy, memorably, falls asleep during the film’s most significant love scene, the dance in the barn in Witness represents a supreme example of sexual displacement. As explained in previous chapters of this book, Ford’s trademark masculinity, although largely consistent with hegemonic constructions of manhood in the Western world, carefully avoids an excessive bodily display and conceals explicit sexuality from sight. It is as if in the construction of Ford’s thoroughly masculine mystique, (hetero)sexuality was simply taken for granted; therefore, it would not need reinforcing through the representation of heterosexual encounters. Hence, the sheer explicitness and urgency of such an atypical scene provide the spectator with a radical new look at Ford’s persona and performance, which certainly

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leaves the door open for against-the-grain interpretations of the narrative and of Ford’s role within it. Such interpretations are fostered by the film’s reliance on ambiguity, which is sustained not only narratively, but also through mise-en-scène. The dark mood of Presumed Innocent is at times contrasted with the brightness characterizing the flashbacks that introduce us to the murdered character. Like Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) or Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer), she is presented from the male protagonist’s point of view as he remembers the good and bad moments they shared, a reminder, together with the opening and closing monologues delivered by Sabich, of the original novel’s first-person narrative. Within the cinematic tradition to which Presumed Innocent is indebted, the flashback structure is often used to encourage sympathy and identification with the “narrator” of the story, as it is through his (subjective) recollections that we have access to the events taking place in the past and leading to his present disgrace. However, as Kathie cautions Bailey (Robert Mitchum) in Out of the Past, such recollections should not be taken at face value, for they are tainted with the narrator’s own subjectivity. It is also the intensely emotional context in which the story is retold that casts a shadow of doubt over its truthfulness. Such narrative ambiguity suggests that one should suspect Sabich’s recollections of his relationship with Carolyn for, if they represent his hopes, they also point to his anxieties and fears. As Spicer25 suggests, this is typical of post-modern flashbacks, which are usually more ambiguous than in classical film noir. Since the film strongly privileges Sabich’s point of view, his recollections are placed on shaky ground. In other words, the biased way in which the film presents the monstrous feminine can be read as the direct result of a protective male fantasy emerging from the main character’s paranoia, from his fear of emasculation at the hands of the spider woman and his latent desire for retribution. As was also typical of classical film noir, post-modern men in crisis project their sexual―and by now professional―anxieties onto the character of the femme fatale, a figure

Spicer, Film Noir, p. 158.

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that must finally be contained in order for the male victim to regain his sense of manhood.26 Nevertheless, the fact that Polhemus is actually dead arguably neutralizes the power of the femme fatale, while also privileging the unreliable point of view of the defendant. Yet, it seems that her symbolic power remains effective even from beyond the grave, as can be noted on the numerous occasions when her vulnerable victim breaks down and loses control of his emotions. At such moments, Polhemus becomes an extreme example of Doane’s27 thesis that the femme fatale, as the cultural embodiment of imagined male sexual fears and fantasies, is the unconscious carrier, rather than the conscious bearer, of the power she yields over men. Despite the character’s self-repression, Rusty’s latent potential for violence is never made more evident than when he is let down by two of the most important people in his life: his lover and his boss and mentor Raymond Horgan (Brian Dennehy). It is to the latter that Rusty has remained loyal to the point that Carolyn abandons him when she realizes that Sabich will not try to challenge him for his post as District Attorney and thus secure her rapid career advancement. Both his lover’s and boss’s betrayal inflict immense pain on Rusty’s pride, to which he reacts with rage. As Horgan says “you always had the cork in too tight […]. When you blew, you blew.” This affords the spectator a glimpse of the violent potential that simmers inside Sabich, which allows for the ambiguity of the narrative to be sustained. The fact that Polhemus and Horgan initiate an affair immediately after she abandons Sabich only adds insult to injury. Sabich’s male pride has been hurt, and it is precisely for this reason that he becomes a plausible prime suspect of murder, as Rusty himself aptly illustrates when he tries to advance the prosecutor’s case. The character’s dark side also materializes at various other moments during the film, in which we see Sabich stalking and cold-calling Carolyn.

In her classic analysis of women in film noir, Janey Place also read the femme fatale as a Doppelgänger figure for the male protagonist: “the sexual, dangerous woman […] is the psychological expression of his own internal fears of sexuality, and his need to control and repress it,” which would be consistent with Ford’s largely asexual characterization (Janey Place, “Women in film noir,” in E. A. Kaplan (ed.), Women in Film Noir (London, 1998 (1978)), p. 53). 27 Quoted in Yvonne Tasker, Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema (London and New York, 1998), p. 121. 26

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“I do not accept this,” he says to her angrily when she will not take him back. The sensitive, self-effacing façade he has been sporting throughout the film becomes highly suspicious at moments like these, almost a masquerade, for the potential consequences of his behavior cannot be ignored. In Hollywood, when male pride is hurt and manhood is beset, this often leads to an outburst of what Melley,28 following Richard Slotkin, has termed “masculinist regeneration through violence.” Hence, Gates’s29 description of early neonoirs, even if originally applied to those of the 1980s, equally fits the analysis of this particular film: The neo-noir films of the 1980s offered a critique of the more sensitive kind of masculinity demanded by Feminism at a time when the neo-noir hero represented an inability to reconcile this new softer image of masculinity with what were seen as “real” men—the more traditional notions of masculinity. Simultaneously, it critiqued the empowerment of women and their desire for independence from the home and equal opportunities in the professional world. The neo-noir film was a parable for the 1980s, warning men and women of the danger of transgressing established gender roles.

Sabich’s only alibi, which he naively insists his lawyer must use during the trial, is his assurance that he really cared for Carolyn; hence, he could not have killed her. However, Sabich seems to be the only one who fails to understand that, rather than provide him with an alibi, this confession would most certainly lead to his conviction. While he is still investigating the murder, he goes to visit Carolyn’s ex-husband (Peter Coyote), who confesses that he felt so angry when she left him that he wished that she was dead. He concludes their conversation by saying “maybe she made a man feel like that who actually acted on his fantasy.” The film’s promotional tagline also toyed with the idea of desire for retribution: “Some people would kill for love.” Pakula,30 meanwhile, was well aware of the potential implications of casting star Ford for the role as far as audience reaction/interpretation was concerned:

Timothy Melley, Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America (Ithaca and London, 2000), p. 14. 29 Gates, Detecting Men, p. 102. 30 Quoted in Dan Yakir, “An innocent man?” Empire 16 (September 1990), p. 58. 28

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We had to have someone [the audience] could believe might be guilty and still like him. […]. What also works for him is the fact that maybe some people in the audience want to see Carolyn killed because she slept around and humiliated Rusty [i.e., Harrison Ford] (emphasis in the original).

However, in classic mainstream Hollywood fashion, the ambiguities that have effectively sustained the suspense in the narrative must be dispelled lest the audience becomes alienated from the star. Hence, in a bizarre narrative twist that works to reinforce male paranoia but risks ruining the audience’s suspension of disbelief, Rusty’s wife Barbara confesses to the murder of Carolyn Polhemus. It is in fact doubtful that the police would not have located the murder weapon, which is surprisingly still stained with blood when Sabich finds it, during their previous search. This dramatic moment is, nonetheless, meant to smooth over the cracks in the character’s ambiguous personality and finally reassure the spectator that Sabich/Ford is still the vulnerable but reliable hero who we are accustomed to. It is at this precise moment that the power of Ford’s star image—and the expectations it generates—starts to play an important part as far as the standard interpretation of the narrative is concerned for it is his recurrent heroic status that is meant to assuage the spectators’ anxiety and encourage their desire to believe in his innocence. Judging from the overall critical response, Harrison Ford’s powerful star image seemed to be enough to dispel any doubts about Rusty Sabich. As a result, Ford’s heroic brand was barely dented in this particular case. However, despite the narrative presenting us with Barbara’s final confession, the carefully constructed ambiguity of the film is not dispelled altogether and an element of doubt remains. Contrary to the mainstream interpretation, Pfeiffer and Lewis31 also expressed their concern that “while we want to believe he is innocent of his lover’s murder and that he has truly rehabilitated himself as a family man, there is some doubt among the audience that he may not be quite what he seems” (emphasis added). The final part of this section is devoted to the teasing out of this final ambiguity. Let us start by taking a closer look at the final sequence, which reveals that things are not as simple as they might seem. Once Rusty has been cleared

Pfeiffer and Lewis, The Films, p. 187.

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of murder―thanks to the judge’s dishonesty―we should expect order to be restored. Indeed, the film’s iconography emphasizes this by focusing on the Sabichs’ suburban home, conventionally bathed in the warm light of autumn colors. However, Rusty’s guilt has not been disproved and the murder remains, effectively, unsolved, which undermines the artificial atmosphere of peace and tranquility in the household. Moreover, the fact that the ending of the film is not made to coincide with Sabich’s moment of triumph, as is the case in most courtroom thrillers, emphasizes the sustained suspense of the story. Barbara’s final confession fulfills the generic requirement that the crime must be solved, even if the actual murderer can get away with the crime. As the “desperate housewife” suddenly becomes the deadly woman, Sabich’s worst fears and paranoia are confirmed, for the most dangerous femme fatale remains at large and he must remain by her side. Nevertheless, the way in which this eerie confession is staged provides an element of doubt that suggests, yet again, that it may all be a figment of Sabich’s paranoid imagination. Barbara, who is meant to be attending a job interview, suddenly appears on the basement stairs as her husband is cleaning the murder weapon, which he has just come across. As the camera slowly draws back from Sabich and tense music plays in the background, we hear Barbara’s voice, but since all we can see is Sabich’s back it looks as if her voice was coming from inside his mind. In addition, Barbara’s appearance is ghostly, and the fact that she does not make a noise as she descends into the basement reinforces the possibility that he is imagining her. Moreover, once in their dining room upstairs, where, after an ellipsis, the main characters are located, Barbara retells the story in the third person, which would also support this particular interpretation. It is as if another protective fantasy was being enacted in order to exonerate Sabich.32 Hence, the utter ambiguity of the final sequence precludes closure and suggests that the narrative order has failed to be restored―even if Ford’s powerful everyman persona may provide a strong counterweight anchoring the audience’s belief in Sabich’s innocence.

As Jones points out, in the original book, it is actually Rusty that narrates this part of the story. Hence, she concludes that “the book’s narrative strategy evokes an ambiguity that emphasises the unreliability of the ‘truth’” (Amelia Jones, “She was bad news: Male paranoia and the contemporary new woman,” Camera Obscura 25–6 (1991), p. 313).

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In any case, even if one chooses to believe that he is innocent, Sabich’s morality is altogether compromised during the film’s final sequence for he becomes complicit in the crime in the name of family values. The fact that Sabich withholds the truth from the authorities so as to preserve the sacred family unit seems to provide enough justification for his acts. As he says awkwardly, “I could not take his mother from my son.” However, not even this supposedly noble end can hide the fact that Sabich is being complicit in Polhemus’s murder, which deeply compromises his moral status. And since the moral order has not been properly restored, this family can never be recuperated. Yet in the eyes of some, there is still hope: Though [Sabich] is eventually exonerated, he is unable to reveal the identity of the true killer; thus, his relief remains partial, and our admiration rests in part on his sorrowful determination to maintain the secret (emphasis added).33

The fact that anybody, let alone a serious critic, should claim that a character is admirable for concealing a crime, testifies to the power of Ford’s star image. So, even if the family cannot be recuperated, the male protagonist’s dubious moral standing can, despite the continuous doubts raised throughout the narrative, which may provide the last refuge for some members of the audience amidst the widespread moral disintegration depicted in the film. Whether, as Sabich claims, the cross he has to bear by keeping the secret is sufficient punishment is left for the members of the audience to decide. Like Blade Runner and Frantic, Presumed Innocent remains an interestingly ambiguous installment in Ford’s career, in that certain aspects of the star’s persona that were forged during the 1980s have become subverted in order for the suspense of the film to be maintained. In fact, whether or not one chooses to believe in Sabich’s innocence, the film’s uncertain conclusion does not adequately smooth over the character’s crisis. If new roles can be understood to introduce nuances into a star’s overall persona, it could be argued that the ambiguity, paranoia, and insecurity characterizing Sabich incorporated important elements into Ford’s brand of masculinity that undermined his wellestablished persona as a self-confident, dependable father and hero. Hence, the Rafter, Shots in the Mirror, p. 144.

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ambiguities surrounding the role allowed new, obscure meanings to infiltrate Ford’s persona in a way that The Mosquito Coast’s Allie Fox, an unambiguous character without redemption, could not do. In Presumed Innocent Ford wished to present the audience with a rather different version of the icon they had seen before and, judging by the final result, he definitely delivered. Unlike other film productions in which Ford had played somber antiheroes, Presumed Innocent was a box office hit, which signals that the audience were keen to see Ford play against type, as long as their expectations were finally fulfilled, even if in the rather problematic manner that has been exposed in this section. Nevertheless, Ford’s “problematic fit” with this role, in which the barely repressed, obscure side of normative masculinity is clearly exposed, also offered new, unexpected readings of his star persona that his next role in the melodrama Regarding Henry also seemed to capitalize on.

Regarding Henry: The Great Shift? It is almost ironic that Ford’s next film, Regarding Henry, should have involved a loose version of the Jekyll and Hyde story in which a lawyer with a reputation for professional ruthlessness and a strong track record of familial neglect eventually becomes a gentle human being entirely devoted to his family. Jenkins34 concluded that the part offered the actor “a chance to roll a villain and a hero into one.” As has been explained in previous chapters of this book, through many of his earlier roles, and despite his increasing public construction as a family man, the star had displayed a distinctive ambivalence toward dependable fatherhood and its concomitant loss of independence, which, inevitably, leads to a culturally “acceptable” form of emasculation through domestication. It should not be forgotten that the reason why Ford’s first marriage had failed was his larger investment in his professional and personal interests, rather than his family’s. The actor has conceded that he was too inexperienced to be a good father and that the sacrifices attached to the role simply overwhelmed him. Bent on not replicating the mistakes of the past, the

Jenkins, Harrison Ford, p. 285.

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more mature Ford embraced his second chance at parenting wholeheartedly. Regarding Henry’s narrative, therefore, seemed to capitalize on Ford’s changing public image as a reformed family man in order to strengthen its discourse on the transformation of the masculine role in contemporary US society. Nevertheless, Ford’s film parts of the early 1990s still betrayed the ambivalence toward the father/husband role that characterized his film production during the 1980s. Alan J. Pakula remarked upon the contrasting qualities that could be attached to Ford’s image: “he’s solid, he’s strong, he’s responsible. At the same time […] there is an adventurous quality about him, a danger. That’s probably responsible for a lot of the sex appeal he has.”35 Through his part in Regarding Henry, nonetheless, a momentous shift from bad to good father―or from hard body to soft body―can be appreciated, and in fact the part can be said to have laid the foundations for the establishment of Ford’s trademark image as an affectionate, dependable family man and hero virtually immune to moral besmirch during the 1990s. Regarding Henry was not a box-office hit, but it was still more popular than Ford’s worst cinematic failures of the 1980s. While director Mike Nichols became the target of most criticisms for allegedly having lost his “edge” in favor of a more conservative perspective, Ford’s performance in this markedly nonaction role was not left unscathed. However, there were also reviewers who praised Ford’s performance as a brain-damaged patient on his way to recovery. In fact, one of the most positive reviews of the film and Ford’s performance came from Dr. Keith Andrews,36 a neurosurgeon writing for the prestigious British Medical Journal: It is easy for a specialist to pick up details in the film that are not clinically correct […]. [Also], the film panders to the public’s desire for miracle cures [but] in spite of my grumbles, Harrison Ford is excellent as the unfortunate attorney. His portrayal of the physical pattern of recovery is fascinating to watch.

Still, despite Ford’s skilled performance, the plot presented various shortcomings that perhaps required more than the usual degree of suspension

Quoted in Ibid., p. 277. Keith Andrews, “Scrambled eggs with Tabasco,” British Medical Journal 303/6809 (1991), p. 1070.

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of disbelief on the part of the audience. The story, for example, involves Henry going back to work so that “new Henry” can become aware of “old Henry’s” mistakes. Yet, the audiences are left to wonder how, without having entirely recovered from severe brain damage, Henry is still perceptive enough to be able to sabotage his old firm and make it up to the old couple whose lives he had previously destroyed. Also, with the help of his eleven-year-old daughter (Mikki Allen), he learns to read in just one session. Moreover, even though Henry does not remember his family, just their home’s gray carpet, his wife Sarah (Annette Bening) asks him to sleep with her just after he comes back home from the clinic, which certainly can make some members of the audience cringe. In addition, even though the dire economic situation in which Henry’s wealthy family are left after he is shot is frequently referred to, it is never actually treated as a real issue or a dramatic concern. It is not only Henry’s life that has been severely disrupted after the shooting, but also his wife’s and daughter’s. In spite of this, the Turners are still able to send their daughter to an exclusive boarding school, which allows for the happy end in the form of a heroic final rescue to be felt even more intensely. The film represented Ford’s further incursion into the male melodrama, a genre that was becoming increasingly popular at the time.37 Apart from Hanover Street, melodramatic concerns had featured prominently in Ford’s earlier production. According to Williams, the melodramatic mode is wide-ranging and moves beyond the traditional confines of the woman’s film or the family melodrama, which have come to epitomize the genre within the field of Film Studies. Thus, the melodramatic form may be located within any genre, the action film, and the Western among them, and, contrary to Film Studies’ “dogma,” should be considered to be the norm, rather than a form of excess, within Hollywood cinema, a view that Ford38 clearly subscribes to: “emotion is the true language of film. […]. One can have a very clever, very interesting story, but without the emotional connection between the audience and the events on the screen, it is like witnessing an event that you don’t really care about.” From this particular stance, Regarding Henry, unlike most other films in Ford’s filmography, has attracted considerable attention from academics interested in analyzing this particular trend (Viveca Gretton and Tom Orman, “Regarding men: Disease and affection in contemporary male melodrama,” CineAction 26–7 (1992), pp. 114–20; Joy Van Fuqua, “Can you feel it, Joe? Male melodrama and the feeling man,” The Velvet Light Trap 38 (1996), pp. 28–39; Nicola Rehling, Extra-Ordinary Men. White Heterosexual Masculinity in Contemporary Popular Cinema (Plymouth, 2009)). 38 Quoted in Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 169. 37

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melodrama would essentially entail a narrative strategy that exploits pathos and emotional identification through the victimization and final moral vindication of the long-suffering but innocent protagonist.39 Still, one could speculate that the audience were not interested in watching Ford play the role of an infantilized adult going through a long process of recovery, despite the film’s promotion of prevailing conservative discourses: the rejection of hedonism and individualism, the embracing of family values, and the concomitant re-strengthening of the father role. Without a doubt, the film’s central discourse on masculinity posited that it is only by renouncing self-indulgence in favor of traditional family values that men can find their real sense of manhood. Indeed, the conservative ideology of the post-liberation era, which transpires throughout the narrative, represented an attempt to recuperate the role of the patriarch within the traditional nuclear family, which, in conservative discourse, had been eroded as a result of the social permissiveness characterizing earlier decades in US history. It was the moral background to the story that attracted Ford to the project. His first and only daughter, Georgia, had just been born and he was becoming more and more comfortable with his role as a “new man” and a nurturing father, a point that critics were keen to highlight: “the movie belongs to Ford. And its 1990s ethos―familial love defeats personal ambition―seems to reflect the actor’s own priorities.”40 Once again, fact and fiction were becoming fused in the press accounts of the film. The star, who has never felt comfortable talking about his private life in public, was on this occasion keen to reinforce such an analogy during promotional interviews. Ford was indeed becoming more involved in his family life. However, even though he attended his daughter’s delivery and was willing to change nappies, he was still the one getting a good-night sleep since, according to the actor, he did not have “the required biological mechanism to soothe [babies]” in the middle of the night.41 Although Ford embraced his fatherly role wholeheartedly, it was still evident that he had not forsaken the long-established belief that mothers are more naturally, or biologically, suited for nurturance and care and therefore should have a greater responsibility over childcare than men. In any case, the Fords Linda Williams, “Melodrama revised,” in R. Browne (ed.), Refiguring American Film Genres. Theory and History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1998), p. 58. 40 Brian Johnson, “The reluctant star,” Maclean’s 104/28 (1991), p. 45. 41 Quoted in Robert Sellers, Harrison Ford: A Biography (London, 1993), p. 238. 39

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had by then become the ideal nuclear family that the Reagan-Bush Sr. political administrations supported so vigorously. In Jenkins’s42 poetic words, “on-set, at least, the Fords presented a picture of the perfect, nuclear, nineties family. Melissa, content with the two children she wanted, radiated an earth–mother warmth that left some sorely starstruck” (emphasis added). Judging from the press reports about the making of Regarding Henry, it appears that analogies between the performer’s private life and the narrative were being made in order to highlight the film’s discourse on a new form of masculinity and the strengthening of family values. Still, Jenkins’s uncertain introductory words betray a degree of doubt about Ford’s new role as a reformed dad and husband, and by extension, one could argue, Henry Turner’s sudden, almost magical transformation from ogre to prince charming. Ford’s growing influence as a star was also reflected in his ability to claim certain privileges. Having become aware of the major emotional rift that the separation from his first family while shooting had caused, Ford had started to contractually demand that his wife and two younger children accompany him on location, whether in the United States or abroad. As a matter of fact, during the shooting of Regarding Henry Ford remained as private a man as ever, going back to his family as soon as the day’s filming was finished: This second time around I have no intention of blowing it. I’m still as dedicated an actor as I ever was, but now I know where to draw the line. While I’m on the set, nothing else matters but the role I’m in at that moment. But once shooting is over, I forget about it and head home, ready for my wife and kids. And I want things to be normal and calm. I don’t appreciate excitement off the set […]. I can pick and choose the movies I want to make […]. As for the stardom, the money, the awards—they are all secondary. They don’t mean a thing if a person isn’t happy.43

However, as a man of many contradictions, he still confided that the effects of his proverbially reclusive personality and professional meticulousness extended to his own family: “when I work on a picture I don’t want to go out to dinner, I have no energy left for weekends, I neglect my children, I neglect everything.”44 Ford’s increasing star power also became evident through Jenkins, Harrison Ford, p. 286. Quoted in Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 175. 44 Quoted in Jenkins, Harrison Ford, p. 286. 42 43

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his ability to choose the film’s director and involvement in the film’s postproduction. While for most actors the end of daily filming means the end of their working day, Ford was now becoming used to staying on to check out the “dailies” and work with the director toward improving the final cut. Therefore, Ford’s increasing status as an A-lister and a major stakeholder in the various film projects in which he was involved ranged from his technical and artistic input to the way in which his private life and public image intersected with and contributed to the construction and establishment of a particular discourse on masculinity and family relations. Regarding Henry tells the story of a ruthless lawyer whose life is dramatically transformed by a fortuitous event. Like Presumed Innocent, the film starts at a courthouse but, whereas the former film focused on its interior in order to establish some of its thematic intentions, the latter chooses to present the spectator with a prolonged shot of the gray, snowy exterior of the sturdy, neoclassical courthouse building in Manhattan, perhaps signifying the cold, uncaring disposition of the people inside, particularly Henry Turner, a legendary “shark” within his law firm. Once inside, the protagonist’s voiceover dialogue strongly establishes Ford’s star presence. The camera slowly circles around the chamber, allowing us to observe the characters present in the courtroom—who can be said to stand in for real spectators—looking at Henry’s/Ford’s performance admiringly. Regarding Henry, however, is not ambiguous in its cold-hearted portrayal of its dream lawyer. “Old Henry” is decidedly inhuman and does not hesitate to twist evidence in order to safeguard his powerful clients’ interests. Through his professional ruthlessness, his characteristic power look, and his lifestyle, Turner embodies the stereotypical 1980s’ hedonistic, individualistic yuppie, addicted to work and conspicuous consumption, but with little time for others, especially his family. To the outside world, his professional achievements are outstanding; he has an imposing office and an enormous apartment in Manhattan as well as a beautiful family, from whom he has become estranged as they have simply become one more necessary signifier of success to parade in front of his friends. Nevertheless, the film clearly demonstrates that Henry is very much at ease with his current double life and is proud of his heartless reputation. His socialite wife Sarah is aware of the situation and seems to be content enough with her status as a trophy wife, but his daughter Rachel dislikes her father intensely.

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Despite all this, the film ultimately seems to suggest, somewhat paradoxically, that new Henry was nothing but the repressed side, or victim, of old Henry. In other words, Henry’s initial attitude is supposed to be the result of his own preprogramming, in which the disproportionate investment on a distorted version of the traditionally masculine values of individualism, hard work, and material success, which prevailed during the “greed is good” years, took necessary precedence over feelings and other feminizing familial concerns. Admittedly, the way in which Henry gets to redefine his male identity leaves a sour aftertaste since it does not actually emanate from a conscious desire to transform himself. Still, one of the film’s most interesting aspects is its portrayal of one of the most significant cultural contradictions in contemporary US social policy. In order for the Republican rolling back of the State to take place, the fostering of individual self-reliance, or traditional (male) “rugged individualism,” became imperative. At the same time, the role of the family unit as the essential provider of personal needs and guarantor of social stability was strengthened. As a result, the ideologies of individualism and familism were made to coexist, often at the expense of the woman/mother, whose return to her natural or, literally, home environment, that is, the by-now privatized realm of the family, was widely promoted. The father, meanwhile, was encouraged to exercise his “naturally” male, individualistic drive, which was nonetheless to be tamed in order to become fully compatible with the role of family provider. While this explosive combination had already been explored in The Mosquito Coast, the fact that Henry literally “needs” to be shot in the head and become a virtual child in order for his transformation from bad to good patriarch to take place suggests that such a shift belongs firmly within the realm of myth, rather than reality. However, since the plot makes it clear that old Henry is a character without redemption, a shot in the brain may be the only narrative device that can work such miracles. Ultimately, one is left to wonder whether old Henry might not resurface once the recovery process is finished. The film clearly presents us with two opposing sides of the same personality. Old Henry is the embodiment of social success but also the representative of the narcissistic strand of the new masculinity, mainly characterized by hedonism and a rejection of the traditional male role of family provider, which had been gaining momentum since the 1960s.45 These traits would therefore Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men (London, 1983).

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make Ford’s fit with the part problematic. In any case, the fact that new Henry later refuses to leave the rehabilitation clinic to become reintegrated within his own family seems entirely consistent with the ambiguous attitude toward the institution that had characterized many of Ford’s earlier roles. The family, once again, provides the problem and the solution to the hero’s plight. Whether we consider Henry in his old or new incarnation, his desire to find personal― and sexual―satisfaction beyond the domestic sphere entails an outright rejection of family values. Curiously enough, the first section of the film, which only lasts twelve minutes and portrays old Henry, was, in many reviewers’ opinion, the film’s greatest asset, which they often put down to Ford’s energizing performance: “It doesn’t help the movie that Henry is less interesting as a good guy than he was as a rat”;46 “Regarding Henry is just about bearable thanks to Ford’s sheer presence and the occasional reminder—the first twenty minutes in particular—of what might and should have been.”47 For a performer who has specialized in the portrayal of heroic characters and is well known for keeping a very low public profile and leading a simple life, the praise received for his portrayal of old Henry deserves consideration. On the one hand, it reflects the complexity of Ford’s persona; on the other, it suggests that his performing range is much wider than generally acknowledged and that his “dark side” was well worth paying attention to. For this precise reason, Ford’s “new man” status, as signified through the transformation undergone in the Henry Turner role― note the significance of the surname, rings a little hollow, especially if one takes into consideration the fact that Henry’s atonement does not originate from a conscious process of introspection, but from a purely haphazard event. Indeed, the way in which events are portrayed would make Bob Merrick’s (Rock Hudson) transformation from playboy to cutting-edge brain surgeon in Magnificent Obsession (1954) a lot more realistic in comparison. According to Duke,48 the original working title for the film was literally Henry Forgets,

Canby, “The attitude adjustment of a bullet in the brain,” in The New York Times (1991). Available at http://web.archive.org/web/20080516235240/http://apartment42.com/regarding-review.txt (accessed February 8, 2008). 47 Barry McIlheney, “Review of Regarding Henry,” Empire 28 (October 1991), p. 25. 48 Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 169. 46

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which eventually became Regarding Henry. Arguably, this change in the title shifted the attention from this obvious narrative flaw, which is nonetheless the film’s main narrative element, to the spectacle of Henry’s suffering during his slow recovery process from selfish yuppie to a sort of Capraesque, ingenuous man-child (see Figures 21 and 22).

Figures 21 and 22  Something old, something new: Harrison Ford excels as old Henry, which makes new Henry’s story of painful transformation seem implausible and ­rather dull in comparison. Regarding Henry (produced by J. J. Abrams, Robert Greenhut, ­Susan MacNair, Mike Nichols, Scott Rudin).

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Elayne Rapping49 analyzed the movie as part of a trend within Hollywood film production in which adult white men turned into children or irresponsible adolescents in a more or less metaphorical way. In her view, these man-to-child films constituted Hollywood’s escapist response to the crisis of masculinity. Since in the era of post-feminism old male scripts no longer seemed to hold, white, middle-class males, as portrayed in the films she discussed, seemed to find easy refuge in a perpetual adolescent condition, free as they were from adult responsibilities and preoccupations. Henry’s total, and rather convenient, memory wipe-out does indeed allow for this kind of reading. A crucial narrative requirement in the film is that Henry’s childish disposition should provide him with a powerful “alibi” preventing him from understanding the cynicism that characterizes the “adult” world, of which he used to be a very successful member. Henry’s transformation into a metaphorical child is represented at several levels: his boyish looks and manner of walking and speaking, his constant need for care and attention, his naïf artistic style, his bewilderment at some forms of adult behavior, his intense bond with his “buddy,” physiotherapist Bradley (Bill Nunn), or his growing attachment to his daughter. It is actually through direct interaction with his male friend first and with “the other child” later that the patient thrives. Moreover, Henry feels rather uncomfortable during the very few intimate moments that he shares with his wife, which points at another recurrent feature in Ford’s film persona, that is, his problematic rapport with adult sexuality. Indeed, the roles that Ford had played in the past had, to a large extent, been characterized by their asexual nature. Henry Turner is a particularly interesting continuation of this characteristic trait. Among various examples, one could highlight the sequence in which Henry ends up watching an adult film at the cinema by mistake, which is meant to draw attention to his boyish discomfort, but finally confirms Ford’s largely asexual onscreen nature (see Figures 23 and 24). At such moments of childish, innocent befuddlement, one cannot help but be reminded of other unforgettable Hollywood men-boys, such as Gary Cooper in Ball of Fire (1941) and in Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), or Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby. Henry’s awkward and surely anachronistic reaction to adult sexuality, despite being due to his infantilized mental state, Elayne Rapping, “Boys of summer,” Progressive 55/11 (1991), pp. 34–6.

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Figures 23 and 24  Harrison Ford and the “sex question”: Henry’s embarrassed face says it all. Regarding Henry (produced by J. J. Abrams, Robert Greenhut, Susan MacNair, Mike Nichols, Scott Rudin).

recalls the male characters in the aforementioned screwball comedies. Because of the constraints imposed by the Hays Code, play, verbal sparring, and sexual innuendo substituted for the direct representation of sexual attraction in these “sex comedies without the sex,” which caused physical attraction to be displaced in an innocent, almost virginal, fashion. In this sense, Ford’s childlike performance, and Henry’s anachronistic style of adult sexuality in particular,

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can be said to reinforce his routine associations with those classical actors who became successful romantic partners under the Production Code. Regarding Henry attracted considerable academic attention as a male melodrama, a sub-set of the genre that proliferated in the early 1990s. Williams’s useful reconsideration of melodrama as a wide-ranging mode has allowed for the melodramatic elements present in traditionally male genres, such as the Western, the road movie, the thriller, or film noir, to be foregrounded. However, for the sake of clarity, this analysis will focus on the more familiar notion of the family melodrama, and its male variant in particular. Like most examples of female-centered and family melodramas, the typical male melodramas tend to focus on the damaging psychosexual effects of the protagonists’ refusal or failure to conform to gender-related social norms.50 Even though during the years of the sexual revolution melodrama seemed to have fallen from public favor, in the late 1970s and early 1980s a spate of popular films―the remake of The Champ (1979) or Oscar winners Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Ordinary People (1980) are only some examples―placed a renewed emphasis on the suffering and vindication of their male protagonists. These films essentially became early paeans to the contemporary Men’s/Fathers’ rights movement. Because of their novel portrayal of the new man as a nurturing father, they were regarded at the time as a direct response to the challenge that the feminist movement had launched against patriarchy and normative gender roles in particular.51 As these fictions would have it, men were capable of changing only when forced to become single fathers. These narratives offered new male models, but because of their recurrent vilification of the mother figure and the principles of women’s liberation, they did little to encourage gender equality or cooperation between the sexes.52 Ironically, the heroic male parent found his role vindicated by precisely assimilating the social scripts, such as nurturance or self-sacrifice, Thomas Schatz, “The family melodrama,” in M. Landy (ed.), Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film and Television Melodrama (Detroit, 1991); Tom Lutz, “Men’s tears and the roles of melodrama,” in M. Shamir and J. Travis (eds), Boys Don’t Cry? Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the US (New York, 2002). 51 Dave Kehr, “The new male melodrama,” American Film 8/6 (1983), pp. 43–7. 52 Elizabeth Traube, Dreaming Identities: Class, Gender and Generation in 1980s Hollywood Movies (Boulder, 1992), p. 169. Worryingly, Hamad and Jenkins find similar undercurrents in many examples of male-focused “post-feminist” melodramas of the 2000s and beyond (Hannah Hamad, Postfeminism and Paternity in Contemporary US Film: Framing Fatherhood (New York, 2014); Claire Jenkins, Home Movies: The American Family in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (London and New York, 2015). 50

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that feminists were denouncing as ideologically prescribed and alienating for women. On the other hand, the “rediscovery” of fathering allowed men to get in touch with their feelings, or “feminine side,” without being socially stigmatized as wimps. As a result, men who renounced their earlier “masculine nature” in order to adopt the feminine role of nurturer were constructed as brave and responsible, rather than emasculated, whereas women who pursued “masculine” interests and strove “to fulfil themselves” away from the family were accused of being selfish and betraying their essence as women. While men were being lauded for their capacity to embrace personal change, women were criticized for doing very much the same. As a result, these changes did not necessarily translate into a broader reconsideration of the gender order. Despite their many shortcomings, these films also made it evident, through their renovated portrayals of masculinity, that gender scripts were open to socio-historical change and alteration, and that the capacity for nurturance in particular should not necessarily be ascribed to one gender only, a tenet that these narratives clearly shared with the feminist movement. Although this circumstance does not necessarily lead to a fundamental reorganization of the gender order, and can in fact reinforce existing power structures, the progressive cultural devaluation of the authoritarian father figure and the fact that contemporary men are increasingly sharing—rather than helping with— childcare and household responsibilities with their partners suggest that these films’ construction of the caring, home-making father did resonate with a sizeable portion of the male—and female—audience. On the evidence provided by the male (family) melodramas of the late 1980s and early 1990s, women seemed to be “back in the picture,” but their narrative importance was still significantly subordinated to that of the male protagonists and secondary male characters. Despite the fact that both female ministrations and the rediscovery of romantic, heterosexual love were cardinal for the recovery of the vulnerable male, the woman’s parallel story, as Regarding Henry itself exemplifies, was not considered to be relevant enough to be foregrounded. As a result, the vulnerability of the male victim and his rediscovery of love and family become the single focus of the narrative and, far from representing his feminization or emasculation, suggest the start of the journey that the heroic male must embark on so as to achieve physical, psychological, and moral healing for both himself and his family. It is by

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discovering their inner “male wound” à la Robert Bly,53 after a near-death experience that the protagonist can enjoy a new beginning without having to radically alter the internal reorganization of the family or the broader social system in which it is placed. Regarding Henry’s narrative structure strongly resembles Bly’s initiation ritual into renewed manhood, as portrayed in Iron John. In the film, the role of the strong father figure would be played by Bradley, Henry’s physical therapist. It is this caring, albeit “thoroughly manly” and sexist man who regards most women around him as possible sexual targets who literally fathers Henry throughout his recovery process, which is akin to a child’s developmental process: he teaches Henry to walk, speak, be creative, relate to others, and, eventually, regard women as something that “you gotta have [your]self.” It is Bradley’s care, rather than Henry’s family’s, that is foregrounded throughout the narrative. Henry’s eventual separation from Bradley, which Mother/Sarah is adamant about despite medical advice that he should want to leave first, is portrayed as traumatic but at the same time necessary for Henry to leave his Peter-Pan stage behind in order to become an adult and a proper pater familias. After returning to the feminized realm of the family, however, Henry gets depressed—or gets “another wound”—when he realizes that he is not going to be able to become reintegrated within his former social group. It is then up to Father/Bradley, not Mother/Sarah or his daughter, to help Henry come to terms with his new situation. Moments like these strongly suggest that male agency and male bonding rather than merely family love are essential for men like Henry to recover completely and consolidate his standing as a new man in the new society he has to create for himself. Henry’s later transition into the adult world and away from Bradley is facilitated by his daughter, rather his wife. Not only does he decide to leave the clinic after he shares a moment of epiphany with Rachel, but she is the one who acts as a substitute for Bradley when he returns home. Meanwhile, Henry remains anxious about having to share his bed with an adult woman. Although the film is not very explicit about it, Sarah seems to be busy away from home now that she has had to go back to work so that she can look after her two dependents. During this time, Henry remains more or less an infant and while Robert Bly, Iron John: Men and Masculinity (New York, 2001 (1990)).

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Rachel is at school he enjoys himself as a child would do on his day out on the town: he does not bother with zebra crossings, goes to the cinema, buys himself junk food and ice-cream, and treats himself―and Rachel―to a puppy. Later on Henry goes back to work and, it is suggested, resumes the role of breadwinner, despite the fact that he is no asset to his law firm any longer. It is thus that he is able to find atonement, for in the process he discovers the error of his former ways and, quite remarkably, is able to make up for them. Just after he goes back to work, he finds out that, to his disappointment, Rachel is moving away to boarding school. On the night after her convenient banishment from the narrative, Sarah tries to recuperate her sex life with Henry, which, nonetheless, seems to have been non-existent before he was shot. Even though Henry is sad and extremely nervous about crossing this crucial line in his recovery and eventual transition into/return to adulthood, they eventually make love, which is tantamount to saying that Henry loses his virginity for the second time. Yet the director makes it easier for him, so to speak, by resorting to an elliptical dissolve that places the action in an after-sex moment, where Sarah still seems to be a lot more relaxed than Henry, who is visibly exhausted after such a momentous experience. Even though the elided sex scene provides evidence confirming that Henry is on the rebound and will not stay a disabled, vulnerable child forever―that is, he will become a manly man again, Sarah is still presented as the more sexual character, which is entirely consistent with Ford’s characteristic on-screen rapport with adult sexuality. Sarah and Henry are now about to start a new life as a normal, happy couple by “downsizing” and moving to a new home. However, before the happy end is reached the narrative introduces a suspenseful, melodramatic turn when just by pure chance Henry discovers that Sarah had been unfaithful to him in his “previous life.” Henry feels betrayed and rather irate, which the film blatantly emphasizes through high-contrast cinematography, thereby providing a strong counterpoint to the soft colors that had characterized its photography during Henry’s transformation from evil man to innocent child. This startling moment provides stark evidence of the existence of Henry’s―and Ford’s, by extension―repressed dark side, which hints at the possibility that old Henry may resurface after all and do away with the promise of a happy family reunion, which would not have been such an uncommon prospect in Ford’s film career,

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after all.54 Instead, however, the film uses this precise moment to accelerate Henry’s progress to maturity, since it simultaneously leads to the “shocking” realization that he too had been unfaithful to Sarah and challenged the ethos of family values. This second epiphany rounds up Henry’s transformation into a new man and a new father. After his visit to his former courtroom victims, whom he provides with the evidence that had been withheld during “his famous last trial,” he hopes to bring about his old firm’s downfall singlehandedly. As if! As a final act of individual heroism, Henry gives up his alienating job, gets rid of the formal, boring suits in his wardrobe, and finally subscribes to the family values ideology by saving his daughter, to whom he will now presumably become a proper father, rather than simply a pal. He finds that, as Bradley predicted, this new “man’s outfit” fits him much better. By committing himself to the promise of full-time, responsible fatherhood, Henry finds another route to redeem and vindicate himself. Still, the narrative, conveniently, does not let us cast a verdict on Henry’s fathering skills since it chooses not to disclose the future of the family or the father’s role within it. As mentioned earlier, the film has often been criticized for failing to truly challenge traditional models of manhood, or rather, for stopping short of actually questioning the gender order. By the end of the narrative, Henry has certainly transformed himself into a new man/father, but the roles that both his daughter and wife have played in his transformation and its favorable effects on the family have been downplayed in favor of Bradley’s or his own. Henry’s discovery of his new self, rather than his wife and daughter’s constant support, has turned Henry into the glue that reunites the family and holds it together. With the final reunion of the family, Henry is able to reassert his central standing within the institution, even though he has effectively ceased to be the breadwinner. In the film’s overly sentimental final sequence, his wife remains literally in the background, overshadowed by the magnificent presence of Henry, the father, the true hero, embodied by Hollywood superstar Harrison Ford after all, who rescues his daughter from the type of education that he received but now rejects (see Figure 25). And since in Reagan-Bush Sr.’s One of the film’s reviewers was somewhat unfair in his assessment of Ford’s acting skills during this particular sequence: “this confrontation scene with his wife is supposed to devastate Ford but it is photographed with minimal light to shield the star who cannot emote” (Keith Edwards, “Review of Regarding Henry,” Films in Review 43/9–10 (September 1991), p. 335).

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Figure 25  Sarah must remain in the background for Henry’s/Ford’s heroism to become the sole focus of the film’s sentimental finale. Regarding Henry (produced by J. J. Abrams, Robert Greenhut, Susan MacNair, Mike Nichols, Scott Rudin).

United States a happy family was all one could strive for, a happy family is a happy ending. Therefore, through its final dramatic depiction of male agency, the film provides the spectator with one more portrayal of individual male heroics to add to Harrison Ford’s successful track record. Just as in the opening courtroom sequence, the film closes with a gripping performance on Henry’s/ Ford’s part, which leaves the diegetic―and extradiegetic―audience in awe. Yet the future of Henry’s second chance at fatherhood or the future of the reunited family itself is not disclosed, not even hinted at, and indeed the film ends on a very positive note, with the family, even their puppy, hugging together as Rachel is released from the yoke of the alienating traditions of the conservative elite. However, it is not only the aforementioned possibility that Henry might revert to his old self that spoils this feel-good ending, for a gloomy possibility remains that the family will not be able to get by, no matter how hard the narrative tries to disavow Henry’s dark side and their problematic economic situation. Even though on the surface final closure is achieved, and the family’s utter happiness seems to ensure them against misfortune, one cannot help but wonder what will become of them after the “and they lived happily ever after” turns into daily routine for a family with severely diminished economic resources. Henry’s dramatic transformation cannot obliterate the

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consequences that it might have for his and his family’s future. The obsessively narrow focus that the narrative places on Henry reveals the limited range of its proposed answers to people’s problems and the way men can adapt to their changing social environment in particular. This fact calls into question the real value of Henry’s transformation, since it takes place at a purely personal level and does not even manage to effect any substantial change within his own family structure. In Pfeil’s55 words, “the point is not to give up power, but to emerge from a temporary, tonic power shortage as someone more deserving of its possession and more compassionate in its exercise.” Beynon56 has criticized the new man ethos due to its restricted applicability to the case of economically privileged males, which questions its potential to effect wide-ranging social change. Still, these privileged “pioneers” contributed, however mildly, toward the creation of a different model of masculinity. Although it is true that sociological surveys still attest to the fact that more women than men take care of domestic and family responsibilities, at least something has changed and this change has been effected by nonsexist women and men who display roughly similar traits to new Henry’s. The shot in the head may provide a poor excuse for the transformation of the narcissist into the nurturer, but the pleasure that may be derived from representing men’s capacity to embrace a new self cannot be underestimated. Regarding Henry has been rightly questioned for its failure to carry its rethinking of gender roles and relations a lot further. While the presence of male superstar Harrison Ford may be partly to blame, the narrative, despite its many shortcomings, should also be appreciated for its presentation of an alternative to traditional masculine representation, one that may close the gap between fantasy and lived experience for many men and women. If cinematic masculinity represents an improved version of lived masculinity that can be identified with, fantasized about, and maybe realized, not only does the new man figure help to deconstruct the myth of a monolithic masculinity, but it also proposes other possible alternatives that might contribute to real social and economic change.

Fred Pfeil, White Guys: Studies in Postmodern Domination and Difference (London and New York, 1995), p. 49. 56 John Beynon, Masculinities and Culture (Buckingham and Philadelphia, 2002), p. 99. 55

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Without a doubt, Harrison Ford’s later output during the 1990s continued to foster associations with a sensitive style of masculinity, as well as family and moral values in general, which is why the star’s eventual return to the largely masculinist precepts of the action genre through the Jack Ryan films, The Fugitive, The Devil’s Own, Air Force One, or Firewall in the 2000s offered an interesting re-configuration of the contemporary action hero that constitutes the very basis of Harrison Ford’s unique trademark within contemporary mainstream Hollywood cinema.

Patriot Games: The Man Can’t Help It The film Patriot Games saw Harrison Ford return to what many have always considered to be his home turf, that is, the (melodramatic) action film/thriller formula. Despite his best efforts to diversify, Ford, aka “the thinking man’s action hero,” was well aware that the audience preferred him to perform in an action picture. He too admitted that he was looking forward to playing an action role after a number of subdued roles: “I’ve been doing quite a few desk jobs, and I figured it was time to roll around in the mud […]. I’d done too many suit-and-tie jobs and I reckoned I needed to hit somebody in my next movie or lose that as an option.”57 Given Ford’s own graphic description of his first Jack Ryan movie, it is paradoxical that the star still refused to label these films action thrillers during interviews. Ford had been approached by producers who were interested in him retaking his career within the action formula but he was invariably forced to reject their offers: “I kept turning them down because of [the films’] overweening violence or because they lacked ambition. I wanted to deal with ideas within the context of action” (emphasis added).58 Indeed, as a man of action, Ford has often come across as an ordinary and reflexive man who is reluctant to resort to violence and is normally led to fight only in legitimate self-defense, the famous shooting in Raiders of the Lost Ark providing a memorable exception. Unlike other contemporary action heroes, the characters played by Ford stand Quoted in Pfeiffer and Lewis, The Films, pp. 197; 199. Quoted in Gregg Kilday, “Dangerous games,” in Entertainment Weekly (1992). Available at http:// web.archive.org/web/20090927083805/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/Jack_Ryan/ dangerous_games.php (accessed December 9, 2011).

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out because they are constructed as vulnerable individuals that the audience can potentially identify with. It can therefore be established that the penchant for spectacular, blood-drenched overkill that characterizes the action formula is blatantly absent from Ford’s track record. As he has often declared, he has always been attracted to action roles that offer “an emotional reality more complicated than revenge. What bothers me is blood lust.”59 This type of characterization was already evident, nonetheless, in other “adult” roles in Ford’s filmography. Thus, Rick Deckard’s reluctance to continue to terminate replicants or John Book’s terrified expression after shooting his antagonists became central for the development of Ford’s persona as a Hollywood film hero “with a conscience.” Such aspects of Ford’s powerful brand became further solidified through the role of Jack Ryan, a happily married man and former CIA analyst who is fortuitously led to heroic action while on holiday with his family in London. Despite now being an office-based, technical intelligence expert rather than a member of the special operations unit, Ryan does not hesitate to act in the face of danger, especially if it involves what is dearest to him, that is, his family. Ryan therefore comes across as a mythical figure, an ordinary family man with the heroic potential that the majority of mortals desire for themselves. The empowerment fantasy that the typical Ford action character provides for members of the audience is precisely what prompted the director of the film, Philip Noyce, to declare that Ford embodied a very believable Jack Ryan, since “he plays Jack as an Everyman, which allows us to be in his place. Harrison Ford is the way we would like to be, if we could be our most heroic selves.”60 Just as Ford found it hard to step out of the action formula without compromising his star power in Hollywood, Jack Ryan felt compelled to retaking his former frontline responsibilities in order to reassert his male identity by saving his family (and the rest of us). On the evidence provided by Ford’s “thinking man’s” action film, it seemed that Ford’s conventional everyman hero could not help stepping into action whenever necessary. The film’s pre-production involved various problems that are very telling with respect to the mechanisms of Hollywood stardom. As is well known, the film is based on Clancy’s bestselling novel of the same name, which is part of Quoted in Johnson, “The reluctant star,” p. 45. Quoted in Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 183.

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a series of books whose main protagonist is CIA operative Jack Ryan. The first novel in the series, The Hunt for Red October, had been successfully adapted to the screen two years before, with Alec Baldwin playing Ryan and Sean Connery his Russian antagonist, Captain Ramius. Ford had been contacted on that occasion regarding the role of Jack Ryan, but he had declined. Among other things, the star considered his role to be secondary to Connery’s, which Ford found more interesting than Ryan. Superstar Ford, in short, was not willing to “play second fiddle” to Connery. Ford expressed his interest in taking part in the project, only if he was offered the Ramius role instead. The producers declined the offer as they were committed to Connery, whose presence in a series of films that aimed at replicating the success of the James Bond franchise must have been considered crucial. Eventually, Alec Baldwin went on to play Ryan with more than acceptable results. When the second film in the series, Patriot Games, was in pre-production, Baldwin was contacted once again to play the Ryan role. However, producers could not reach an agreement with him for two reasons: on the one hand, Baldwin was asking for what was considered to be an excessively high fee; on the other hand, the film’s production dates coincided with Baldwin’s previous engagement to play the lead role in A Streetcar Named Desire in Broadway. This led producers to contact Ford once again, who was happy to collaborate, as long as he was granted director and script approval. The film’s stakeholders were exultant as they regarded the new Jack Ryan, the “James Bond for those kinder, gentler, less sexually rampant 1990s,”61 as a potentially lucrative amalgam of the various roles the star had played before. Clearly aware of the mechanisms of contemporary Hollywood stardom and of the most successful marketing strategies used to attract a wide spectrum of the audience, producer Mace Neufeld62 stated: Ford is a star for everybody and this is a broad audience picture […]. What you see in this movie is Harrison using all of the combination of characters he’s played in various films—the cop [in Blade Runner or Witness], Indiana Jones, Han Solo, the lawyer from Presumed Innocent—and he kind of rolls them all into one to give a very, very, very interesting Jack Ryan (emphasis in the original). Jennie Cooney, “The spy who came in from the cold,” Empire 40 (October 1, 1992), p. 74. Ibid., p. 74.

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Interestingly, the star was also paid his asking fee, even though it was considerably higher than Baldwin’s. This clearly suggests that, in the studio’s view, the presence of an A-list star of the stature of Ford would certainly provide its planned “tent pole”63 Jack Ryan project with insurance against economic failure.64 Whereas Baldwin’s economic demands had amounted to $4m, Ford’s fee was $9m, plus another $20m for the two upcoming sequels, and an additional 10 percent of the different films’ profits. This remuneration package was considered to be a record high within the industry. As Jenkins65 explains, The size of the fee set Hollywood’s talent agents into a spin. Every major negotiation in town was reconsidered in its wake. Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis enjoyed what many came to regard as the obscene fruits of the salary spiral that ensued as the $10 million a movie barrier was breached for the first time in Hollywood history.

Despite Ryan’s blatant change in physiognomy and considerably older age, the film went on to make a large profit. However, it must also be stated that Baldwin and Connery’s film was overall more economically and critically successful. Therefore, the fact that the third Ryan film was still Ford’s attests to the industry’s blind faith in A-list performers. Since the studio’s producers were hoping to turn Jack Ryan into a franchise à la James Bond, they seemed to be relying on Ford’s established track record in the action formula. In fact, it is Connery’s and Ford’s images, not Baldwin’s, that are still used to sell the Jack Ryan films of the 1990s, which confirms that, as far as the public is concerned, the most memorable incarnation of Jack Ryan remains Ford’s, over and above Baldwin’s. Another important pre-production setback originated from Clancy himself, who disagreed with many of the changes in the final script. These ranged from Ryan’s older age to turning the Ryans’ house into a more traditional one, which would In Hollywood, “tent poles” are dependable money-makers capable of balancing the rest of a studio’s release schedule in economic terms (Kilday, “Dangerous games”). 64 Some film reviewers seemed to agree with this view. For example, Cooney referred to Baldwin’s unavailability as “a happy coincidence […], what with ‘our’ Harrison tending to be something of a hit with the audience whenever he stops talking and gets stuck into a few loathsome baddies, whereas Mr Baldwin is more likely to elicit a cry of Alec who???” (Cooney, “The spy,” p. 74). Pardi, for his part, compared Baldwin to Ford rather unfavorably: “the lightweight Baldwin lacks the unforced masculinity and movie star authority Ford brings to the role” (Robert Pardi, “Review of Patriot Games,” Films in Review 43/7–8 (1992), p. 268). 65 Jenkins, Harrison Ford, p. 292. 63

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enhance the “family” trope, to replacing the Prince and Princess of Wales as the Irish Republican Army (IRA’s) assassination targets. In addition, as Ford had demanded, the script introduced variations that were more in tune with and reinforced his star persona. Ryan’s characterization as a family man was strengthened and elements of mild humor, such as the film’s final scene in which the sex of the new Ryan baby is about to be disclosed, were introduced. On the other hand, some of the action scenes in which Ryan was allowed to display his macho bravado in the original novel were de-emphasized in order for the suspense of the story to be maximized. As director Philip Noyce66 explained: “we took the action out of your face and put it in your bones where you can fear it—and you don’t necessarily have to see it. We de-explosioned the film, you could say.” In many reviewers’ opinion, this was a wise move that was in tune with the star’s own brand as a reflective, mature man of action, rather than a mindless action hero. However, these changes angered Clancy, who then demanded that his name be removed from the film’s credits. He also went on to vent his anger by having a letter published on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The confrontation had clearly developed into a clash of titans involving Clancy, the filmmakers—including the film’s star—and the studio. It was only when the Paramount executives, who were getting increasingly anxious about the influential author’s outspoken criticism, offered to increase his paycheck that Clancy acquiesced to the various changes introduced to this and subsequent film adaptations of his novels. Finally, the film’s preview found that audiences were not altogether happy with its original ending, which involved a fight between Jack Ryan and his terrorist antagonist filmed in the dark and literally under the water, at the end of which Ryan’s enemy, IRA terrorist Sean Miller (Sean Bean), drowns out of exhaustion. The general view was that the underwater showdown provided a poor climax to the two characters’ confrontation and since audiences seemed to be after a much more cathartic, that is, ruthless, experience, the fight’s final fifty seconds were quickly re-shot in less than one day. Despite audience demand, the director insisted that turning the final confrontation into a much bloodier one that would satisfy the spectators’ most visceral instincts would only be inconsistent with Jack Ryan’s/Harrison Ford’s “more peaceful” disposition67—hence the film’s epilogue fittingly depicting Ryan Quoted in Pfeiffer and Lewis, The Films, p. 200. Jim Emerson, “Noyce’s on,” Film Comment 28/4 (1992), p. 76.

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as a settled, happy family man once again. As a result, the spectacular final combat was transposed to the deck of an out-of-control speedboat, which conforms to formulaic expectations, at the end of which Ryan’s enemy becomes “accidentally” impaled by an anchor as he falls on his back after being pushed by Ryan. Whereas Alec Baldwin’s macho Ryan had not hesitated to execute the traitor point-blank on board the Red October submarine, Ford’s exhausted Ryan can only be left to witness the outcome of “the fatal accident.” Even though his actions have been instrumental in Miller’s predictable death, such an ending clearly works to awkwardly exonerate everyman Ryan by having Miller kill himself, so to speak. Therefore, the film’s last action piece, far from just representing a conventional display of Hollywood’s penchant for spectacular action devoid of narrative significance, provides another good example of the dramatic characterization of the typical Ford action hero. If one compares Ryan’s reaction, and Ford’s performance, during and after the final confrontation to, say, Benjamin Martin’s (Mel Gibson) brutal desire for retribution in The Patriot (2000), a film dealing with comparable fatherly grief that Ford declined to star in, the star’s uniqueness within the action genre becomes apparent.68 Ford believed The Patriot was “too violent,” since many of the children in the story were either killed or endangered. Characteristically, he also told People Magazine that he had turned the role down because he felt “the story was too simple: The Revolutionary War boiled down to one man seeking revenge” (see Figures 26 and 27).69 Further underlining the star’s familial connections, the narrative firmly places the audience within the Ryans’ domestic space from the start, even though images of what seem to be classified CIA documents and fast aerial shots of unspecified landscapes open the film. This has the effect of introducing the audience to the main tropes in the narrative: the portrayal of Jack Ryan In 2013, data analyst Randal Olson compiled a list with the “Top 25 deadliest actors of all time by on-screen kills in movies.” Top of the list is Arnold Schwarzenegger (369 kills), followed by Chow Yun-Fat (295), and Sylvester Stallone (267). Significantly, Harrison Ford is absent from this list. (Randal Olson, “Top 25 deadliest actors of all time by on-screen kills in movies,” randalolson.com, December 31, 2013. Available at http://www.randalolson.com/2013/12/31/deadliest-actors-of-alltime-by-on-screen-kills-in-movies/ (accessed November 2, 2016)). The website moviebodycounts. com, meanwhile, has “only” recorded forty-six “Harrison Ford” kills (Anon, “Harrison Ford body counts,” moviebodycounts.com, no date. Available at http://www.moviebodycounts.com/Harrison_ Ford.htm (accessed November 2, 2016)). 69 Quoted in Anne Marie O’Neill, “The enduring appeal of Harrison Ford,” in People.com (2001). Available at http://people.com/premium/the-enduring-appeal-of-harrison-ford/ (accessed March 24, 2012). 68

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Figures 26 and 27  Drenched in water vs. drenched in blood: Ford’s restrained, childfriendly use of violence is devoid of brutality. Patriot Games (produced by Lis Kern, Charles H. Maguire, Mace Neufeld, Robert Rehme). The Patriot (produced by Michael Dahan, Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich, Ute Emmerich. Directed by Roland Emmerich)

as a family man and of the CIA’s secret international operations within the “New World Order,” which the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 had inaugurated. Patriot Games reflected a completely new, uncertain, and volatile geopolitical situation in which the long-lasting communist threat was about to be replaced by what was rightly perceived to be the new concern for US security, that is, international terrorism. During the initial sequence, an establishing shot introduces us to the Ryans’ all-white clapboard house, which has a traditional feel, both inside and outside. Family photos are prominently displayed while a phone message is being recorded. The look of the home was one of the first things that “auteur” Ford had insisted on modifying, in an attempt to establish Ryan’s firm commitment to family values: “I wanted not to have to play Jack Ryan as a person who had bought into American values. I wanted it to be

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understood, to be felt.”70 Since we quickly realize that Jack is not at home, but actually leaving a message on his own answer phone so as to make sure that his daughter is not disappointed to find her goldfish dead on their return home, this slight disorientation serves to remind the audience, who are about to see some action, that home is where Ryan’s heart is. The narrative then shifts to the Ryans’ oversize family room in a luxury London hotel, where they are spending a short holiday. Ryan is also a guest speaker at the British Naval Academy, where he gives a speech on the political instability brought about by the fall of the communist regime. Moreover, it appears that the Ryans are also trying for a second baby now that Jack has decided to retire from frontline CIA operations and settle for a quieter life by his family’s side. Ryan has decided to put family before work, for which he has been awarded a life full of domestic bliss. Thanks to his legendary analytical and intellectual skills, and his own status as a member of the Marine Corps, he has now become a full-time lecturer in Naval History at Annapolis Marine Academy—and a full-time father and husband. Yet Ryan’s new peaceful life is interrupted during the family’s London sojourn. While on his way to meet his wife and daughter after the lecture, Jack finds himself in the midst of a terrorist attack on Lord Holmes, the British Northern Ireland Secretary and a member of the Royal Family. In a bid to thwart the attack, which has importantly put his own family in danger, Ryan impulsively comes to the rescue and fights the terrorists. Unfortunately, even though he manages to frustrate the attack, he also ends up killing the younger brother of one of the terrorists, Sean Miller, who swears to avenge himself on Ryan and his family. As many a commentator noted at the time, Patriot Games was the first Hollywood film to depict the IRA as “the enemy.”71 While terrorism has featured prominently throughout Hollywood history, never until then had the “baddies” belonged to the IRA—although it is later revealed that they are “merely” a splinter faction. In a country where the Irish terrorist group has found many supporters, this was regarded as a politically incorrect move. As a matter of fact, a scathing review in influential Variety, which praised Alec Baldwin for turning down the role and described the film as “fascistic and blatantly anti-Irish” apart from “mindless, morally repugnant and ineptly directed to Quoted in Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 184. Joan Dean, “Screening the IRA,” Film West 20 (1995), p. 26.

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boot,”72 led to Paramount removing all their advertising from the magazine indefinitely. Nevertheless, most reviews, while not as critical, agreed that the political and historical dimensions of “the troubles” and the controversial popularity of the IRA among Irish-Americans were merely glossed over. Hollywood films, however, have conventionally tended to focus on personal conflicts, rather than political ones, even if the latter provide a useful context against which to stage dramatic conflicts. Hence, the superficiality of Patriot Games’s geopolitical subtext allows for the role of the victimized family, and the family man in particular, to stand out, while also forcing the motives and nature of the enemy to become diluted and almost insignificant. And indeed it is family, rather than politics, that the film is actually about. It is not about geopolitical issues and the CIA’s problematic handling of the threat of international terrorism in the New World Order, but about protecting the sacrosanct US family from any kind of external threat to its wellbeing. It is precisely for this reason that for the second installment in the Jack Ryan series Harrison Ford provided a much more believable Jack Ryan than his younger predecessor. As explained throughout this book, the conflation of man and role has been a mainstay in the construction of Ford’s trademark persona and a valuable marketing tool that has been employed incessantly in order to attract the audience to his films, hence Noyce’s description of their first meeting: When I first met Harrison and we flew to Washington to shoot interiors at the CIA, if he wasn’t already Jack Ryan, he certainly was when he hopped off the plane. Some actors metamorphose into the characters, and then the separation between the character and themselves becomes impossible to define.73

On the other hand, Ford’s mainstream associations with traditional family values also prompted Noyce to proclaim Ford as the ideal Jack Ryan: “Ryan is really an extension of Harrison Ford himself […]. Unlike James Bond, Ryan doesn’t have a string of girlfriends—hence [Ford’s] billing as the archetypal male hero for the 90s.”74 The archetypal male (action) hero for the 1990s, as Jeffords has aptly analyzed, seemed to be a new man who was morally strong Joseph McBride, “Review of Patriot Games,” Variety, June 8, 1992, p. 50. Quoted in Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 182. 74 Quoted in Cooney, “The spy,” pp. 95–6. 72 73

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and devoted to family values.75 His commitment to family and domesticity, however, should not be understood as feminizing, since given the right circumstances—should his family become the target of terrorists—this father and hero’s resurgent masculinity will lead him to act. Using an interesting car analogy that correctly summarizes Ford’s complex aura, Schickel76 described the star’s function in Patriot Games thus: Harrison Ford is like one of those sports cars that can go from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in three or four seconds. He can go from slightly broody inaction to ferocious reaction in approximately the same time span. […] But maybe the best and most interesting thing about him is that he doesn’t look particularly sleek, quick or powerful; until someone causes him to run his engine, he projects the seemly aura of the family sedan.

In the broader socio-political landscape in which the film was produced, the family had become the crucial site where cultural battles were being waged. With the demise of the political and cultural archenemy of the United States, much political debate turned to internal issues and tended to center on the decline of traditional US moral values and, more specifically, the decline of the nuclear family—by now a “nuclear target” itself—as the guarantor of social stability. After the end of the Cold War, the scenario of social unity and moral certainty that the long-lasting confrontation with the “evil” Communist Empire had provided US citizens with started to become destabilized. As Sharp77 explains, The containment of the USSR acted […] to discipline the myriad possible characterisations of “America” into a coherent moral agent. The Cold War offered a set of scripts in quite a literal sense: it wrote parts for the ‘bad guys’

As can be expected, not everyone was satisfied with Ryan’s/Ford’s new man style: “Clancy […] intends his Jack Ryan to be America’s answer to James Bond, but the hero as a model married man and father does not hold a candle to the counterspy as womanizer, hedonist, master of sardonic repartee. A brief scene of connubial contentment in a licitly shared bed does not play nearly so well as sex with a bevy of distressing damsels given to black-widow orgasms” (John Simon, “From paramilitary to paraplegic,” National Review 44/14 (1992), p. 46). Simon certainly failed to understand that licit, procreative sex, in this case, is what a typical Ford character is usually content with. 76 Richard Schickel, “The menace is missing,” in Time (1992). Available at http://content.time.com/ time/magazine/article/0,9171,975727,00.html (accessed December 12, 2008). 77 Joanne P. Sharp, “Reel geographies of the New World order: Patriotism, masculinity and geopolitics in post-cold war American movies,” in S. Dalby (ed.), Rethinking Geopolitics (London, 1998), p. 157. 75

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and for the “good guys.” […]. The end of the Cold War has disrupted the repetition of this geopolitics and the identity it reflected into the space of the USA.

As a result of the disappearance of the communist threat, the United States was forced to search for a new substitute enemy, which would reassure its citizens of their moral and cultural supremacy and justify the massive military and intelligence spending that sustains the United States’ geo-strategic hegemony: that the Cold War was constitutive of American self-identity, rather than a threat to it, has now become quite clear in the clamor to find an alternative source of danger against which to define the boundaries of the USA. […]. The end of the Cold War has required new geographies of danger in order to make believable the conflict and tension in [Hollywood] stories.78

It was in the combined threat posed to US citizens—and families in particular—by international terrorism and drug-cartel trafficking, which incidentally provide the dramatic background to Ford’s two Jack Ryan films, that the culturally necessary enemy was found. As much of the conservative socio-political discourse claimed, in order for US civilization to endure and maintain its hegemonic power within the New World Order, one must, among other things, cherish the (traditional) family, the emblem of US civilization, and the repository of the United States’ alleged moral superiority over other nations. Patriotic citizens were required to love and defend their country but, above all else, protect their families from external threats. As the promotional tagline claimed, somewhat contradictorily given the actual evidence provided by the film’s plot, “Not for honor. Not for country. For his wife and child.” Since the nuclear family had by 1992 become a symbol of traditional, or “true,” US values and moral beliefs, the threat posed to the family in Patriot Games can, by metaphorical extension, be said to represent the threat that international terrorism—or any other kind of enemy—was understood to pose for innocent US citizens, or the nation itself. It is therefore Ryan’s zeal to protect his family that reveals both his superior moral righteousness and his patriotism. Hence, any threat to the Ryans becomes a matter of national security that requires the CIA’s secret intervention, as dotingly portrayed in Patriot Games. Interestingly Ibid., pp. 152; 156.

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Figures 28 and 29  Harrison Ford, heroism, and patriotism are conflated in the film’s trailer. Patriot Games (produced by Lis Kern, Charles H. Maguire, Mace Neufeld, Robert Rehme).

enough, the film’s dramatic trailer was much more explicit in its conflation of performer, family, and patriotism. Images of Ford/Ryan, his family, and members of the IRA and the CIA were combined with images of the film’s title and its main protagonist’s name against what seemed to be a frayed US flag blowing in the background, symbolizing perhaps an imminent threat to national security (see Figures 28 and 29). The trailer’s narration also contained a different, and very significant, wording of the aforementioned tagline. This supreme example of film marketing works as a virtual advertisement for the CIA, though it also manages to underline militarism; mainstream US values; and, in particular, the conflation of violence, love of family, and love of nation. While it starts by emphasizing the political conflict depicted in the film and the role of the typical hero embodied by Ford—“a reluctant soldier in

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a war that isn’t his”—it then goes on to emphasize and glorify male heroics, family values, and US patriotism, as well as democratic principles—“a man fighting for everything that he holds dear. For justice; for freedom; for family; for keeps.” In short, Patriot Games does not make sense if one fails to understand the film’s investment in the politics of family values and Ford’s increasing emergence as a mature, patriotic hero with a family, and a conscience. On the other hand, through its hysterical portrayal of the besieged family, Ford’s film can be accurately linked to the family psychothrillers of the late 1980s and 1990s, which became influential cultural products in which the crusade to protect the traditional family from its countless enemies had become evident.79 In fact, the casting of über-nurturing wife and mother Ann Archer as the loving Cathy Ryan provided an evident link to the trend-setting family psychothriller Fatal Attraction (1987), in which she played Michael Douglas’s long-suffering but loyal wife. Even though this time Cathy Ryan is a competent eye surgeon, whose professional skills are displayed in the name of political correctness in a clearly superfluous sequence within the main story, the film’s masculinist values entail that she must still be constructed as a passive figure who has things “done” to her and is unable to protect her daughter. Hence, unlike in the family psychothrillers, where female characters often took center stage, the solution to the family’s predicament in Patriot Games is firmly placed on the necessity for our “all-man” yet sensitive hero to exercise his cultural prerogative to revert to violence in order to protect what is most sacred. Patriot Games, like countless Hollywood films before and after it, became an apology for male violence, however deferred, subdued, or generically justified, in the name of family values.80 Ryan’s conversation with his Marine colleague Lieutenant Jackson (Samuel L. Jackson) on his return to

Virginia Luzón-Aguado, The Family as Target: Narratives of Besiegement in the Contemporary Psychothriller (Ann Arbor, 2006). 80 For a similar argument centered on the family and the action film, see Schneider and Tudor (Karen Schneider, “With violence if necessary: Rearticulating the family in the contemporary action thriller,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27/1 (1999), pp. 2–11; Deborah Tudor, “Nation, family and violence in Gladiator,” in Jump Cut, 2002. Available at http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc45.2002/ tudor/index.html (accessed November 2, 2009). For the endurance of the powerful “family in peril” trope, also see Atkinson, who maintains that although the subject became more prominent after the Second World War, when classical film noir struck a powerful blow at complacent ideas about the stability of middle-class (family) life, it has endured until the twenty-first century, as Ford’s own Firewall (2006) or Taken (2008) and its sequels attest (Michael Atkinson, “Family in peril,” Sight and Sound 18/4 (2008), p. 23). 79

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the United States, during which he explains why he decided to step into action while in London, is rather explicit in this respect: Jackson: So you just waded on in like John Wayne. What were you thinking? Ryan: I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking. Jackson: You don’t know? You sound like some of my students! Ryan: It just pissed me off. I couldn’t just watch him shoot those people right in front of me. It was … rage, pure rage. Jackson: Here’s hoping you never get mad at me, man.

As mentioned above, through its initial contextualization, the film firmly places Ryan within the context of the family, and it is the extraordinary circumstances in which he finds himself while in London that brings out the hero within. Such unexpected circumstances and dramatic coincidences are also important characteristics of melodrama, a genre that has traditionally been linked to women’s issues and family concerns. More recently, however, there has been a tendency to re-read the “all man” action genre by focusing on its links with the melodramatic.81 In his historical studies, Steve Neale has located the origin of the contemporary US action genre in the stage melodrama of the nineteenth century and its earlier precursor, the sensational novel. Such popular genres, which later on evolved into some of the earliest film genres in US cinema, such as the chase film or the adventure serial, were characterized by dramatic cliff-hanger climaxes and an emphasis on “victimized innocence, evil conspiracy, dark mysteries and spectacular incident.”82 In Neale’s view, action films are the contemporary representatives of this tradition, since they have inherited many a feature that is usually associated with early melodramas, such as the aforementioned staging of dramatic coincidences, a tendency to focus on sensational visual spectacle, Manichean conflicts between ordinary and flamboyant characters, and the victimization of the innocent hero or

Steve Neale, “Melo talk: On the meaning and use of the term ‘melodrama’ in the American trade press,” Velvet Light Trap 32 (1993b), pp. 66–89; Steve Neale, “Action-adventure as a genre,” in Y. Tasker (ed.), Action and Adventure Cinema (London and New York, 2004 (2000)); Yvonne Tasker, “The family in action,” in Y. Tasker (ed.), Action and Adventure Cinema (London and New York, 2004b); Mark Gallagher, Action Figures: Men, Action Films and Contemporary Adventure Narratives (New York and Houndmills, Basingstoke, 2006). 82 Martin Rubin, Thrillers (Cambridge, 1999), p. 42. 81

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heroine. Neale is certainly not alone in arguing that such similarities are observable within mainstream Hollywood cinema today, as the most popular examples in Ford’s cinematic output demonstrate. While the Indiana Jones films of the 1980s represented a clear update on the popular adventure serials, which encouraged Ford’s long-term association with classical conceptions of acting and characterization, other action—and non-action—vehicles in Ford’s career can easily be described as melodramatic in the sense proposed by Neale or Williams.83 Moreover, Ford’s long-standing tendency to back film projects with a certain degree of moral complexity that intend to elicit an emotional reaction from the audience clearly suggests that melodramatic concerns have always been an important guiding principle in his career. His intense, almost obsessive, desire to portray himself as “something else besides an action hero,” however, can sometimes border on pontification: I hope audiences get a combination of entertainment and emotional exercise from the film, which I think is beneficial. One without the other is like having a diet that’s too heavily based on fats or sugars. It just isn’t interesting enough. I like to think I am providing a rounded, complex and emotional experience for the audience, especially when you’re dealing with as serious a subject as Patriot Games.84

If Brian Taves85 is right in pointing out that action “tends to shift sentiment, character, dialogue and family to the background,” then it can be firmly established that Ford is no ordinary action hero, and he has more in common with, say, a Jodie Foster mother courage character than a typical Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis one. Ford’s characterization as a vulnerable everyman/father/hero victimized by a terrorist is undeniably melodramatic. As analyzed in previous chapters, the vulnerability displayed by Ford’s characters, as well as their ability to elicit the audience’s sympathy and compassion, is no doubt the source of much of his appeal. Still, as Rubin86 has noted, the crucial difference between melodrama and the thriller lies in the fact that the hero or heroine in thrillers, while vulnerable, Williams, “Melodrama revised.” Quoted in Sandra Siepak, “Regarding Harrison,” in Valley Magazine (1992). Available at https://web. archive.org/web/20080516235714/http://apartment42.com/valley.htm (accessed February 8, 2008). 85 Brian Taves, The Romance of Adventure: The Genre of Historical Adventure Movies (Jackson, 1993), p. 5. 86 Rubin, Thrillers, p. 7. 83 84

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is significantly more proactive than in the traditional family melodrama, which in cultural terms has led to the masculinization of the former mode and the feminization of the latter. Ford’s characters’ competitive advantage, so to speak, in the “post-feminist” era lies in their ability to integrate melodramatic concerns—such as emotion, victimization, or the family—within a traditional male characterization that is based on competence, toughness, self-reliance, and the eventual empowering use of violence, if necessary. It is at the precise moment when Ryan, hardly suppressing his tears, sees his wife and daughter badly injured in hospital after they have been chased by Miller that he resolves to take action by re-joining the CIA in order to hunt the terrorist. Ford’s quiet talent for melodramatic characterization becomes evident throughout this sequence, which is heavily predicated on the display of Ryan’s barely concealed—though never excessive—emotions and their

Figures 30 and 31  “It was rage, pure rage”: A slight facial movement indicates a ­significant shift from intense pathos to intense rage, or from melodrama to the a­ ction thriller. Patriot Games (produced by Lis Kern, Charles H. Maguire, Mace Neufeld, Robert Rehme).

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effect on the sympathetic audience, but also on the prominent resurgence of aggressive masculinity (see Figures 30 and 31). What is striking, however, is that our “peaceful” and reluctant hero’s own desire for retaliation at this juncture has hardly been remarked upon. It could be argued that, as was the case with the reception of Presumed Innocent, Ford’s persona played a key role in this respect. By way of an example, McCorkle87 claimed that the plot contrasts Sean [Miller]’s drive for revenge with Ryan’s dedication to protecting his family [and relies] upon a hero who is drawn into fighting terrorists because of his own sense of morality […]. Ryan is portrayed as a peaceful man driven to violence to protect his family (emphasis added).

In Ryan’s case, it is significant that, unlike other, more individualistic heroes, he decides to resort to the CIA to resolve his personal conflicts. Yet his reliance on the authorities, the CIA in this case, is easily explained due to his own status as a former analyst within the secret agency. Hence, since his impulsive, “John-Wayne-like” intervention at the beginning of the film has shown that he has the drive and courage of a true hero, his later return to the CIA as an office-bound analyst, or a bureaucrat, poses no danger to the audience’s perception of Ryan as a heroic character. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that Ryan is also an ex-Marine, or a veteran soldier. Therefore, as an ex-Marine, former CIA analyst, and current history lecturer at Annapolis, Ryan poses an unusual but potent triple threat to his opponent, namely as an “athlete, technical warrior and intellectual rolled into one,”88 and, of course, a furious, protective father to boot. Prompted by his wife’s angry pleading after they are harassed by Miller over the telephone, Ryan decides to take extreme measures, a move that is welcomed by both his Marine and former CIA colleagues, his own wife, and, by extension, the adoring audience, always ready to cheer on and wave the flag for Ford’s heroes. As one of the CIA bosses tells Ryan as he leads him into the secret operations management room, “this is where you have taken us, Jack,

Suzanne McCorkle, “American hero meets terrorist: True Lies and Patriot Games after September 11, 2001,” in M. Matelski et al. (eds), War and Film in America: Historical and Critical Essays (Jefferson and London, 2003), pp. 162; 170. 88 John Simon, “From paramilitary,” p. 44. 87

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into battle.” The fact that Patriot Games presents the use of violence as the only viable solution to ensure the security of the Ryans—and ultimately the nation—points at the double standard that Hollywood applies to its treatment of violence. As Boggs and Pollard89 describe in their analysis of the portrayal of terrorism in contemporary Hollywood films, Discourse on violence reflects the double standard permeating so much of the American public sphere: violence is sanctioned, even celebrated, in the service of US power and wealth but it is treated as a violation of civilized values when used by others. […]. Larger-than-life images of threatening villains willing to destroy civilisation are vital to the efficacy of such propaganda, and nowhere are these images more powerful than in Hollywood movies.

While the ideology of Manifest Destiny—some would say US imperialism— has been used to justify the use of violence throughout the history of the world’s first superpower, Ryan’s use of violence is sanctioned because it is used in the name of moral principles. Patriot Games therefore provides an excellent example of the narrative characterization of the typical Ford action hero of the 1990s, in which melodrama and action become inevitably fused: a virtuous but victimized ordinary family man who does not hesitate to revert to violence whenever necessary. It is certainly love of family, rather than solely patriotism, that provides Jack with the motivation to act. Ford, in fact, did not seem to consider the latter a good enough reason: “this isn’t a mere ‘let’s kick ass for the old red, white and blue flag’ enterprise. I wouldn’t be happy playing a character who is so unthinking.”90 However, within the discourse of the film, it is impossible to separate one from the other. It is only by conflating the defense of the family and the defense of the nation that the rest of the narrative makes sense. One cannot truly imagine that the CIA would display all its capabilities and exercise its full power—by re-tasking spy satellites to locate terrorist camps or sending killing squadrons—just to protect one ordinary family, even if it is the family of a celebrated former member of its own staff. Only if the Ryans

Carl Boggs and Tom Pollard, “Hollywood and the spectacle of terrorism,” New Political Science 28/3 (2006), p. 349. 90 Quoted in Drew Mackenzie and Fiona McIntosh, “Harrison’s all man,” in The Daily Mirror (1992). Available at http://web.archive.org/web/20091005092427/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/ Jack_Ryan/all_man.php (accessed December 9, 2007). 89

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are understood to stand for the nation, as I have already suggested, can the subsequent action make full sense. As observed by many a critic91 at the time of the film’s release, the CIA were keen to use the film as a prolonged advertising feature or a powerful publicity instrument at a juncture when it was necessary to justify the massive expense involved in the maintenance of an agency that had become “obsolete” after the disintegration of the USSR. History has demonstrated that the CIA’s secret operations continue to play a vital role in the implementation of US defense and foreign policy, but in 1992 the agency was keen to advertise itself by opening the doors of its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to a film crew for the first time in its more than fifty years of history. Ford’s high-profile involvement in Patriot Games no doubt played a crucial part in this decision. Ever since the 1970s, the reputation of the CIA had been in decline after such scandals as Watergate and the Iran-Contra Affair. As mentioned above, its role had by 1992 become more ambiguous and questionable than ever before, which led the agency to launch an advertising campaign via a major Hollywood feature. Using the film as a wide-reaching platform for the display of the CIA’s full power in the name of family values must have been an enticing and timely opportunity for “the Company.” In fact, one of the most memorable sequences in the film, namely the launch of the attack on the terrorist camp in Northern Africa, was shot on location in Langley. Ford received widespread critical praise for his performance in this sequence, which is preceded by an investigation into the possible location of the IRA terrorists who Ryan, or rather the CIA, is after. Ryan leads the team and it is a far-fetched combination of intuition and intellectual skills that leads Ryan to a specific camp in the “rogue” state of Libya, where members of a number of terrorist groups, from the IRA to the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), the Red Brigade, and Shining Path are training together. By introducing a multinational team of terrorists, the narrative suggests that only an alliance of the major terrorist groups at the time, supported and protected by a rogue state, would pose a big enough threat to the security of the United States, a belief that the events of September 11, 2001, certainly shattered.

Cooney, “The spy”; Nancy Griffin, “I spy,” Premiere 15/10 (June 1, 1992); James Rusbridger, “Someone to watch over you,” Empire 40 (October 1, 1992).

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Once the terrorist camp has been located, the film starts to provide the audience with a spectacular display of the CIA technological capabilities, which are highly fetishized. It is here that the film is at its most “James Bondian.” Even though we have by now become accustomed to accessing similar technology from our own phones or computers via, say, Google Earth, live satellite transmission, and webcams, such technology was mesmerizing only a few years ago. It was amidst such a powerful display of technology that Ford’s subtle style of performance—revealed through a sustained close-up of Ryan’s reaction to the attack—stood out in the opinion of many reviewers. Nevertheless, his suggestive performance during this sequence can be described as contradictory. Even though it is his boss Admiral James Greer (James Earl Jones) who actually provides the Special Air Services (SAS) with the information necessary to launch the attack, which results in the death of all of the camp residents, not only the members of the IRA, it is Ryan who has passed the relevant information to him, despite the fact that his only evidence is the presence of an undistinguishable female figure in the camp. Because he cannot be entirely sure that he has identified the correct target, Ryan watches the killing from a cautious distance. While others are excited and make comments such as “it’s a kill,” Ryan observes the whole scene displaying an ambiguous range of emotions, which can be said to go from horror, to anguish, to immense guilt. The whole sequence seems to recreate the first bombing of Baghdad, live on CNN, during Operation Desert Storm, but also, as various reviewers pointed out, represents the attack as a “harmless” computer game displayed on the big screen. The comfortable distance that the narrative creates for the audience allows them not to confront political realities. While some92 have described the scene as Noyce’s authorial attempt to be critical of the effects of the CIA’s illegal operations and US interventionism, and more generally, the use of sanitized violence in Hollywood films, others93 left such political and moral issues aside in order to focus on the scene as a supreme demonstration of Ford’s capability to instill

Karl Quinn, “Patriot Games,” Cinema Papers 90/1 (October 1992), p. 54; Emerson, “Noyce’s on,” p. 73. 93 Hal Hinson, “Review of Patriot Games,” in The Washington Post (1992). Available at http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/patriotgamesrhinson_a0a782.htm (accessed June 5, 2008); Jenkins, Harrison Ford, p. 292. 92

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an intense degree of compassion into his characters through performance. As Griffin,94 quoting Ford, points out, the drama of the scene, which uses very little dialogue, lies both in the impact of the satellite footage […] and in Ford’s ability to draw the audience into his dilemma. “The pleasure of it is doing it without talking about it. It’s not ‘talk story’, it’s ‘I feel it—you feel it too?’”

However, it is for this precise reason and at this dramatic point that the narrative becomes incoherent. For how can Ryan feel anguished and guilty about the spectacular massacre carried out by the CIA when it was he who presented the intelligence to launch the attack? In this respect, Fernández Valenti95 complained that Ryan’s suffering at such a crucial moment reveals the plot’s shallowness and, more specifically, a lack of consistency in character construction. Yet while it is evident that Ryan’s apparent anguished mood is narratively inconsistent, Fernández Valenti failed to grasp that it is entirely in tune with Ford’s mythical construction as a reluctant and intensely moral hero who, despite it all, is still able to show compassion for his terrorist enemies. It is as if, through his performance, Ford was trying the impossible, namely to deny the feelings of rage harbored by Ryan while pleading for the audience’s understanding: “it really was not my intention. They made me do that to them!”96 As pointed out earlier, retaliation through the use of violence is morally justified when it is in the interest of US national security, or, in this particular case, its surrogate manifestations. This is easily observable when the epilogue of Patriot Games is contrasted with that of the less obviously mainstream Hollywood product A History of Violence. Cronenberg’s film, which, according to IMDB,97 Ford declined to star in, similarly depicts a reluctant hero’s intervention but deals with the issue of male violence more critically. At the end of the former film, Ryan can return to the safety of his home and resume

Griffin, “I spy,” p. 78. Tomás Fernández Valenti, “Juego de Patriotas: espionaje, terrorismo y unidad familiar,” Dirigido por 206 (October 1992), pp. 28–9. 96 Despite the praise that Ford received for his performance, the way in which the self-deprecating star discussed his role provides an excellent example of his status as a “professional star,” in which personification, or the ability to “behave on cue,” plays a crucial role: “for me it was a simple reaction shot. Basically, it was one of those scenes where you just show up—and try not to fall over, because I didn’t even have to walk!” (quoted in Griffin, “I spy,” p. 78). 97 IMDb.com, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399146/trivia (accessed May 17, 2015). 94 95

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his blissful family life after having disposed of Miller, who had incidentally flown to the United States before the SAS massacre took place. The Ryans, as representatives of the national interest, are allowed to become a happy family once again, their joy complete with the future arrival of a new member. The parallel sequence in Cronenberg’s film, however, suggests that reintegration into the family, or the community for that matter, after a display of the father’s potential for extreme violence, is no easy task. Therefore, Patriot Games’s construction of normative masculinity and fatherhood via its everyman hero underlines the questionable conflation of masculinity, ordinariness, and the use of extreme violence, even if reluctantly and remorsefully, that Hollywood, and Ford himself, excels at. Patriot Games can be considered to be a landmark in Ford’s developing persona, as it was thanks to this film that his “action family man” credentials became solidified. Throughout the rest of the decade, he continued to foster such associations in such melodramatic action vehicles as The Fugitive, Clear and Present Danger and Air Force One, Ford’s most important hits of the 1990s, to which now I turn.

The Beleaguered Innocent, or “By Endurance We Conquer” This section seeks to investigate, on the one hand, the ways in which Ford’s iconicity further established itself during the 1990s through a set of narratives belonging to different genres but displaying more or less consistent narrative trajectories and thematic implications, and on the other, the important effects that contemporary stardom may have upon industrial decisions and artistic practices. In short, this section intends to provide further multidimensional insights into Ford as a star, performer, “auteur,” and above all cultural icon for the 1990s, which will hopefully make it easier to understand, before moving on to a more extensive analysis of the archetypal 1997 film Air Force One, what it is that made Ford strike a chord with the audience during the last decade of the twentieth century. The fact that the following individual analyses are comparatively shorter does not imply that these films are necessarily minor examples in Ford’s oeuvre. In particular, The Fugitive (1993) and Clear and Present Danger (1994) became great critical and financial successes, although they contributed very little in terms of star construction.

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Sir Earnest Shakleton’s proverbial motto “By Endurance We Conquer” would have provided a fitting subtitle for the majority of Ford’s roles in The Fugitive, Clear and Present Danger, Sabrina (1995), and The Devil’s Own, through which the most prominent characteristics of Ford’s mainstream persona, that is, heroism, authenticity, ordinariness, vulnerability, perseverance, love of family, and a strong sense of duty, became consolidated. Perhaps the most notable case was The Fugitive, the successful remake of the popular 1960s series. The film received widespread critical acclaim as a rare action thriller with rich characterization. The positive reviews that both the director and two main actors received for their respective skills98 established The Fugitive as a “quality” action picture with “the standards of an earlier, more classic time, when acting, character and dialogue were meant to stand on their own.”99 The film’s somewhat oxymoronic categorization, by contemporary Hollywood standards, matched both Ford’s artistic aspirations and his desire to combine entertainment with narrative depth and sentiment. The Fugitive dramatizes the plight of a victimized hero in a plot that exemplifies, once again, the archetypal Harrison Ford narrative of the 1990s: an ordinary, innocent man becomes involved in extraordinary situations, which allows him to discover and display his heroic side. As a result of his melodramatic, though invariably restrained, characterization, the ordinary and the heroic are smoothly blended in Ford’s fictional persona. As already described, it is Ford’s everyman qualities, imperfect good looks, and reluctant kind of heroism that encourage the members of the audience to identify with— and feel empowered through—the characters he plays. It is thanks to this aura of authenticity and nearness, together with an embarrassed kind of sex appeal and a subdued performance style, that Ford has managed to construct a substantial fan base among children and adults, women and men alike. Because of their ordinariness and vulnerability, his characters’ effectiveness and ability to stay in control are constantly threatened, only for these qualities to be reasserted by the end of the narrative, thereby reassuring spectators about male capacity for heroism, autonomy, and self-control. This particular kind As is customary, not everything was praise for Ford’s acting skills: “Ford must have to keep nudging himself to remember which particular picture he’s in at the moment” (Stanley Kauffman, “The reality game,” The New Republic 209/12–13 (1993), p. 36). 99 Roger Ebert, “Review of The Fugitive,” in Rogerebert.com (1993). Available at http://www.rogerebert. com/reviews/the-fugitive-1993 (accessed January 27, 2008). 98

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of narrative development and its concomitant (re)articulation of masculinity as agency have been recurrent motifs in Ford’s career. Since the typical Ford narrative seems to provide the same narrative pleasures as film genres, stars― especially “professional” stars in Geraghty’s100 wording―such as Ford can be analyzed in a similar fashion, that is, as a consistent body of work with a large measure of continuity but also a certain degree of mutability, as the four films this section comprises evince. Admittedly, however, variations were more noticeable in the actor’s output during the 1980s and since the 2000s than in the 1990s, a decade during which, by purely personal choice, super-star Ford became increasingly constructed as a sensitive and morally incorruptible family man-cum-hero. Since this is the side of Ford that the audience seemed to be most attracted to, the star, the self-confessed worker “in a service occupation” with ever-increasing star power and business acumen, was happy to acquiesce. As Maslin101 put it in her flattering review, It’s worthwhile to mention what the film is missing. It has no gratuitous bloodshed, no noxious posturing and no sadism. There are no schoolyard insults or four-letter witticisms, of the sort so often used when nothing better comes to the screenwriters’ mind. There are no pop songs, bikini-clad extras or other cheap tricks to keep the audience occupied. The audience has enough to do simply keeping up with a cliché-free story told at breakneck pace.

The character ambiguities, as well as the melodramatic, convoluted plots staged in both Frantic and Presumed Innocent, were to a large extent reworked in The Fugitive. Nevertheless, a happy resolution is achieved thanks to the customary tenacity and resourcefulness, rather than brute force, of the beleaguered hero, who despite all the evidence mounting against him manages to prove his innocence, while also saving a few lives along the way. In an era in which individual agency and decision power have become compromised, Ford stands out as a morally unambiguous hero who never gives up and surmounts obstacles against all odds, thereby allowing the audience to believe that there is room for heroic potential in the common, decent man, which allows the spectator to feel empowered via his/her identification with the Christine Geraghty, “Re-examining stardom: Questions of texts, bodies and performances,” in C. Gledhill and L. Williams (eds), Reinventing Film Studies (London, 2000), p. 190. 101 Janet Maslin, “Review of The Fugitive,” in The New York Times (1993). Available at http://web.archive. org/web/20080517000834/http://apartment42.com/fugitive-review.txt (accessed January 15, 2008). 100

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Figure 32  In The Fugitive, the “average” man can both escape a spectacular train crash and melt into the crowd. The Fugitive (produced by Keith Barish, Roy Huggins, Arnold Kopelson).

hero. In a nutshell, the typical Ford character manages to stay in control of his own destiny by virtue of his intelligence and perseverance, and this fantasy becomes all the stronger thanks to Ford’s mundane qualities and reluctant brand of stardom and heroism (see Figure 32). Still, for all his bravery and capacity for endurance, Ford’s/Dr. Kimble’s panic is made manifest throughout the relentless chase that he is subjected to. It is indeed difficult to imagine other, more stolid action heroes displaying such a constant measure of fear and anxiety—not even the more contemporary Jason Bourne. This kind of heroic vulnerability awakens the spectators’ concern for Kimble, while it increases the level of narrative suspense: will Kimble be able to escape? Will Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) be able to catch him first? While identification with any fictional character works at the level of fantasy, Ford’s characters’ brand of imperfect heroism is anchored in the realm of the possible, which increases the potential impact that the meanings attached to the characters he has played may have upon the audience. In addition, Ford’s willingness to perform many of his own stunts adds one more element of dramatic realism that works to deepen the spectators’ appreciation and identification with the long-suffering action hero. Meanwhile, the inflexible law enforcers who are after this champion of justice do not appear to be very concerned about his plight, which yet again encourages

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the audience to root for Kimble, whose innocence has been established through various flashbacks. The haste and obvious carelessness with which Dr. Kimble’s guilt is established by indifferent lawyers and bureaucrats intensify the nightmarish feeling that pervades the film and points to popular paranoia discourses undermining the legitimacy of political and legal institutions, a trope that had already featured prominently in Ford’s earlier output. The subplot involving medical, pharmaceutical, and business corruption certainly adds a contemporary touch that increases the feeling of paranoia that was already present in the 1960s’ original series. By the end of the film, the hero has managed to reassure the audience that no matter how powerless and manipulated they might feel by veiled interests and corporate greed, there is always a glimmer of hope provided by old-fashioned incorruptible individuals such as Dr. Kimble, aka Harrison Ford. The moral certitude that a character like Dr. Kimble provides offers the audience some much-needed relief as it evinces that virtue can still be found amongst ordinary members of the public/ audience, or their surrogate filmic representatives. Dr. Kimble’s sense of morality is staged from the very start of the film through both characterization and various narrative devices, while Ford’s established persona can be considered “to do the rest.” For example, a preliminary version of the script involved an affair between Kimble and a young doctor, but the script was modified so as not to jeopardize the audience’s perception of the hero’s ethics.102 Also, and despite the studio’s protestations, Ford insisted on sporting an unflattering bushy beard in the first part of the film in order to convey the character’s eccentric personality, as well as his desire to remain an outsider within the medical establishment. Unlike his colleagues, Kimble chooses not to go on a gift cruise paid by the pharmaceutical company investing money in the hospital where he works, as it would compromise his moral and professional integrity. This move effectively creates a symbolic gap between Kimble and the all-powerful medical establishment, which turns him into a reluctant member of the upper class who is keener on producing honest, decent work than on taking advantage of his social privilege. It is through the values he displays that he is symbolically aligned with the middle class, for his wealth and privilege are coded as being the result of his hard, respectable work, Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 190.

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rather than lineage or corruption. Yet, Kimble’s unfair conviction eventually brings about total economic and social disempowerment for the doctor— Lieutenant Gerard likens him to “a gopher” and Kimble’s various adopted identities establish a firm link between him and members of the lower class— which makes his eventual vindication all the more pleasurable. Moreover, despite the fast-paced nature of the narrative, Kimble can always find time for good practice and save other people’s lives, even if that entails putting his own life at serious risk. In fact, Kimble’s readiness to help a colleague surgeon in a high-risk operation at the beginning of the film indirectly leads to his own wife’s death, for which he feels morally responsible. And indeed, it is only after a lot of suffering that Kimble manages to prove his innocence and identify the one-armed man that he insists killed his wife, but in the process, he also manages to expose a pharmaceutical plot involving very important risks for public health. Hence, not only does the hero succeed in saving his own life and reputation, but his victimization and sacrifice also serve to unveil business and medical corruption, thereby helping make the world a safer, better place. As the Washington Post critic Desson Howe103 put it, Kimble “is not just a fugitive, he’s Messiah, M.D.” It is through his intelligence, resolve, and generosity, rather than through manipulation or the use of brute force, that Dr. Kimble becomes an apt hero for the caring 1990s, while also comforting the audience that, despite everything, the world will be safe in his dependable hands. In Kimble’s/Ford’s mythical, melodramatic world, virtue is always rewarded, while vice never goes unpunished. By the end of the film, evil has been purged and Gerard has finally become convinced of the doctor’s innocence. While Gerard and Kimble’s memorable confrontation serves as an additional reinforcement of the latter’s moral standing, it also serves to outline various differences in their personalities, and thus different styles of masculinity. The chase, especially its very first moments, characterized as they are by rapid editing, dramatic music, and tense, fast dialogue, dramatizes the nail-biting confrontation and is a very good example of economic but effective film characterization. Gross104 has pointed out that chase scenes in Desson Howe, “Review of The Fugitive,” in The Washington Post (1993). Available at http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/thefugitivepg13howe_a0afe7.htm (accessed June 5, 2011). 104 Lawrence Gross, “Big and loud,” in J. Arroyo (ed.), Action/Spectacle Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader (London, 2000 (1995)), p. 7. 103

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action films usually provide pure spectacle without providing much added narrative complexity. Yet for an action film such as The Fugitive centering on a chase within a chase, characterization is a very strong point. Ford105 rightly referred to the film as a “character study,” rather than an “action film,” since the spectacular pyrotechnics that are typical of action films―the train crash, the escape at the dam―are mainly reserved for the first part of the narrative, before Kimble returns to Chicago in order to prove his innocence. Kimble’s anguish and despair contrast with Gerard’s self-assuredness and sarcasm as the frantic chase begins. Meanwhile, Gerard’s groomed, smart looks are also meant to contrast with Kimble’s totally deglamorized shabbiness, later turning to unassuming casualness. However, while the story emphasizes the loneliness and sorrow resulting from Kimble’s dramatic loss and his willingness to prioritize compassion for other fellow human beings over and above his own freedom and safety, Gerard’s more traditional performance of masculine toughness, signaled among other things by his steadfast refusal to bargain and his constant need to banter, cannot entirely conceal the concern and affection he displays toward the members of his team, whom he refers to as his “kids” or “bambini,” and, ultimately, toward Kimble. Nevertheless, the forced way in which Gerard asserts his authority and interacts with others ultimately signals his need to keep boundaries in place by putting on a performance of masculine toughness. However, the teasing to which he is subjected by his own staff also signifies his own self-awareness and a likely measure of discomfort resulting from his constant need to maintain such a distance. Conversely, Kimble’s own brand of “performativity” derives from his pressing need to evade the authorities but betrays no obvious self-questioning of identity, which is presented as rather solid from start to finish. This fact hints at the most crucial difference between these two men. Even though both Kimble and Gerard are equally charismatic, skillful, and thoroughly dedicated to their respective causes, Gerard is meant to stand in for artificial, man-made law, whereas Kimble represents the moral principles of natural justice, which emphasizes and legitimizes his own hazardous quest over and above Gerard’s. By the end of the narrative, Kimble has been newly arrested but Gerard has also become convinced of his innocence. Nevertheless, by asking Kimble Quoted in Brantley Bardin, “Idol chatter: Harrison Ford,” Premiere 16/11 (July–August 2003), p. 120.

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“not to tell anybody,” he refuses to relinquish his masquerade and adherence to the formal principles of man-made Law. Gerard’s aura of uncompromising toughness is therefore not altogether dissipated, but the film still presents a happy resolution through Kimble’s “off-the-record” acquittal. At a symbolic level, Gerard’s brand of masculinity is presented as misguided and blinded by his excessive adherence to the formal but arbitrary principles of the Law, which stands in stark opposition to Kimble’s caring disposition and desire for freedom and justice. Kimble’s plight represents a further example of the contemporary brand of paranoia engendered by the “fed scare,” and the eventual triumph of the “common man” is meant to signify the liberal dream of individual liberty, agency, and control when confronted with unfair, careless, and faceless institutions. Having been divested of his most loved one, his possessions, and social privilege, Kimble’s final vindication and empowerment signify the triumph of the morally decent individual, whose symbolic acquittal by the representative of the federal government becomes all the more satisfying for the sympathetic audience. In essence, the plot’s development of diverging styles of masculinity ultimately points at the misguided nature of traditional authoritarian forms of masculinity, while also positing a more contemporary, caring, and above all ethically decent version as the solution to both individual predicaments and more general social ills. Ultimately, moral values and the natural wholesomeness of the common man, as embodied by Kimble, rather than the inflexible rule of law and order, as embodied by Gerard, are heralded as the real antidote to cure social ailments in contemporary societies. The Fugitive remains one of Harrison Ford’s most successful films, both in artistic and financial terms. Through its re-construction of a classic fictional character whose goodness and perseverance were already well known, this smart film capitalized on and helped to consolidate the star’s persona as “everybody’s next door neighbour.”106 Had Michael Douglas or Alec Baldwin, the producer’s other choices,107 agreed to play the Kimble role, The Fugitive might certainly have become an entirely different film experience for the audience. Clear and Present Danger, for its part, represented Ford’s successful second outing as Jack Ryan. In the third installment of the spy series, Ryan is, yet Producer Andrew Kopelson, quoted in Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 198. Sellers, Harrison Ford, p. 300.

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again, reluctantly forced to become CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence due to his boss and mentor’s terminal pancreatic cancer. In the film, whose telling promotional tagline was “Truth Needs a Soldier,” Ford’s character embodied once again such notions as ordinariness (his childlike delight when the president takes his advice following his first visit to the White House is worth highlighting), patriotism, democracy, altruism, and sheer honesty. So much so that Ford’s cinematic Ryan, unlike Clancy’s original Ryan, was not afraid to testify against the president of the United States in front of Congress members at the end of the film. Once again, the original story was significantly modified in order for the narrative to fit Ford’s popular persona as the stalwart for morality, democracy, and other foundational US values more appropriately.108 Unsurprisingly, Ford graduated to the US presidency only three years later in Air Force One. Indeed, Ford’s President James Marshall might more fittingly have been named President John Patrick Ryan. In Clear and Present Danger, a friend of US President Bennett’s (David Moffat) who had become involved with Colombian drug cartels is assassinated, which leads the president to launch a secret operation, labeled “Reciprocity.” Even though the operation represents the president’s purely personal vendetta against the cartel, he launches the secret operation in the name of national security. Unbeknownst to many of the CIA’s top officials, and Ryan in particular, the president, supported by his closest collaborators National Security Advisor Cutter (Henry Czerny), and Ritter (Harris Yulin), the crooked CIA Deputy Director for Operations, sends a team of highly trained soldiers to Colombia to terminate his friend’s enemies, while also orchestrating a parallel, this time official, mission to the same country, led, as reluctantly as it had become customary in a Ford character, by Ryan himself. During the investigation, Ryan learns that the failed secret operation has followed an alternative route and that the US soldiers have been abandoned and left to die in the Colombian jungle. Needless to say, Ryan saves the soldiers, and eventually manages to preserve democracy for his fellow citizens by testifying against those who have perverted the democratic spirit of US institutions. If “truth needs a soldier,” By contrast, Clancy protested that “to go before Congress, which as we all know is a nest of snakes, is ridiculous. Anyone in this day and age who thinks that Congress is an honourable organization is a fool” (quoted in Gregg Kilday, “Ford to make Clear and Present Danger,” in Entertainment Weekly, http://web.archive.org/web/20081120142229/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/Jack_Ryan/ fought_to_make.php (accessed April 28, 2011).

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who better than Harrison Ford to reassure US citizens that democracy remains intact? A decisive confrontation between Ritter and Ryan, which represents an almost incongruous Capraesque moment in a contemporary Clancian technothriller, reveals Ritter’s contempt for Ryan’s “black hat-white hat” perspective on politics and morality: Ritter: What do you think you’ve got there? Ryan: You broke the law! Ritter: You’re such a boy scout! Look at you. You see everything in black and white! Ryan: No, not black and white, Ritter. It’s right and wrong!

Yet again, the potent melodramatic value of Ford’s character lies in his ability to reconcile heroism with ordinariness, and above all, his capacity to remain both morally untainted and loyal to the principles of democracy that are so dear to the US citizenry at large. As Admiral Jim Greer reminds Ryan, You took an oath, if you recall, when you came to work with me. And I don’t mean to the National Security Advisor of the United States. I meant to his boss, and I don’t mean the President. You gave your word to his boss. You gave your word to the people of the United States. Your word is who you are.

If Dr. Kimble represented the belief that ordinary citizens might be able to right the wrongs and injustices against the innocent committed by those in positions of power, Ryan goes much further and saves democracy, as represented by the US presidential institution, from being sabotaged by unworthy individuals who break the law and risk the lives of innocent citizens for purely personal reasons (see Figure 33). As already explained, the film ends on a positive note, with Jack Ryan giving evidence against his political superiors in front of Congress members surrounded, once again, by ordinary, adoring members of the public standing in for real spectators. Yet the fact that the eventual outcome of the investigation, or the possible political consequences, is not disclosed means that Ryan’s act of heroism and loyalty to democratic institutions remains purely in the realm of the mythical. However, one could argue that it is precisely the myth, or the suspended fantasy, that provides the most intense of cinematic pleasures. As Sellers109 has put it, Sellers, Harrison Ford, p. 313.

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Figure 33  “How dare YOU, Sir?” US citizen par excellence Ford/Ryan faces up to ­ resent the president, who has brought disgrace to the iconic political post. Clear and P ­Danger (produced by Lis Kern, Mace Neufeld, Robert Rehme, Ralph S. Singleton. ­Directed by Phillip Noyce).

Ford built his success on films which the old Hollywood would have no trouble in recognizing. […]. Today he stands alone for principles that are now more mythical than real. He has an outmoded American doggedness, a strong sense of what’s right and what’s wrong.

Clear and Present Danger also provided further evidence of other characteristic features of Ford’s as an “auteur,” such as his willingness to get involved in all aspects of his films, from choice of co-stars and director, to characterization and the orchestration of stunts, most of which he performed himself. The result was yet another critical and box-office success to be added to Ford’s strong track record in the action thriller formula. It was precisely in 1994 that the powerful National Association of Theatre Owners presented Ford with the first, and last, “Star of the Century Award” for the outstanding economic results obtained by such films as The Fugitive and Clear and Present Danger. Ford’s star power became once again evident in his next film Sabrina, a remake of Billy Wilder’s original 1954 film. Ford, one of the remake’s most prominent sponsors, was adamant that the late Sidney Pollack should head the production due to his reputed ability to construct powerful romantic dramas, which had garnered him the curious epithet of “the king of foreplay.”110 Good Ford, quoted in Barbara Lazear Ascher, “Regarding Harrison,” in Ladies’ Home Journal (1996). Available at http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/Miscellaneous/regarding.php (accessed February 5, 2009). Link no longer available.

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old-fashioned romance, “foreplay” and anticipation, or the stuff that most romantic comedies are made of, was what Pollack’s first and Ford’s second romantic comedy was about. As has been noted in previous sections, Ford has noticeably shied away from explicit, “gratuitous” displays of sexuality in his films and Sabrina proved to be no exception. As Empire reviewer Ian Nathan111 concluded, the “modern Sabrina still has plenty of innocent pleasure to impart in an age where movies strain to appeal to our basic instincts. […] It’s all dreadfully old-fashioned.” The film’s chaste representation of the mating ritual—romantic dinner at an exotic restaurant, cycling around Martha’s Vineyard, a moonlit dinner on the beach, the lovers’ final reunion in Paris— was very close in spirit to Hepburn and Bogart’s sailing trip in the original film. Nathan’s aforementioned summation of Sabrina’s romantic feel was therefore rather in tune with Ford’s interest in making audience-pleasing films that were meant to, literally, “exercise our better emotions, rather than our baser instincts.”112 As is to be expected, the film depicts the process of falling in love, albeit from a particularly cynical perspective. The character played by Ford, Linus Larrabee, engineers a romantic plot to make his loyal chauffeur’s daughter Sabrina (Julia Ormond), who is in love with his brother David (Greg Kinnear), to fall in love with him instead. Linus’s main interest, however, is not Sabrina, but saving his brother’s imperiled engagement to the daughter of a powerful businessman, which in turn will lead to a lucrative merger between the two families. Although Sabrina remains blind to Linus’s scheming, the viewer remains fully aware of his machinations. As a result of its artificiality, Linus and Sabrina’s romance remains between inverted commas, even after their final reunion.113 The spectator’s hypothetical lack of faith in their romantic pairing is strengthened by the fact that sexual tension between the two characters is virtually non-existent. Critics characteristically disagreed on Ford’s performing merits—though he was later to receive his fourth Golden Globe nomination for his role in Sabrina—in favor of newcomer Greg Ian Nathan, “Review of Sabrina,” Empire 80 (February 1996), p. 33. Quoted in Ric Leyva, “Harrison Ford speaks softly, carries yet another movie,” in Associated Press (1995). Available at http://web.archive.org/web/20080516235937/http://apartment42.com/sab1. htm (accessed May 16, 2008). 113 Frank Krutnik, “Conforming passions? Contemporary romantic comedy,” in S. Neale (ed.), Genre and Contemporary Hollywood (London, 2002). 111 112

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Kinnear’s, but most reviews remarked on the total lack of sexual chemistry between Julia Ormond as Sabrina Fairchild and Harrison Ford as Linus Larrabee. If, as Deleyto114 holds, the romantic space in which the lovers are located is meant to be protective but also “erotically charged” and electrifying, whether literally or metaphorically, Linus and Sabrina’s is anything but. On the other hand, there was a generalized view that the contemporary setting made the story rather anachronistic. Reviews abounded in comments such as “Can you actually say ‘Once Upon a Time’ in a movie in 1995?”115 or “expectations of [the film] saying something valid about modern relationships should be ditched immediately,”116 while another concluded “there seems little profit [sic] in reviving [the story] now—unless one aspires to provide modern audiences with the embalmed old movie emotions of their grandparents.”117 It appears that, on this particular occasion, Ford’s conventional associations with the male stars, the acting conventions, or the narratives of yesteryear failed to make this old-fashioned romantic fantasy more appealing or significant for contemporary viewers. Despite present-day romantic comedies abounding in nostalgic references to love stories from Hollywood’s golden period, the relative absence of remakes of classical romantic comedies in contemporary Hollywood that Krutnik118 has noted may be due to the fact that the life and love experiences of today’s audiences are far removed from those of viewers in what one critic has referred to as “the bad old days of the great old movies.”119 Despite the skepticism of many in Hollywood, Ford’s interest in the film was fostered by his desire to “take a break” from what he had by then also started to refer to as “Harrison Ford films.” Unfortunately, the general audience showed once again that their favorite Ford was not a romancing one, or a manipulating one, for that matter. It could be argued that Linus’s cold-hearted cynicism, despite the vicarious pleasure that his eventual transformation in Sabrina’s loving hands may potentially generate, did not please cinemagoers. It appears that Ford’s persona’s problematic fit with the character was a difficulty that the film was unable to resolve successfully. Celestino Deleyto, The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy (Manchester, 2010), p. 5. Simon Braund, “Fairy tale ending,” Empire 80 (February 1996), p. 72. 116 Nathan, “Sabrina,” p. 33. 117 Peter Matthews, “Review of Sabrina,” Sight and Sound 6/2 (1996), p. 53. 118 Krutnik, “Conforming passions?” p. 43. 119 Julia Cameron, “What’s love got to do with it?” American Film 14/6 (April 1989), p. 30. 114 115

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The (re-)construction of Ford’s role as Linus was one of the most important modifications that Pollack’s remake involved. As in previous films, Ford’s part was made more prominent in order to make the most of his involvement in the project. As a matter of fact, while the different posters for the original film had featured its three stars, Hepburn, Bogart, and Holden, the poster for the contemporary version featured Ford adopting a suggestive pose, but neither of the supporting actors in the story, despite Ormond’s equal billing on the poster itself. Apart from Sabrina’s story of transformation during her thoroughly clichéd Parisian sojourn, the film focuses mostly on Linus’s transformation from cold-hearted cynic to vulnerable new man in love. As in countless romantic fantasies, the love of a woman transforms a thoroughly self-centered man into a redeemed sensitive person who rejects his previous lifestyle in the name of love. The film clearly pitches two strands of masculinity against each other, although both are depicted as equally lacking. David Larrabee, the younger brother, represents the slack, playboy version, whereas Linus, the older brother, represents the diligent but at the same time flawed, workaholic version. Whereas carefree David is generally lacking in maturity, ruthless Linus is specifically lacking in empathy as a result of his traditional upbringing and his having had to take over the Larrabee empire after the death of his industrious father. Unlike his younger brother, he has always worked hard but never played hard, so to speak, and has “sadly” never known any better. Despite the fact that Linus is meant to be emotionally immature and unfit for relationships, the character’s shrewdness and attention to detail still allow him to pull out a very convincing romantic performance as a romantic suitor, which sweeps Sabrina off her feet. Although Sabrina is fully aware of the artificiality and predictability of David’s seduction ritual, even though she still strives to convince herself of its genuineness when David finally tries to seduce her, she finally surrenders to Linus’s thoroughly uncharacteristic though very convincing performance. Although in true romantic-heroine fashion Sabrina believes she might become Linus’s savior and that her tender loving care will make a better man of him, the audience remains fully aware of his deviousness, which, as suggested earlier, arguably jeopardizes the strength and legitimacy of the emerging couple. Because of its unromantic, self-seeking intentions, Linus’s scheming is closer to Gil Shepherd’s in the

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more melodramatic The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) than to, say, Gwen Phillips’s romantic masquerade in Housesitter (1992). Moreover, the disjuncture existing between Linus’s devious attitude and Ford’s mainstream persona as a champion of decency and truth possibly distances the audience from the character. When Sabrina accuses him of not believing in marriage, to which he responds “yes, I do. That’s why I never got married,” or when he finally declares his love for Sabrina by saying “I was lost, but now I’m found,” his responses sound clichéd, hollow, and meaningless, as if taken from the script he created by watching his skilled brother perform in the game of love. Since Linus is aware that Sabrina is not interested in money or status, but in the ultimate romantic fantasy, he knows that his performance as a sensitive new man in search of the love that he never had will push the necessary buttons. It is for precisely this reason that the film’s last-minute shift from the lie in New York to the dream in Paris ultimately becomes rather unconvincing. As Krutnik120 points out, “although real relationships are posited as growing out of pretend ones, the deception narrative explicitly frames romance as the construction of a representation.” The potential effect of Linus’s “construction of a representation” is that it might turn him into the conventional wrong partner of romantic comedy, thereby shifting the audience’s affections toward his brother David, who, like the audience, is concerned about the devastating effects that Linus’s masquerade might have upon Sabrina. That said, it is possible that despite the negative construction of the character throughout most of the narrative, Ford’s powerful star persona and its concomitant positive associations might, for some spectators, give certain credibility to Linus’s final transformation from cynic to love-struck romantic. Despite the flawed outcome, the film attempted to capitalize on Ford’s credentials as a sensitive 1990s new man. However, Sabrina also attempted to be complicit with the film’s intended female audience by making a couple of “inside jokes”—possibly the only good ones in the narrative—at the expense of Ford’s off-screen reputation as a reluctant sexual icon. During the formal engagement dinner between David and his fiancée Elizabeth Tyson (Lauren Holly), David’s future mother-in-law (Angie Dickinson), a flirtatious former Krutnik “Conforming passions?” p. 142.

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air hostess, embarrasses Linus by insinuating that she could “still manage to put his seat in the upright position.” On the other hand, Linus’s faithful and long-suffering secretary later compares rummaging in his underwear drawer in order to prepare his luggage to “touching the Shroud of Turin.” Yet the fact that the narrative forces itself to introduce these jokes in order to make the Linus character more appealing and sexier, via a displaced reference to Ford’s image as a sexual icon, testifies to the narrative’s failure to mobilize the forces of attraction between its two, ultimately, very dull lovers. Ford’s following film, The Devil’s Own, became a revealing case study about the impact that stardom may have on the production of a film project, which is why the final part of this section will provide a closer industrial, rather than textual, analysis of this film. The Devil’s Own had for a few years been a pet project of Brad Pitt’s, one of the most popular rising stars in Hollywood at the time. Pitt envisioned the project as an artistic exercise in which he could leave his celebrity claim to fame as (People Magazine’s) “sexiest man alive” (in  1995) to one side. The original story was a realistic low-budget drama about an IRA member fleeing to the United States and his relationship with a far from clean-cut police officer, a supporting character originally to be played by Gene Hackman or Morgan Freeman, who were eventually considered to be too old for the part. Ford accepted the role, as long as some fundamental changes were made to it. Given Ford’s reputation and box-office clout, Paramount acquiesced since the studio’s executives could not resist the temptation of making a film with two of the most popular Hollywood actors of the moment, thereby transforming what was to be a low-budget drama into a major Hollywood event or “tent pole.” Once they were on board, Ford and Pitt were given director approval and the only one on both of their lists was Alan J. Pakula. Since all three artists had script approval, the story of the film’s pre-production eventually became a showcase of the ways in which a preliminary project, or concept, can be modified beyond recognition in order to comply with the demands of its stars. For instance, as a result of Ford’s involvement, the character of Sergeant O’Meara was modified so intensely that what was originally a bent cop eventually became a straight-arrow lawman. After the relative box-office failure of Sabrina, the star wanted to be part of a great commercial hit, lest his star power might become tarnished. Since ensuring box-office success

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entailed a rethinking of his part, Ford121 did not hesitate to exercise his significant power within the industry: I’m not dictatorial, I just think many things are worthy of discussion. I like to do the best job I can. That means that if I think I’m right about something, I’ll try to influence the situation. It’s not uncommon for a person in my position to be involved in the production. It’s my name above the title, and I don’t like to disappoint my consumers.

One of the many modifications to the original script involved a lengthier depiction of O’Meara’s life as family man and cop, which one reviewer tellingly described as a “grafted-on subplot […] amounting to Ford’s own little movie within the movie.”122 Paramount, which had suffered a number of commercial failures, went along with the extensive modifications that Ford demanded. As a former studio executive explained in one of the production reports, Each movie is now so expensive, not only to the studio, but to the star, who can’t afford flops. They become paranoid, the studio becomes paranoid and that leads to control freaks. It costs so much, nobody can have a good time.123

Still, it was not only “control freak” Ford who had script approval, but also Pitt and Pakula, with the latter also having final-cut approval. As can be expected, they too demanded that the script be modified to their liking. In fact, such was Pitt’s displeasure with the script’s evolution that he threatened to abandon the project when filming had already started. Pakula, for his part, was not afraid of exercising his directorial control over the production so that it would become an even-handed product in which his imprint would become visible. As he124 put it, I love the collaborative process, but in the end I want to be the final arbiter of what is on the screen. I’d rather take less money than lose that. Especially when you’re dealing with such powerful personalities. This one could have gone all over the place.

Quoted in Roald Rynning, “Ford perfect,” Film Review (June 1997), p. 34. Jeff Dawson, “Sympathy for the devil,” Empire 96 (June 1997), p. 76. 123 Quoted in Anne Thompson, “The devil made them do it,” Premiere 4/12 (1997), p. 36. 124 Quoted in Demetrios Matheou, “Q&A: Alan J. Pakula,” Premiere 5/4 (1997), p. 85. 121 122

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As a result, the original story was eventually modified by no less than five “script doctors,” each one hired to introduce the necessary modifications to a text that, surprisingly, seems to hold itself despite the initial complications involved during the film’s pre-production and production. As a matter of fact, filming began without an actual script, which created a very tense working atmosphere. The press reports tended to focus on the alleged confrontation between the two “divas” in the film―one reviewer referred to them as two “Barbra Streisands,”125 each wanting their part to become more narratively prominent than the other’s. As explained earlier, although the main character in the story was initially to be Pitt’s Frankie McGuire, Ford’s eventual participation involved a thorough rewrite of the Sgt O’Meara part. Pitt, for his part, also insisted that the Irish element of the story and especially its political subtext should be amplified so that the two characters’ narrative contribution should be roughly similar. As a result, the film presents two parallel stories with two significant stars that necessarily converge from the beginning due to the fact that McGuire has been invited to live with the hospitable O’Mearas, an ordinary Irish-American family wanting to give a helping hand to a fellow Irishman recently arrived in the United States, allegedly to start a new life. Although both plots more or less reflected the stars’ commercial and artistic interests, the potential complications that such a form of storytelling may generate for a mainstream Hollywood product were reflected in different reviews of the film: The Devil’s Own, an honourable but ultimately disappointing film, can’t make up its mind whether to be an American story, with chases and shootouts, or an Irish one, with heartbreak, insoluble conflict, and the pull of old ties too strong to break.126

In any case, the fact that both stories, and both stars, were eventually deemed to be equally important for the marketing of the film became evident through the promotional posters and the magazine space that both stars commanded during its promotion. Still, Ford, whose $20m salary at the time more than doubled Pitt’s at $9m, received first billing on both the film’s credits and promotional material. Dawson, “Sympathy,” p. 77. Leah Rozen, “Review of The Devil’s Own,” People 47/12 (1997a), p. 21.

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As a result of the extensive modifications that the script was subjected to, Ford reverted to type as a by-the-book police officer and conventional family man, a role that yet again demonstrated his essentially conservative choice of parts during the 1990s, usually driven by commercial interest rather than artistic concerns. Even though the star has always been keen to participate in different genres, by the end of the 1990s his iconic persona had become so established via the major hits in his career that the film’s director was led to describe the actor as the ultimate “moral man in an immoral time.”127 Without Ford’s star performance, O’Meara’s heartfelt conversation with his wife Sheila (Margaret Colin), in which he announces his retirement from the police department after having lied—for the first time ever—about his trigger-happy colleague’s misdeed, would simply not hold. Sgt O’Meara: It was a bad call. Sheila O’Meara: You covered for him. Sgt O’Meara: I lied about how it went down. I’ve thought it through, Sheila. I’m going to take my pension. Retire. Sheila O’Meara: In twenty-three years you never took a bribe. You never abused your power. You never treated anybody unfairly. Sgt O’Meara: I treated the dead guy unfairly. Sheila O’Meara: He shot at you! Sgt O’Meara: He was stealing radios. He got shot in the back. You don’t deserve to get killed for stealing a radio. Sheila O’Meara: Tom, it’s terrible that he died, but you’re not the only cop in the force that’s made a mistake. Besides, you didn’t make the mistake. Eddie did! Sgt O’Meara: I lied! Don’t you understand? There’s some things I said I would never do. Sheila O’Meara: Once Tom, you did it once! Sgt O’Meara: What about the next time. I can’t do the job this way. I’m done being a cop. Sheila O’Meara: But you love being a cop! Sgt O’Meara: I love you. I love the kids. I love what we’ve got. I don’t love being a cop … any more.

Quoted in Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 231

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It is Ford’s presence and compelling star persona that makes it easier for the spectator to digest the deeply melodramatic undertones of the plot, in which the “white-hat” cop is betrayed by the “black-hat” terrorist who has become his surrogate son during the narrative. Ford’s/O’Meara’s mythical standing is so elevated that at the end of the narrative it is suggested that, if allowed to, this humble policeman might be able to put an end to the Irish troubles single-handedly. Since both the members of the (Provisional) IRA and the British secret service are portrayed as vindictive murderers, it is up to our ever-reliable all-American hero to put an end to their confrontation by putting McGuire behind bars while also keeping him alive. Such a form of storytelling, which is strongly reminiscent of the classical Western’s and is at the heart of US cultural mythology, is what prompted this apt summary of Ford’s cultural connotations in contemporary US cinema by one of his (unofficial) biographers: Today, at the end of cinema’s first century, Harrison Ford stands alone as the heir to Henry Fonda and John Wayne, to James Stewart and to Gary Cooper. He embodies the spirit of the man who ends the fights that others start, the avenger who rights the wrongs that others do. He is, more than any other actor alive, the quiet outsider at the heart of American mythology.128

Although O’Meara is in fact reacting against McGuire putting his family in danger, another classic Ford trope going back to Frantic and the Jack Ryan films, or even Witness, the plot manages to transcend the benign patriarch’s desire to protect his family and transforms it into a mythical display of heroism that only the likes of Ford are capable of. It was in his next film project, the tremendously popular Air Force One, that this axiom would become firmly established.

Jenkins, Harrison Ford, p. 360. The fact that the meaning and significance of a particular star’s image are always provisional, complex, and contradictory becomes apparent in the following, alternative quote: “Ford has become our Gary Cooper, an actor who erased his initial sex appeal to play stoic, righteous and deeply boring men. Just as the ravishing young Cooper of Morocco bears no relation to the tall-in-the-saddle lawman of High Noon, you can watch The Devil’s Own in vain for a glimpse of Ford’s former rakishness” (Charles Taylor, “The dreamboat and the stiff,” Salon.com, March 28, 1997, https://web.archive.org/web/20110129231840/http://www.salon.com/march97/devil970328. html (accessed May 5, 2008)).

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Air Force One: Everyone’s Favorite President In 1997, Harrison Ford did not hesitate to take up the challenge of portraying the president of the nation―a mythical figure in US culture if ever there was one―in an action thriller to be directed by Wolfgang Petersen, whose compelling Oscar-nominated war epic in a submarine Das Boot (1981) became a powerful inspiration during the production of Ford’s new film. Nevertheless, while Captain Lehmann (Jürgen Prochnow) fails to protect his crew in the more cynical and less Manichean Das Boot, the US president’s heroic display of leadership skills and efforts to save his fellow passengers―and, by extension, his fellow Americans―from the threat of terrorism will not be in vain. This being a big-budget Hollywood action thriller, international critics, typically, could not agree on the merits of the film. While Chidley129 considered the narrative to be little more than “jingoism on a jet,” Macnab130 condemned the film using the arguments that are usually leveled against Hollywood action films, that is, the presence of a Manichean structure or loose narrative elements as evidence of poor narrative development, an excessive use of “noise” and spectacle in the form of special effects and action stunts, etc. However, in the opinion of other critics, Petersen’s directorial work granted the picture a rare pedigree for an action thriller that was also in tune with Ford’s long-standing artistic endeavors. Critic Peter Travers,131 for instance, compared the film to a different contemporary action picture on a plane in the following favorable terms: Con Air […] views us as jolt junkies eager to pay for any tainted action meat as long as it’s bloody, accompanied by non-stop noise, and spiced with sadism and twisted sex. Air Force One doesn’t insult the audience. It is crafted by a filmmaker who takes pride in the thrills and sly fun he packs into every frame. Welcome to something rare in a summer of crash commercialism: a class act.

Travers’s is a very succinct assessment of the “quality elements” that may be located in the film and which can certainly be found in earlier action thrillers Joe Chidley, “Jingoism on a jet,” Maclean’s 110/31 (1997), p. 53. Geoffrey Macnab, “Review of Air Force One,” Sight and Sound 7/10 (1997), p. 43. 131 Peter Travers, “Indiana Jones for president,” Rolling Stone 766 (July 1997), p. 67. 129 130

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in Ford’s career. In these films, generic elements such as fights, chases, and special effects are powerfully combined with melodramatic concerns related to the eternal battle between good and evil. More specifically, the protection of family, nation, and moral values in general takes precedence over sexploitation and brute, trigger-happy force. This is how the star132 explained his reasons for taking on the role of President Marshall: It’s fine to be the ass-kicking President, as long as people understand that this film has other values. […] It’s kicking ass to a moral end and that to me is much more interesting than just kicking ass. I’ve never been a huge fan of action films. […]. They don’t engage me as a moviegoer. What engages me is strong storytelling, [which] most of the time has a moral component. There’s a moral contest, there’s a question of human character and nature and value [and] that seals you into a story […] much more strongly than one kinetic event after another (emphasis added).

It is rather evident that the actor has always been keen to elevate the cultural significance of the various action pictures he has participated in by bringing their moral, or melodramatic, component into sharp focus (see Figure 34).

Figure 34  Ford and the melodramatic sensibility: The action president shows evident signs of vulnerability when his family becomes threatened. Air Force One (produced by Marc Abraham, Armyan Bernstein, Thomas A. Bliss, David V. Lester. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen). Quoted in Jenny Peters, “Cultural icon becomes Commander in Chief,” in Mr. Showbiz (1997). Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20091005092335/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/ Air_Force_One/cultural_icon.php (accessed February 13, 2008).

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Yet, in order to account for the tremendous popularity of Air Force One, one has to look beyond moral issues, choreographed violence, and special effects. On the one hand, the cultural implications of the narrative must be considered. On the other, one may also look at some of the marketing strategies employed to turn the film into “an event,” or a major Hollywood blockbuster. As the Columbia-financed film was going into production early in the summer of 1997, it was announced that James Cameron’s monumental Titanic (1997) would be released at the same time as Ford’s film. He then exercised his considerable star power to force Paramount executives to reschedule its release. Although, in the end, there were other production factors that delayed the release date of Titanic until December, Ford made it patent that, as a respected Hollywood heavyweight, he knew how and when to exercise his considerable power within the industry. The star pulled all the necessary strings to ensure that his new film would become one of the year’s major box-office events. In certain ways, Ford’s earlier roles had anticipated his portrayal of the president of the United States, or “the leader of the free world,” to the point of fearlessly facing up to the president himself in Clear and Present Danger. Ford has over the years forged a popular image that reflects certain core US principles, such as the value of hard work and perseverance, the decency of the common man, and the power of the American Dream. It is for this reason that, despite his many obvious privileges, Ford has arguably become one of the most popular everyman figures of the movies in recent times. As I have already elaborated in previous sections, Ford’s extraordinary star appeal appears to reside in his uncanny ability to project an aura of authenticity and normality, or “everymanness,” while at the same time standing for something special and unique, that is, an extraordinary individual who represents a veritable role model. In Richard Dyer’s theory of the stars, these are the very traits that characterize Hollywood icons. However, in social and political terms, these are also the very traits that the US public at large had traditionally associated with the US presidency, until revelations emerged about Nixon’s political scheming in the 1960s. Classical Hollywood presidential portrayals or political fables such as Young Mr. Lincoln (1931), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), or, more recently, and in a rather different sense, the well-publicized story behind the epic path to political power of ex-President Barack Obama are clear indications of this.

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The fact that by 1997 Ford’s mainstream persona as the repository of traditional democratic and moral values provided a perfect fit with the mythically heroic character of President Marshall was perhaps made patent on the August 1997 cover of the political magazine George, which was at the time edited by the late John F. Kennedy Jr. Ford was invited to become immortalized as Abraham Lincoln in a top hat, in a pose that was also largely reminiscent of Uncle Sam’s, minus the pointing gesture. The fact that Ford was invited to “stand in” for the mythical figures of Abraham Lincoln and Uncle Sam reflects the extent to which his persona had by then become associated with such notions as nation, leadership, democracy, and tradition.133 Incidentally, Mashall/ Ford, or “Indiana Lincoln,” as one critic134 dubbed him at the time, has been regularly voted “best Movie President” in the United States.135 In times of social and political crisis, people crave leadership and vision, qualities seamlessly embodied by Ford as president and hero—and Father of the Nation—in Air Force One. Despite the ups and downs that Ford has experienced at the box office in more recent years, it is significant that, thanks to certain iconic parts such as President James Marshall, his career in the aggregate is still able to summon up such a large degree of admiration among film fans. At the time of the film’s release, numerous critics remarked on the superb casting of Harrison Ford as president and Vietnam veteran hero James Marshall. Interesting reviews included Entertainment Weekly’s succinct assessment: “Harrison Ford as the President of the United States is such a perfect piece of casting that it’s at once a fantasy and a joke: the joke is how perfect the fantasy is.”136 Rozen,137 for her part, highlighted Ford’s ability to

Duke claims that Lincoln was Ford’s “childhood hero” (Duke, Harrison Ford, p. 242). José María Lacalle, “Presidente bueno, Presidente malo,” Cinemanía (September 1997), p. 72. 135 As Reuters report, over one million internet users participated in a poll in 2008, which was conducted only two weeks before the US presidential election. Among sixteen “contenders,” Ford’s President James Marshall polled first with approximately 25 percent of the vote, followed by Morgan Freeman’s President Tom Beck in Deep Impact (1998) with 16 percent of the vote. The remaining contenders received only marginally significant votes (Jill Serjeant, “Harrison Ford voted best movie president: Poll,” Reuters.com, October 23, 2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-presidentidUSTRE49M33020081023 (accessed May 21, 2010)). USA Today also reports on a more recent poll also headed by President Marshall and, yet again, followed by Freeman as President Tom Beck (Chris Heady (2016), “The best and worst movie presidents of all time,” in USA Today, http:// www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2016/07/19/best-and-worst-movie-presidents-all-timefandango/87288544/ (multiple access dates)). 136 Gleiberman, quoted in Pfeiffer and Lewis, The Films, p. 242. 137 Leah Rozen, “Review of Air Force One,” People 48/5 (1997b), p. 19. 133 134

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incorporate such cherished notions as leadership, bravery, authenticity, and moral integrity, which have become so difficult to come by in today’s politics: Harrison Ford is the dream President. Playing the leader of the free world in Air Force One, he is as principled as Lincoln, as plain talking a Truman, as easy on the eyes as Kennedy and, as a former Medal of Honor winner in Vietnam, as ready to bash heads as any villain. Who wouldn’t vote for this guy? […] Air Force One belongs to Ford. With his aw-shucks demeanor and air of unflinching moral rectitude, he is as close as we come in today’s Hollywood to Gary Cooper.138

President James Marshall has indeed proven to be one of Ford’s most enduringly popular impersonations. It was largely thanks to this role that the actor received three consecutive People’s Choice Awards, two as “Favorite Motion Picture Actor” in 1998 and 2000, and one as “Favorite All-Time Movie Star” in 1999 (the first and last ever to be awarded).139 What is significant about these particular awards is that they strongly reflect the popular taste, since they are polled among actual cinemagoers, rather than Hollywood insiders or film critics. This kind of information has no doubt a huge impact on the industry as a whole, and Hollywood stardom in particular. The American Film Institute, in fact, went on to celebrate Ford’s career by awarding him its prestigious Life Achievement Award in 2000, before paying tribute to other respectable Hollywood heavyweights such as De Niro, Streep, Lucas, Pacino, or Hanks. Former US President and Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan was asked once “How can an actor be a president?,” to which he perceptively responded “How can a president not be an actor?”140 Reagan’s response laid bare an inconvenient truth, namely the fact that ever since the advent of television and, more generally, the mass media, politics has become an increasingly public site, sustained upon image and spin, rather than purely ideology and public policy. Thanks to his youthful good looks and continuous TV appearances, JFK was Yet again, Ford’s evocation of the values, narratives, and stars of the classical period was a recurrent motif in the film’s reviews. According to Fineman, Air Force One is “Frank Capra on ‘Speed’” (Howard Fineman, “Last action president,” Newsweek 130/3 (1997), p. 66). Macnab, for his part, stated that Ford is “one of the few stars with the gravitas of a James Stewart or a Henry Fonda,” aka Mr Smith and Mr Lincoln, respectively (Macnab, “Air Force One,” p. 43). 139 The actor also ranked number one in UK Empire magazine’s “Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time” list in October 1997. 140 Extracted from BBC documentary President Hollywood (2008). 138

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certainly the first US president to become both a powerful political leader and a popular media icon. Indeed, John and Jackie’s “Camelot” administration swept US citizens off their feet. Yet both the country’s traumatic involvement in Vietnam and the political betrayal of the subsequent Nixon administration came to shatter the view that US Americans had of their revered political leaders. Hence, ever since the late 1960s, it has become acknowledged that image and popularity, that is, performativity, have become as crucial as political performance in US politics and public life in general, if not more. Such a cynical realization has been dramatically portrayed in various political films, ranging from The Candidate (1972) to Wag the Dog (1997) to State of Play (2009), to name but a few. As Bruzzi141 laments, “presidential politics is so image-dependent that who the candidates are […] has become an irrelevance. […] [T]he modern candidate is purely an artificial construct.” In this particular sense, two significant US social institutions, the presidency and Hollywood stardom, inevitably converge. As Shenkman142 states, “like actors, presidents are coached on what to say and how to say it. They follow scripts. They deliberately project their image […]. [Yet], they have to appear natural when on camera […] and they are judged by the quality of their performances.” Ronald Reagan understood this well, having worked in Hollywood for several years before becoming a successful politician. Norman Mailer143 reflected this well in his assessment of Reagan, the star/president: Reagan established the principle: you cannot be a good president unless you keep the populace entertained. Reagan understood […] that the President of the United States was the leading soap-opera figure in the great American drama, and one had better possess star value. The President did not have to have executive ability nearly as much as an interesting personality.

Reagan’s successor George Bush Sr. was considered a failure on the popularity front. Democrat President Bill Clinton, however, reached popularity levels that Bush Sr. could never have dreamt of. Because of his comparative youth, undeniable popularity, and appealing lifestyle, Clinton’s “star quality” Stella Bruzzi, New Documentary: A Critical introduction (London and New York, 2000), p. 147. Richard Shenkman, “Foreword,” in P. C. Rollins and J. E. O’Connor (eds), Hollywood’s White House: The American Presidency in Film and History (Kentucky, 2005 (2003)), p. xiii. 143 Quoted in Jon Roper, The American Presidents: Heroic Leadership from Kennedy to Clinton (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 209. 141 142

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or “charisma,” in Dyerian terms, reminded many of the magic of JFK. Like the former legendary president, Clinton was fond of surrounding himself by Hollywood celebrities. By pure coincidence, President Clinton was celebrating his birthday in the Jackson Hole area when Ford was starting work in his new film and he invited Clinton and his family to celebrate it on his ranch. Air Force One was in pre-production at the time and it was during this dinner party that Ford was granted exclusive access to the presidential aeroplane by Clinton himself. It was because of their apparent and much-publicized friendship that the media started to build a playful analogy between Ford’s role as President Marshall and President Clinton himself. Although Ford denied being influenced by Clinton in the construction of the role, he could not deny the existence of a number of similarities. Both Clinton and Marshall had a similar age and a similar family. Most importantly in terms of the film’s plot, both men pledged to wage a “selfless, humanitarian war” for “moral reasons” in a faraway country beyond the fallen Iron Curtain―Clinton in Bosnia, Marshall in Kazakhstan―despite strong opposition on the home front. However, there was also an evident gulf separating these two leaders on the “character” front. Although the Lewinski scandal had not yet broken out by 1997, Clinton had already run into legal difficulties due to such scandals as “Whitewatergate” and had also been accused of perjury and sexual harassment at work. In short, “Bubba” Clinton had by that time proven to be far too “ordinary” a US citizen, in the sense that his private life was far from being exemplary. According to his detractors, his apparent inability to score high in the morality or “character” index, as opposed to the popularity index, entailed that he was unreliable and therefore unfit for the presidential institution. Yet Clinton’s outstanding economic results during a period of economic recession helped him to retain his popularity among the electorate at large, who remained willing to cast a blind eye on his various “indulgences.” Indeed, during the “scandal-and-spin” years that characterized the Clinton administration, cynicism about politics and politicians increased exponentially. As a result, a huge symbolic gap was created between the presidency as cultural icon and the man chosen to be president, or, to put it in a different way, between the myth of presidential leadership and the imperfect reality of the current presidency, or future presidential candidates. The increasing visibility of this gap spawned a number of popular Hollywood fictions that aimed to breach the gulf between

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the mundane reality represented by men like Clinton and the mythic fantasy of presidential integrity and leadership. According to Bruzzi,144 there seemed to be two important factors encouraging the production of an unprecedented number of presidential films during the Clinton years, namely the cynical realization of the gulf existing between the actual man and the ideal icon and Clinton’s own celebrity status, record popularity levels, and strong affinity with Hollywood. Both celebratory and critical, these films turned presidential character into a major issue and nostalgic reinventions focusing on heroic leadership such as Air Force One are certainly meant to compensate for the shortcomings of real-life political leaders. Among the essential traits that the contemporary presidential archetype should possess, Thompson145 has highlighted the following, all of which could easily be identified in Harrison Ford and/or President James Marshall, rather than President Clinton: An American president must be a “male.” Few seem yet to be eager for a female president. He should be tough, but also embody the friendly kind of person who might be a next-door neighbor. He should have rugged good looks, and perhaps some pop star charisma so that he can wow the crowds when he’s out there making appearances and giving speeches “on tour.”

Hence, it is not surprising that, by the time Air Force One was released, Clinton’s much-publicized flaws led many to compare him unfavorably to Ford’s extremely successful outing as straight-arrow action President James Marshall, a well-respected Vietnam War hero, and a loving family man who kisses his wife and child “even when no-one is looking.”146 Movie critics reflected this view incessantly. Kaufmann’s147 tongue-in-cheek review, for instance, read as follows: Stella Bruzzi, “The President and the image,” Sight and Sound 8/7 (July 1998), pp. 16–19. Robert Thompson, “Presidents, pop stars, and czars,” in Alternet, March 7, 2002, http://www. alternet.org/story/12585/presidents%2C_pop_stars%2C_and_czars/(accessed May 25, 2010). 146 Janet Maslin, “Review of Air Force One,” in The New York Times (1997). Available at http://web. archive.org/web/20080517001249/http://apartment42.com/afo-review.txt (accessed June 30, 2008). 147 Stanley Kauffman, “Air Force One,” The New Republic 217/8 (1997), p. 24. His comment is also interesting because it pinpoints the two most relevant generic elements in a typically “Fordian” action picture: strong doses of action thrills and moral values. Other interesting reviews included ironic comments such as “‘Get off my plane’ is a more inspired line than, say, ‘I am not a crook’ or ‘I did not inhale’” (Fineman, “Last action president”), or “the pumped-up Prez […] plays hide and seek with the bad guys, knocking them off one by one in a manner that more befits Clint than Clinton” (Ian Freer, “Review of Air Force One,” Empire 100 (October 1997), p. 80). 144 145

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And you think Bill Clinton has problems. President James Marshall (Harrison Ford, that is) hangs, at one point, from the end of an open ramp at the back of Air Force One as it speeds along on high. He has to pilot the plane when six MIGs attack. Hanging at the end of the cable he has to transfer in midair [sic] from his plane to another. Plus, through all this, he has to stick to his principles.

Meanwhile, a spoof internet “referendum” was carried out in 1998, when the  Lewinski scandal had already broken out, hailing all-American mannext-door Harrison Ford as the next ideal presidential candidate. Among other comments, this referendum’s website included the following: My fellow Americans: are you tired of the current state of affairs in Washington today? […] Do you think our President should be someone with integrity, strong morals, and a good speaking voice? […] In the world we live in, it’s often hard to find a man with good character, a man millions of people would like to listen to and follow, a man that people can trust […]. Harrison Ford is that man! […] We need a president who has courage. We need a president who is a leader. We need a president who has integrity. We need a president who can still look good even if he does not shave for a week. Harrison Ford for President!148

In short, it was by virtue of his persona’s strong connections to democracy and ethical principles that Ford was considered to be the ideal presidential candidate. While it might prove very difficult for a real-life president to make the crucial transition from celebrity to national hero, it might be easier for a Hollywood star with a strong track record in the representation of integrity and heroic leadership to become the ideal role model. In the case of Ford, a rather good example of star/character personification, this fantasy is made even more realistic because his on-screen persona as an honest, dependable hero has often stood out more prominently than his more mundane offscreen existence. Even though Ford has usually been reluctant to attach the label “hero” to himself, in this particular case, he seemed to be happy to go

Daniel Hsia, “Harrison Ford for president,” danielhsia.com (1998), http://www.danielhsia.com/ hfprez/ (accessed January 12, 2008). Link no longer available.

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along with the fantasy of equating the man with the fictional character. One particular special feature on the film149 read as follows: Fugitive or President, the “real” Harrison Ford is everything like the characters he portrays in films. This actor does not leave much of himself on the cutting room floor […]. With Harrison Ford, what you see is what you get. [Says the actor], “the irony is that people DO know me because I’m unable to hide in the characters I play. That really IS my emotion. Those really ARE my feelings. […]. You cannot know me better than by seeing my movies” (emphasis in the original).

Said otherwise, Ford had no need to find inspiration in President Clinton for his portrayal of the presidential leader, because he already had the charisma and “the Force,” so to speak. Harrison Ford had “actually” set the ideal standard for the future presidency of the United States. Nowhere in the film does this become more convincing than when Ford/the president leaves Moscow in a real blaze of glory. This purely celebrity moment with enthusiastic gala dinner guests, hysterical fans cheering the president, and a flood of camera flashes blinding Marshall as he boards Air Force One is entirely evocative of the daily routines that stars of Ford’s stature are continually subjected to. Interestingly enough, a large number of internet users liked the “referendum” idea and the “campaign” became quite popular. The site, which was meant to both celebrate Ford’s star persona and criticize Clinton’s failures, received various awards and was regularly featured in the national media. For the purposes of this particular analysis, it certainly remains a powerful sign of the cultural significance that Harrison Ford’s star image had acquired by the end of the 1990s. Worth mentioning is also the fact that although the heroic credentials of the filmic president encouraged many to criticize the real president for, among other things, avoiding the Vietnam draft and organizing anti-war demonstrations, little was made of Ford’s own status as a conscientious objector and anti-war protester during the same years.150 As is often the case in the construction of stars-as-professionals, the mythical “Harrison Ford fiction” Luaine Lee and Scripps Howard, “Screens: Air Force One,” in The Detroit News (1997), http:// detnews.com/SCREENS/9707/25/ford/ford.htm (accessed July 4, 2008). Link no longer available. 150 Lawrence Grobel, “Off the beaten path,” in MovieLine Magazine (1997), http://web.archive.org/ web/20120130212607/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/Air_Force_One/off_the_beaten_ path (accessed June 30, 2009). 149

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overruled the less heroic Harrison Ford reality. In other words, in the eyes of the audience, and many of the critics, Ford’s fictional persona, as represented through US President James Marshall, became more powerful and significant than Ford’s unexciting condition as a conscientious objector with family responsibilities during the Vietnam draft years. In other words, within the public imagination, Harrison Ford had ceased to be Harrison Ford and had by then become the ideal presidential figure. Tellingly, the film’s straightforward publicity tagline was “Harrison Ford is the President of the United States.” Characteristically, Harrison Ford’s image was prominently displayed on the film’s promotional material, with the villain’s (Gary Oldman) own lurking in the background. The best-known poster sent a clear message about the ensuing plot, which involves a symbolic confrontation within the New World Order inaugurated by the fall of communism. The unstoppable force of democracy, as represented by “the leader of the free world,” is dangerously challenged by the tyranny of what became known as “the axis of evil,” whose representative in the film is a Kazakh terrorist group nostalgic for the old cold-war certainties embodied by “Mother Russia.” Even though both sides defend their patriotic and ideological cause just as fiercely, in semiotic terms, it is evident that the “good,” democratic cause, as represented by the US President, the US flag, and the presidential aeroplane, is allotted a larger share of legitimacy than the opposing side. The image of the fanatical terrorist wielding a machine gun is dwarfed by the vivid, larger-than-life image of the president, and the iconic star that embodies him. The way the narrative sees it, President Marshall, aka Harrison Ford, is not only saving himself, his family, and his fellow passengers and citizens, but democracy, or the “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” as we know it. Communist fanatics are therefore presented as deluded supporters of obsolete autocratic regimes. In the fictional New World Order, the US way of life seems to have become established as “the good life” and the repository of all virtues. Air Force One starts rather spectacularly, with the violent arrest, or perhaps illegal kidnapping, of Kazakh General Radek (Jürgen Prochnow), the leader of the pro-communist faction proclaiming a re-unified Russia as “the Motherland” and threatening the smooth instauration of a democratic system in the ex-communist region. The film’s “New World Order” proposition presents us with a new form of leadership in the form of a Russian-American

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coalition that is now under threat from communist “insurgents” eager to “turn their back on God himself ” to defend “Mother Russia” against the democratic frenzy that has gripped the region. The film’s initial moments stage the brutal CIA-led arrest and imprisonment of the rebel Communist leader. Radek has been committing a number of atrocities in neighboring Kazakhstan against his pro-democracy enemies and is plotting to topple the current US-friendly Russian administration. Since Radek is also said to possess a nuclear arsenal, the potentially global consequences of his actions are not left unmentioned. Meanwhile, guest-of-honor and Russia’s new favorite person President Marshall is giving a speech in front of his new strategic allies, after having paid a visit to a nearby refugee camp. In his inspirational speech, he pledges to continue to pursue the proverbial US international mission and defend democratic values over and above every other concern, crucially US national (self-)interests. In addition, by having the enduring Russian archenemy as an ally in this endeavor, President Marshall manages to present his objective as a historic act of diplomatic collaboration, rather than a unilateral imposition. As a matter of fact, the thoughtful president is even able to express himself in his new friends’ language. Even though it is suggested that the rest of US allies— no mention is made of the UN—are bound to be displeased because of the sudden change in policy, President Marshall decides to go ahead with his plans because he knows them to be “morally right.” It is therefore suggested that in the international fight for the instauration and preservation of democracy, it is the “ethical” duty of the United States to take the lead, no matter the potential geopolitical consequences. Essentially, the president’s unscripted speech pledges not to allow US interests to get in the way of his administration’s defense of freedom, human rights, and other honorable causes. Much to the surprise of his political advisors and spin doctors, “maverick” President Marshall decides to go “solo” and turn official foreign policy on its head by foregoing the protection of national economic or geostrategic interests for the sake of preserving democracy and human rights worldwide. In other words, despite the potential political consequences at home and abroad, the president seeks to inaugurate a new form of international leadership based on moral principles, rather than the mere imposition of military might. While, as already mentioned, parallels may be easily established between Marshall’s new approach to international politics

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and the Clinton administration’s decision to intervene in such territories as Bosnia, Haiti, or Somalia in order to prevent genocide,151 the actual content of Marshall’s pledge, and more generally, the construction of the fictional character itself, easily fit with the most recognizable or popular parameters of Ford’s on-screen persona. Marshall’s wife Grace (Wendy Crewson) later praises him because the speech also reflects the fact that the presidency has not changed the man. All these narrative elements (the president as a resolute, principled person and a protective father figure, rather than a hot-tempered warrior) strongly reinforce the associations that the spectator may establish between the character and the performer. Ford’s apparent ability to seamlessly embody such a mythical representation of the presidency makes the viewing experience all the more convincing and pleasurable. As Freer152 put it, Be it handling difficult dilemmas or squaring up to monstrous evil, no one cuts it better in the action stakes than Ford: infusing all his stock in trade― stoic machismo, moral dignity, dyed in the wool decency―into the have-ago politician, Air Force One benefits much from a blissful marriage between star persona and character.

Meanwhile, the medias-res secret operation that inaugurates the film firmly positions the narrative within the action-thriller formula and, judging from the tremendous body count, suggests that a compassionate policy is not incompatible with a tough stand on political enemies. Radek’s violent seizure and imprisonment by US forces are immediately followed by images of Marshall’s anthological speech in Moscow three weeks later and typically suggest that violence, Hollywood-style, is justified when the common good is at stake. To quote President Marshall, Radek’s regime murdered over 200,000 men, women and children and we watched it on TV, we let it happen. […] We issued economic sanctions and hid behind the rhetoric of diplomacy. How dare we? […] Real peace is not just the absence of conflict; it’s the presence of justice. […] Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know is morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons and to those

Roper, The American Presidents, p. 197. Freer, “Air Force One,” p. 80.

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who use them: your day is over. We will never negotiate […] and we will no longer be afraid. It is your turn to be afraid.

“Kick-ass” action President Marshall may stand out as a firm defender of democratic principles and human rights, but he is also a firm defender of the second amendment of the US Constitution, or “the right of the People to keep and bear arms.” Thus, he does not hesitate to first authorize secret arrest operations and later kill a sizeable number of terrorists singlehandedly in order to safeguard his vision of freedom, peace, and democracy. Judging from the popularity of the film, Marshall’s eventual, generically dictated recourse to guerrilla warfare tactics first and man-to-man combat later seem to have struck a chord with the domestic audience, avid as they seemed to be for an unambiguous demonstration of patriotic, testosterone-driven, and adrenaline-filled heroic leadership. While it is moral leadership that Marshall initially aspires to, he clearly does not espouse diplomacy and negotiation. Action President Marshall is no wimp. As the famous song goes, “you gotta be cruel to be kind,” a maxim underlying many a Hollywood fiction dealing with the institution/imposition of law and order, from the Western to the cop film, to the action genre. On the other hand, and in terms of the representation of masculine ideals in the film, Marshall represents a potent amalgam of Jeffords’s “soft-body” and “hard-body” elements. The president’s hard-line antiterrorist policy is, after all, full of compassionate motives. Such a combination is a mainstay of Ford’s best-known (action) characters, and in Air Force One it is characteristically reinforced through the construction of the character as an ordinary, loving family guy. After his successful tour of duty in Moscow, Marshall returns home, in the form of the presidential aeroplane. Once on board, he is able to relax and become “a normal guy” once again. Marshall takes off the stern presidential mask and treats the crew and other employees amiably. He unwinds in the living room, watching a football game with a beer in his hand, like any other Tom, Dick, and Harry, while he waits for his wife and daughter to join him. For President Marshall, family life is all bliss after all these years. The man’s strong moral principles are certainly matched by his deep love of family. Yet only moments after Marshall’s heartfelt display of fatherly love, the president can be seen at business again with his closest collaborators.

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In order to reassure the audience of his tough stand on his enemies and corroborate that he meant what he said during the speech, Marshall resolves to take action against another one of his/the world’s political enemies. As it happens, Saddam Hussein has started a potentially threatening military operation near one of Iraq’s borders, and although the Iraqi ambassador to the United States declares it is only a harmless military exercise, the president resolves to act and send the Nimitz to the area “with immediate effect.”153 It is then that the terrorists on board Air Force One launch their own attack. As the president is rapidly led to the escape pod in the midst of a spectacular emergency landing operation, all he can think about is his family and their safety, over and above his own. Because of the impressive action pieces involving the plane’s landing, which certainly grab our attention, the spectator hardly has time to ponder on and question the potential consequences of the president’s back-door escape. When the terrorists realize that their main target has “escaped,” they retaliate by threatening to kill the hostages one by one. Fortunately, however, the president has remained loyal to his principles and decided not to abandon his family and comrades. As an experienced exsoldier and winner of a Medal of Honor in Vietnam, he sets out to launch a surprise guerrilla attack on the hijackers.154 Meanwhile, a crisis cabinet meets in Washington. They are relieved to find out that the escape pod has been found empty, since that would mean that Marshall is still on board. The fact that the emergency cabinet cannot decide on a specific course of action, or even on who has the constitutional power to take

As a dictator and alleged owner of a nuclear arsenal, Radek clearly stands for Saddam Hussein, who is only fleetingly referred to during the narrative. During his impeachment process in late 1998, President Clinton went on to launch a preventive attack on Iraq due to its alleged ownership of a nuclear, chemical, and biological arsenal. In the preceding State of the Union Address, Clinton had challenged Saddam Hussein: “You cannot defy the will of the world […]. You have used weapons of mass destruction before [and] we are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again” (William J. Clinton, “State of the Union address,” in The American Presidency Project (1998). Available at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=56280 (accessed December 15, 2008). There is a striking resemblance between Clinton’s real speech in 1998 and Marshall’s earlier fictional one in 1997, which is unsurprising given the fact that Ford insisted on hiring a former presidential speechwriter who went on to work in The West Wing (Ford, quoted in Michael Fleming, “Harrison Ford: The Playboy interview,” in Playboy Magazine, 2002, http://archive.li/DFeJc (accessed December 7, 2011)). 154 Interestingly, the plot chooses to stress the fact that Marshall won a Medal of Honor thanks to the many successful rescue, rather than combat, operations he commanded. While the president’s bravery is stressed, the character is constructed as more of a protector than a killer, which is consistent with Ford’s filmic persona. 153

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executive decisions in the absence of the president—they have to call in the legal experts on the matter—makes it evident that what the narrative demands is a strong leader who will act with determination even under duress. While power-hungry Defense Secretary (Dean Stockwell) would rather sacrifice President Marshall and the rest of the people on board than release Radek, since “the presidency is bigger than any one man,” devoted Vice-President Bennett (Glenn Close) is reluctant to pursue that course of action and decides to negotiate Radek’s “temporary” release with Russian President Petrov (Alan Woolf). Unfortunately for the US administration, Petrov refuses to free Radek since this would pose a terrible threat to the stability of his own nation and administration. Bennett’s melodramatic words, “no nation can easily survive the loss of nor soon replace a great leader” do not persuade Petrov to take his collaboration with the United States so far. Having failed to release Radek, the cabinet realize that the hostages are going to be killed one by one. On board the plane, the president, who is unaware of his cabinet’s internal bickering and international bargaining, is pursuing his own secret policy, fighting and then shooting a number of the hijackers—always in self-defense. He is also trying to contact his collaborators in Washington, but as a man with human limitations, he is not sure how to use the mobile phone he carries in his own briefcase. More of a rugged US soldier than a sophisticated spy, Marshall’s ignorance of new technologies distances him from the likes of James Bond. In any case, despite the high doses of dramatically charged, suspense-filled action, the film does not entirely shy away from humor. Displaying the habitual “ordinary guy” credentials that we are accustomed to finding in a Harrison Ford character, not only is President Marshall not able to use a mobile phone, but he cannot remember the White House’s phone number either—although one would not expect the president to call the White House very often. The conversation with the switchboard operator provides a welcome moment of comic relief, but at the same time it shows how vulnerable the president has become since it is then that he is caught by one of the hijackers. Still, he manages to secretly issue orders for his cabinet to implement an action plan that might become the hostages’ last chance of survival. Meanwhile, the leader of the terrorists, Ivan Korshunov, has separated first wife and daughter (Liesel Matthews) from the rest of the group and is about to have a tense conversation with them. As he tries to explain his reasons for

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killing the first hostage, he declares that he is not a monster, but a “believer.” His loyalty to Radek’s political faction has led him to wage a personal war against the enemies of the communist cause, renouncing even “his own private morality,” for the sake of “Mother Russia.” Korshunov’s nationalistic fervor for the defiled Russian Motherland, now “a nation of gangsters and prostitutes,” is manifestly stronger than any other form of human, spiritual, or moral attachment that he may harbor as an individual. Despite his devotion, the terrorist’s zeal is depicted as misguided and monstrous, since his collectivist cause seems to have turned him into a rebel lacking a personal code of ethics and therefore the freedom of choice individuals are supposedly granted under democratic capitalistic regimes. The grotesque characterization of the terrorist, on the other hand, is strengthened even when he voices some truths with potentially damaging consequences. While Korshunov is right to be critical about the US president’s own brutal actions in the form of military attacks authorized by himself as chief executive to “save a nickel on a gallon of gas,” the narrative disavows Korshunov’s point of view following different, more or less typical, manipulative strategies, such as turning him into a vicious child molester. After tying up her hands, Korshunov strokes the president’s daughter’s face and kisses her on the forehead, having just stopped short of kissing her on the lips. Helpless Grace Marshall, a temporary surrogate figure for the audience, can do nothing but look away in disgust. On the other hand, Korshunov’s preferred family ideal, as represented by the totalitarian administration that would resuscitate “Mother Russia,” is also clearly meant to contrast with the family he now holds hostage. Since they happen to be the First Family of the United States, the self-proclaimed leader of democratic nations, Korshunov’s actions stage a symbolic confrontation not only against the background of geopolitics, but also against that of moral and family values. Therefore, the eventual fight on board the plane takes place at two different levels, the political one and the individual one, since the preservation of democracy, the US nation, and the US nuclear family necessarily becomes one and the same. As one reviewer155 put it, “In Air Force One, America is the family,” and, I would add, the family is the United States. Clearly, the narrative Charles Taylor, “Drop dead, prez to the world,” in Salon.com, July 25, 1997. Available at https://web. archive.org/web/20110314161119/http://www.salon.com/july97/entertainment/movieair970725. html (accessed May 5, 2008).

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posits President Marshall as the ideal “Father of the Nation,” the only one with the necessary moral and physical strength required to save his family, his nation, and democracy to boot from the bad fatherly model that Radek and his surrogate Korshunov represent. It is self-evident that this particular narrative strategy, combining the melodrama and action-thriller formulae, had already been successfully employed in the earlier Jack Ryan films. With Air Force One, Harrison Ford therefore managed to confirm his credentials as a rare-pedigree action hero who can seamlessly adjust to melodramatic settings involving intense family dramas. As the fight continues on board, dramatic images of the president overpowering the hijackers one by one are intercut with images of his cabinet and the terrified hostages. This being a standard action picture, kinetics and action-spectacle become integral parts of the narrative, although they are exclusively reserved for the hero/star. This is after all a narrative investing heavily in traditional notions of individual male heroism, which are doubly supported by both its sustained focus on one of the most important individuals on the planet, namely the US president, and the starvehicle formula that the film clearly endorses. While the leading man moves around the plane with apparent ease, his squabbling cabinet, not to mention the hostages on board, remain passive on their seats, unable to act and face up to the terrorists. It is up to the symbolic father and hero to stand and deliver a rescue plan, which, predictably, involves no negotiation with the hijackers. The simple, almost candid, reasoning that the president offers is striking: “if you give a mouse a cookie, he is gonna want a glass of milk.” This metaphorical analysis of the situation reveals both the superficiality with which the political content of the film is dealt with and an almost condescending narrative need to provide the spectator with uncomplicated clues into the development of the action. When the second hostage is executed in dramatic circumstances, the president still refuses to surrender, although, as a very sensitive person, he cannot help shedding a tear over the death of his close collaborator and friend. This restrained form of disturbance, which represents a combination of anger and sorrow, is typical of the Harrison Ford melodramatic action formula. His characters’ reactions show more resolve and disgust than wrath, although they hardly betray panic or resignation. The melodramatic excess that tinges

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the narrative at moments such as this one is, according to the star, far from accessory: “It’s not simply emoting, it’s story-telling.”156 This particular form of storytelling also contributes to the construction of a very appealing kind of (male) hero that has it all. He is loving, resolute, and brave, and is therefore accessible to everyone. In other words, by virtue of the narrative construction of the character, and the very traits that Ford’s performance and persona imbue the part with, the president represents a veritable hero cum “Father of the Nation.” As is to be expected, the president eventually manages to save the lives of all those who remain alive on board, except for the terrorists and the traitor in the president’s security entourage. As Marshall finally manages to break Korshunov’s neck while uttering the iconic expletive “Get off my Plane!,” the narrative reaches a violent climax that certainly gave a large share of the audience the exhilarating brutality that they had been expecting from the president. For other spectators, however, this may constitute a troubling moment. Indeed, the tongue-in-cheek flavor of the scene suggests an obscene conflation of murderous brutality, fun, and laughs.157 While this does not deviate from standard Hollywood action picture tactics, it does represent an important shift in Harrison Ford’s construction as an action hero. Accustomed as the audience were to Ford’s customary heroes with a conscience à la Patriot Games, President Marshall ultimately represents “a clear and present danger” to his enemies, and therefore a clear departure from the standard 1990s Harrison Ford formula toward the more brutal parameters that were usually associated with other action stars of the 1980s and 1990s. Interestingly, however, Ford’s later production, which the next sections will focus on, tended to redress this tendency rather than confirm it.

Six Days, Seven Nights: Intertextuality in Action! After the tremendous success of Air Force One, the actor felt it was time for a change of register. Although always interested in a new challenge, P. J. Sloane, “President Ford,” Film Review (October 1997), p. 56. Admittedly, similar ingredients, that is, violence, fun, and laughs, had already featured prominently in the Indiana Jones series. Unlike Air Force One, however, such films were essentially action comedies.

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the star was well aware of the potential economic consequences of playing against type in a genre, the romantic comedy, which could certainly not be considered to be his natural home turf: “I have a pretty good idea of what my general cultural identity is. I can stretch people’s notion of what I am to a certain extent, but I have to be realistic of the experience audiences have had with me over the last 20 years. I know it’s very hard to disabuse them of that experience.”158 Six Days, Seven Nights was the third and most financially successful romantic comedy in Ford’s career. The plot largely conformed to the established parameters of classical screwball comedies, which reviews constantly stressed. For instance, Empire summarized the nostalgic pleasures of the film succinctly: “It’s as old as the Hollywood Hills: a mismatched couple—she dainty, he gruff—thrown together in unforeseen circumstances, unexpectedly find mutual respect, then lurve in exotic climes.”159 However, perhaps in an effort to maximize its box-office potential, the film also introduced elements belonging to the action-adventure genre and indeed the box-office results were satisfactory but still modest. Even though the star was aware that the economic potential of a romantic comedy, however action-packed, was probably much lower than that of a blockbuster action film, he still commanded the same fee, which at the time amounted to approximately $20m, plus 10 percent of the film’s gross revenue. Despite Ford’s exorbitant salary, the film managed to break even at the domestic box office alone. Different A-list actresses had been considered for the Robin Monroe part but none of them agreed to audition for the part, which was Ford’s contractual prerequisite. In the end, the comparatively less well-known Anne Heche was cast instead. Because of this particular decision, the film’s pre-production involved an unanticipated setback. Unexpectedly, Ford’s selected co-star announced that she was dating Ellen DeGeneres. Because of Heche’s lesbian liaison, many at Disney Studios began to question her ability to convincingly portray Ford’s character’s romantic, heterosexual, interest. Such worries

Quoted in Anon, “Harrison gets personal,” in New Letter (1998). Available at http://web.archive. org/web/20090106010027/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/6d7n/gets_personal.php. (accessed March 29, 2010). 159 Ian Freer, “Review of Six Days, Seven Nights,” Empire 110 (August 1998), p. 77. 158

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had certainly much less to do with her evident acting skills than with the industry’s—and perhaps the potential audience’s—latent homophobia. In any event, Ford, who had co-star veto, and director Ivan Reitman agreed that Heche had proven to be the best choice for the part from the very start of the project. Characteristically, Ford refused to comment on his co-lead’s private life and did nothing but continuously praise Heche’s apt casting and evident comic talent. Apart from the “chemistry” that both actors had been able to generate during rehearsals, Heche was also considered to have the spiritedness and acting skills required for a nostalgic project that unashamedly aimed to update the battle of the sexes of classical Hollywood. According to Premiere critic Pond,160 Heche was “very screwball” and had the necessary “intelligence, fire, wit” or the prerequisite “I don’t give a shit what you think attitude for a film of its kind.” Indeed, Heche’s performance and talent for comedy are one of the highlights of the production. Still, the ensuing uproar provided this summer release with much-needed hype. Judging by the film’s financial results, it is likely that many of Ford’s fans who had not run to the cinema to watch his two earlier romantic comedies were piqued by curiosity and went to see the movie this time. In this particular regard, it is worth mentioning that, whether intentionally or not, an early trailer for the film introduced high doses of sexual innuendo that made oblique reference to Heche’s sexuality, while also highlighting Ford’s tremendously manly powers of seduction. As Ford’s character puts his hand into Robin’s clothes while trying to “save” her from a water snake that “has just swum up [her] pants” (shorts? underwear?), a voice-over intones, “This summer, find adventure in the most remote place known to man.” While the studio denied intending any puns, Reitman awkwardly insisted that the actual meaning of the line was rather different, since “the most remote place known to man is meant to refer to all women and how difficult it is for men to understand them.”161 The producers eventually chose to replace the sexual double-entendre

Steve Pond, “On the set: Pleasure island,” Premiere 11/11 (July 1998), p. 44. Quoted in Andy Seiler, “Movie trailer isn’t funny on purpose,” in USA Today (1998). Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20001011161640/http://www.usatoday.com/life/enter/leps083.htm (accessed November 23, 2008).

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with the more demure, but also more action-adventure-orientated line, “After this week in Paradise, they’re going to need a vacation.”162 Such references to Heche’s sexuality are certainly part of the film’s overall game of references. In fact, self-referentiality is one of the most manifest aspects of the film. Jeffers McDonald163 has argued that “the cannibalism of elements from other romantic films seems widespread” in the contemporary rom-com, although, in her view, “the point of the neo-traditional romantic comedy’s borrowing is difficult to discern,” given the fact that these films are impregnated by a “mood of imprecise nostalgia” or a “more vague selfreferentialism.” Although I agree with this assessment to a certain extent, Six Days, Seven Nights does not entirely fit Jeffers McDonald’s broad assessment. As a matter of fact, the film’s intertextual drive clearly attempts to highlight the authenticity, and sincerity, of both its main male star (and Quinn Harris’s, by extension) and its desperately nostalgic, but rather dated, view of gender relations (see Reitman’s comment above as to the sempiternal battle of the sexes and men’s inability to fathom women). There are numerous moments in the film that reference both Ford’s off-screen existence and cinematic past, with more or less comic effect: the snake, seaplane, or landslide episodes, the gruff pilot’s rugged independence and aversion to urban sophistication, and so on. While these references amuse the audience by tapping their previous “Harrison Ford experiences” and their awareness of some of the most recognizable aspects of his image, they also manage to lend an aura of “authenticity” to the character by synthesizing in him certain of the most significant traits of Ford’s on-screen persona and off-screen image. Quinn Harris is, after all, nothing but a generally wiser, more mature version of the beloved brazen adventurer that Ford had successfully portrayed in the past. On the other hand, Harris’s manly unfussiness and rugged sincerity contrast with the parodic artifice that is typical of other characters in the film, notably The film’s eventual drive for demureness, a characteristic that Jeffers McDonald (Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre (London, 2007), pp. 97–8) finds applicable to most contemporary rom-coms, also seems to have led to the final shedding of costar David Schwimmer’s favorite line of film dialogue. Ford’s character, Quinn Harris, flies an old, classic plane, a De Havilland Beaver. When his passengers, played by Heche and Schwimmer, express their concern that the engine has not been oiled properly before taking off, Harris’s sexpot girlfriend Angelica (Jacqueline Obradors) innocently says “don’t worry. You can put oil in the Beaver when she’s moving,” to which Schwimmer’s character responds “words to live by” (Pond, “On the set,” p. 45). 163 Jeffers McDonald, Romantic Comedy, pp. 86; 87; 91. 162

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Frank, Robin’s milquetoast boyfriend and, ostensively, the narrative’s “wrong partner.” Hence, the naturalness that characterizes Ford’s part is strongly emphasized through self-referentiality. Associations are established and direct commentaries are made in order to endow Ford’s part with the required doses of authenticity one had come to expect from his roles, and, more generally, from his public image. Hence, the fact that Ford, an avid pilot of small planes in real life, insisted that he must fly Harris’s single-engine De Havilland Beaver, a model that the star also happens to own, does not really come as a surprise. Last, but not least, the general mood of the film, as well as certain key scenes in the narrative, references well-known Hollywood romantic classics, such as The African Queen (1951) and From Here to Eternity (1953) in a very direct manner.164 Among other things, the film references the first through its representation of an unlikely, “chalk-and-cheese” couple who realize that they have more in common than they initially thought. Meanwhile, homage to Zinnemann’s Hawaii-set classic is paid both visually and, perhaps less obviously, thematically, since both Robin and Karen Holmes (Deborah Kerr) are trapped in sterile relationships, which leads to unfaithfulness, with certainly different outcomes (see Figure 35).

Figure 35  “She never knew it could be like this”: Like Karen Holmes, Robin Monroe finds her perfect match in a rugged loner on a Hawaiian beach. Six Days, Seven Nights (produced by Julie Bergman Sender, Daniel Goldberg, Joe Medjuck, Roger Birnbaum. Directed by Ivan Reitman). One reviewer significantly entitled his review “It Happened on the African Queen One Night” (Tom Keogh, “It happened on the African Queen one night,” in Film.com (1998), http://web.archive. org/web/20020225214603/http://www.film.com/film-review/1998/10551/23/default-review.html (accessed October 31, 2008)). Favorable and unfavorable comparisons were also frequently made with single performers, or pairs of performers, from the classical period, such as wisecracking Barbara Stanwyck, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard and Doris Day and Rock Hudson (Jonathan Romney, “Review of Six Days, Seven Nights,” Sight and Sound 8/8 (August 1998), p. 54).

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These popular classics provide the narrative with the nostalgically romantic touch that has become a regular feature of what Neale165 and Jeffers McDonald166 have respectively referred to as “the new romance” or “the neo-traditional romantic comedy.” As a result, the film’s self-referential slant, coupled with Ford’s conventional, throwback reputation, deliberately instills the narrative with an aura of romantic nostalgia for things past, or for “the way we were,” and, in essence, for good-old-fashioned “true romance,” thereby suggesting that when it comes to gender or romantic relations one should be wary of too much novelty. Because of its self-conscious exploration and exploitation of both the star system and conventional gender norms in its nostalgic presentation of gender relations, there seems to be more to this summer romp than meets the eye. The narrative first takes us to New York, on a cold, snowy day. Before long, however, we will be transported along with Robin and her future fiancé, Frank, to the South Sea Paradise of Makatéa. Unlike in a significant number of more recent romantic comedies, New York is here uncharacteristically portrayed as an unromantic space that wrecks and impedes, rather than facilitates, romance and excitement. According to Jermyn,167 New York provides an apt setting for romantic comedies for various reasons. For my particular purposes, two of these factors seem crucial: the City’s traditionally liberal lifestyle and one of its corollaries, the freedom of choice and movement granted to women in the Big Apple, where increased professional opportunities for single women led to greater doses of female independence and sophistication. However, judging from the evidence provided by Six Days, Seven Nights, New York’s inhabitants, far from being represented in a positive light, have started to acquire an unpleasant air of arrogance and, crucially, insincerity.168 Ford’s three romantic comedies, incidentally, have at least in part taken place in this particular location. Hence, despite the restrictedness of this particular film corpus, it is interesting Steve Neale, “The big romance or something wild? Romantic comedy today,” Screen 33/3 (1992). Jeffers McDonald, Romantic Comedy. 167 Deborah Jermyn, “I ♥ NY. The rom-com’s love affair with New York City,” in S. Abbot and D. Jermyn (eds), Falling in Love Again. Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema (London and New York, 2009), pp. 9–24. 168 Negra has found a similar impulse in certain post-September 11 New York-set rom-coms. In such films, life in Manhattan is associated with artifice and, significantly, “a worrisome degree of female power” (Diane Negra, “Structural integrity, historical reversion and the post-9/11 chick flick,” Feminist Media Studies 8/1 (2008), p. 60). 165 166

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to identify the changes that took place in the depiction of New York as a space for romance in the space of ten years, which is the period of time separating Working Girl and Six Days.169 Back in 1988, when Working Girl was released, New York was presented as a space for democratic opportunity, where, as long as one exhibited the prerequisite can-do attitude, one could achieve any goal, from being offered a truly rewarding job to finding the man of one’s dreams. Yet seven years later, Sabrina denounced, however mildly, the emotional cost of the greedy excesses of the 1980s, as signified by the emotional stuntedness and workaholic tendencies of certain New Yorkers. Pollack’s narrative also naively suggested that a trip to the sempiternally romantic Parisian Neverland would provide the kind of emotional healing that the main characters were so badly in need of. By the time Six Days, Seven Nights was released, New York had become so inauthentic and unromantic that the narrative time allotted to life and love in the Big Apple was drastically reduced to a meager four minutes. At the beginning of the film, Robin complains about her not spending enough quality time with Frank, which is why after sending her a wonderful flower bouquet, he takes her out to dinner in a Polynesian restaurant, where he tells her they are going to take a week off and go to Makatéa. Never again in the narrative will we catch a glimpse of the City. Robin Monroe’s job is sub-editor of a glossy women’s magazine called Dazzle, a clone publication of Vogue or Cosmopolitan, the magazines par excellence of the so-called post-feminist age. These publications’ central sections, which are invariably devoted to relationships, sex and the latest diet, fashion, make-up, and lifestyle trends, aim to empower urban, young, independent women with, generally, plenty of purchasing power, to become professionally, emotionally, and sexually successful without losing an inch of their traditional femininity. Six Days, Seven Nights, nevertheless, is critical of such magazines and of the “vital statistical” information that they provide their mostly female readers with. Throughout the narrative, various jokes are made at the expense of such magazines, even by the editors themselves, implying that the information they contain is misleading at best and completely false at worst. One of the clearest examples of the ironic detachment that the narrative exhibits toward the Morning Glory (2010), also set in New York, constitutes a further incursion into the comedy genre for Ford. Although it has been widely, though perhaps inaccurately, labeled a romantic comedy, Ford is not, in theory, the protagonist’s romantic partner, hence its exclusion from this corpus.

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post-feminist likes of Dazzle may be found at the very beginning of the film. Robin has set up an “Office Love Affairs” special, which aims to give readers advice on, literally, “how to get him and your raise.” The photographer’s instructions and the kitschness of the photo shoot itself would not appear to have been out of place in a series like Mad Men (2007–15), which suggests that, in the last few decades, little has changed in the nature of gender relations at the workplace. Even though she is the mastermind behind the special dossier, Robin seems to agree, as evidenced by her own exasperated reaction as she enters the room, only to find the female model dressed in a sexy suit, posing as a secretary and showing her ample cleavage to her male boss, who seems to be quite satisfied with the display. The photo shoot episode, despite its relative narrative unimportance, is quite revealing in different, contradictory ways. On the one hand, this apparently insignificant event seems to be putting forward the worrying message that despite years of struggle for equality, women still depend on their looks, rather than their brains, to get ahead in their personal lives (“get him”) and in their careers (“and get your raise”). One the other hand, its blatantly mocking undertones constitute an attack on the real cultural value of contemporary female publications such as Dazzle and therefore undermine the credibility of their editing staff ’s work, values, and ideas. In fact, Robin’s mechanical quotations of statistical information from her magazine have the effect of turning her opinions into hollow, stereotyped assertions without any significant value. In short, Robin’s detached attitude toward her own trade during this episode seems to be preparing the audience for the eventual sacrifice of her career via what Negra170 describes as the prerequisite romantic “retreatist epiphany.” So, the lovers fly off to Makatéa, an imaginary South Pacific island that provides the necessary contrast with New York’s uncomfortably icy roads and pavements. The fact that the lovers’ arrival at Makatéa is incongruously punctuated by Caribbean Calypso music effectively turns the island into the fantasy, secluded space of romantic comedy, an isolated, laid-back space in which everything is possible. In fact, as soon as they arrive at their initial destination, Robin and Frank find that they are no longer in control of the Diane Negra, “Quality Postfeminism? Sex and the Single Girl on HBO,” in Genders Online Journal (2004). Available at https://www.atria.nl/ezines/IAV_606661/IAV_606661_2011_53/genders/g39_ negra.html (accessed March 9, 2009).

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situation, a clear sign that their lives are about to go topsy-turvy in this contemporary hybrid take on the screwball genre. Their connecting flight has been canceled and instead they are forced to accept Quinn Harris’s transport services, which entails flying in an old, single-engine De Havilland Beaver. The rough but reliable pilot is from the very beginning associated with his beloved classic aircraft, not just by virtue of his age, but also in other metaphorical ways. As Harris says at one point, comparing himself to the aircraft, “we may be old, but we are still sturdy.” The pilot’s introduction is a significant moment because it provides the viewer with the first indication that the character, like his cherished plane, and, crucially, like the star that embodies him, is meant to be a representative of older times and enduring values in more respects than one. Harris describes the plane as “one of the safest, most reliable planes ever built,” which echoes the plane’s manufacturer’s own assessment of the aircraft, which claims that it “is the most rugged and reliable aircraft in it’s [sic] category.” It is easy to establish a link between such associations and Ford’s public persona, especially its most recognizable old-fashioned and “throwback” aspects. Indeed, as already pointed out, the narrative seems to be making continuous reference to Ford’s well-established persona, although it is mainly through his direct opposition to David Schwimmer’s character (and persona) that the film’s agenda, particularly in terms of gender construction and polarization, is revealed. It is also at this point that Harris’s exotic, sexy companion, Angelica, is introduced. Frank is evidently pleased to make her acquaintance, which firmly establishes very early on in the narrative that he, although thoughtful and romantic, is not as ideal a partner as Robin seems to think. Once they arrive at the hotel, Frank tells Robin, “I want this to be the most unforgettable vacation of our lives.” This corny, clichéd line also seems to point to Frank’s own insincerity and, by extension, the couple’s romantic delusion. Still, only shortly after Frank proposes to Robin, and she says yes. If Frank’s romantic talk throughout the film sounds clichéd, Quinn’s lines sound commonsensical and down-to-earth instead. For example, he pokes fun in front of Robin at the tourists’ unrealistically romantic expectations about the island: “they come here looking for the magic, expecting to find ‘romance,’ when they can’t find it anywhere else; [but] it’s an island, baby, if you don’t bring it here, you won’t find it here.” Because she takes his comments personally, she mockingly retorts

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“heavy, pilot and philosopher!” Noticing her sarcastic tone, Quinn replies “you are from New York, aren’t you?” This line certainly draws on the stereotype of the sassy, “smart-alecky” female New Yorker and predisposes the audience toward the battle of wits, and the battle of the sexes, which is about to take place in the middle section of the narrative. As if trying to confirm Robin and Frank’s unsuitability for each other, Robin’s boss interrupts their short engagement bliss and asks her to coach an important photo shoot. Even though Robin expresses concern at leaving Frank alone at such a crucial moment she eventually says yes. Just like Dr. Walker’s Parisian adventure in Frantic was symptomatic of his repressed anxieties as a married man, Robin’s capitulation to her boss, although apparently justified in the name of female independence and equal opportunities, signals her own desire for excitement and adventure away from Frank. Indeed, Robin and Quinn’s sexualized repartee as they board the latter’s plane, although somewhat forced, signals their eventual compatibility: Robin : Quinn: Robin: Quinn: Robin: Quinn:

Is it safe to fly? It is with me. Oh, you’re that good. I’m the best you’ve ever been with! I’m not sure I trust your equipment. We may be old but we’re sturdy.

Once airborne, Quinn pokes fun at Dazzled’s centerpiece, “Ten Ways to Light His Fire.” Whereas the magazine concocts sophisticated formulae for contemporary women to make sexual relationships exciting and new every day, Quinn’s practical, old-fashioned advice to women on the same topic is succinct: “Show up. That’s it, we’re easy. Of course you can’t charge six bucks an issue for that, can you?” Despite his cynicism, Quinn’s comparative worth as a partner for Robin is confirmed during their short trip. A rapid, tense montage of images juxtaposing Quinn’s “take charge” attitude during the pair’s doomed flight and Frank’s thorough enjoyment of his dinner, laced as it is with Angelica’s sexy, exotic dance, is a clear indication that Frank is no match for Quinn as a dependable partner. Even though Quinn jokingly asks Robin for two of her tranquilizers during the storm that eventually brings the aircraft down, it is quite evident that he is in control of the situation. Instead, Angelica

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only needs to “show up,” to quote Quinn, in order to light Frank’s fire and cause him to lose control of his impulses. The comparative worth of Robin’s two possible partners was continuously recorded in reviews. The adjectives used to describe Quinn highlighted both positive and (mildly) negative aspects and included “grizzled, sozzled and flirtatious; with gruff charm; rugged man’s man.” However, the adjectives or phrases used to describe Frank were invariably negative and included “schlubby; milquetoast; hangdog dorkiness; professional whine David Schwimmer.” What is striking is the blatant way in which such descriptions pictured two extremely polarized styles of masculinity, one rough but manly and dependable, and the other sophisticated but weak, unreliable, and without redemption. That such contrasting styles were embodied by two well-known male stars from two different generations whose public personas evoked widely differing styles of masculinity has the effect of further widening the gulf separating Frank and Quinn. One such style would seemingly represent the “old school” of traditional masculinity, while the other would come to represent “the new school” and, by extension, “the (wimpish) new man,” or rather, a heavily manipulated version of modern-day masculinity. The narrative, and many a reviewer, clearly associated the latter style with David Schwimmer, or rather, with his most popular part to date, Ross Geller, from the hugely popular and influential sit-com Friends (1994–2004). Yet despite Ross’s many positive traits (sensitive, loving father and brother, loyal friend), only his bumbling personality seemed to come to reviewers’ minds when assessing the film. As one of them put it, The film presents us with another familiar contemporary archetype: The Schwimmer. Cast that wimpy, whiny-boy Friends persona in a romance, and I don’t care how famously hetero or homosexual the female lead is: she’ll run right to the arms of whoever else is on the island. Let the gossip columnists interpret what they may.171

And if that “whoever else” happens to be one of the most popular manly men in contemporary Hollywood, it becomes apparent who Robin is going to run to in the end. Incidentally, Ford was crowned as “Sexiest Man Alive” by People Lisa Schwarzbaum, “Paradise lust,” in Entertainment Weekly (1998). Available at http://ew.com/ article/1998/06/19/six-days-seven-nights-2/ (accessed February 12, 2008).

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Magazine precisely in 1998, at the age of fifty-six! His former co-star Melanie Griffith172 was keen to appraise Ford’s mature charm in the magazine: “He’s just so handsome and sweet and elegant and cool and macho.” As already discussed in this book, Ford’s ability to project a “sweet, elegant, protective” yet also “cool, macho” style of masculinity has always been one of his greatest strengths, which Quinn Harris also seems to possess. The morning after they become stranded on a remote island, Robin fails to contact Sea Rescue with her mobile phone, which she naively thought would save them. Once she realizes that modern technology is useless in such a situation, she chides Quinn precisely for his lack of “traditional” and “thoroughly manly” manual skills. This is how the comic exchange goes: Robin: Aren’t you one of those guys? Quinn: What guys? Robin: Those guy guys. Those guys with skills. You send them out into the jungle with a pocketknife and a Q-tip and they build you a shopping mall! You can’t do that.

Without a doubt, the comic effect of such a piece of dialogue relies on the evocation of Ford’s on-screen persona and off-screen image as one of those traditional “guy guys with skills” in the Indiana Jones or John Book mold and, less popularly, Allie Fox in The Mosquito Coast. Since this is a comedy, it is entirely within habitual generic parameters to focus on Quinn’s initial shortcomings. Yet as the narrative progresses, the audience’s likely expectations as to the character are confirmed and Quinn reveals himself to be the resolute, take-charge man that Robin is disappointed not to find at first. Still, such a progression is punctuated by numerous tongue-in-cheek moments that intensify the comic tone of the narrative, as well as the “heroic ordinariness” of its main male character, and of the star’s persona. For example, he saves Robin from the “attack” of both a wild pig and a snake and he manages to catch some peacock for dinner. Although such moments focus on Quinn’s “innate” hunter-warrior spirit, they also subvert Ford’s heroic persona in a parodic manner. He often stumbles, sounds, and looks confused, and above all he is made to look ridiculous in his primitive hunter’s gear (see Figure 36). Quoted in John Daniel Reed, “The sexiest man alive: Harrison Ford,” in People Magazine (1998). Available at http://people.com/archive/cover-story-the-sexiest-man-alive-98-harrison-ford-vol-50no-18/ (accessed December 12, 2015).

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Figure 36  Quinn’s heroic nature, and certainly Ford’s persona, is subverted at m ­ oments like these. Six Days, Seven Nights (produced by Julie Bergman Sender, Daniel Goldberg, Joe Medjuck, Roger Birnbaum. Directed by Ivan Reitman).

Given Ford’s image of extreme competence and professionalism, moments like these may have different effects upon fans, and the audience in general. While some may relish the star’s ability to poke some fun at himself, others may find the same experience somewhat disconcerting. In any case, the film’s eventual shift from comedy to the adventure genre finally confirms that such a caricature of masculinity is not meant to last. Still, for as long as the film remains faithful to the screwball formula, the pair’s incompatibility is continuously emphasized. Since this is also an adventure narrative, Robin and Quinn’s expeditions to find food and water and eventually their confrontation with modern-day pirates constitute a heightened version of the fun and play characteristic of the screwball genre. Although Quinn makes it clear to Robin that she is not his type,173 they eventually fall for each other. Since his wife left him for his best friend (and business partner), Quinn seems to have been undergoing a personal crisis. He is certainly running away from the complications of romantic commitment and so wishes his liaison with Angelica to remain as simple as possible, which is why he finds Robin so awkward and challenging a female companion. Occasionally, Quinn’s male crisis, as well as the accumulated tension, makes him lose his “male cool.” There is a critical moment in the film when after a whole day’s climbing, he realizes they are not Apparently, Robin is too much of a non-traditional woman for aging Quinn’s old-fashioned taste: “You talk too much; you’re opinionated; you’re stubborn, sarcastic and stuck up. Your ass is too narrow and your tits are too small.” It seems that Robin’s surname, Monroe, would have been more appropriate for Quinn’s exotic bimbo girlfriend, Angelica.

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on the island he thought they were and so have little chance of survival. He goes into a bush and loudly vents his frustration, much to Robin’s desperation. Robin seems to think that she is partly to blame for Quinn’s sudden outburst of rage, and therefore sees the need to tone down her critical stand and boost her troubled companion’s male ego instead: “Please don’t do that again. Come on, ever since we’ve been here you’ve been so confident. You have all the answers […] I need you to be my confident captain. I can’t tell you how difficult this is gonna be for me if you lose it.” As if by magic, mean pirates suddenly appear on the scene, which marks the definite shift from the screwball adventure to the action-adventure genre. It is here that all the “running, jumping and falling down” starts, which gives Ford a chance to perform his distinctive “star turn.” As McDonald174 asserts, genres are fundamental for the definition of star identities, often “setting limits to the contexts in which [they are] used. However, as the parameters of generic categories themselves are never firmly fixed, so the images of stars can be flexibly used to traverse genres.” Thus, the film manages to combine action and comedy in almost equal measure. Indeed, we see Quinn punching the baddies, though we also see Robin clubbing them, which prompts Quinn’s admiring nod. Moreover, when the pirates are about to shoot Quinn, it is Robin who exclaims “we’ve got gold” and makes up the story that gives them another chance at survival, and the possibility of escaping from their captors. Therefore, at least initially, both partners contribute differently, though in equal measure, toward their own escape, which constitutes a welcome move toward equality of agency in an action narrative. Their collaborative effort extends to the construction of the makeshift seaplane that will take them back to Makatéa, which Robin actually has to bring down after Quinn passes out because of his wounds. Still, despite Robin’s willingness to “help out,” she does not hesitate to step to one side when the going gets tough. When during their escape Quinn tries to make her feel better by telling her that he is also scared of the pirates, she feels disappointed at his sincere outburst of “new man” vulnerability. This prompts an exchange between the two that is meant to signify that, always according to the narrative, contemporary, post-feminist-inspired versions of masculinity are useless when push comes to shove: Paul McDonald, The Star System: Hollywood’s Production of Popular Identities (London, 2000), p. 96.

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Quinn: I thought that’s what women wanted, men who weren’t afraid to cry, who are in touch with their feminine side. Robin: No, not when they are being chased by pirates; they like them mean and armed!

Robin’s appreciation of the traditional, rugged masculine ethos would have made the likes of Robert Bly proud. It is precisely Quinn’s more mature protective aura and rugged style of masculinity, which is so removed from what Frank, or the “new man,” supposedly has to offer, that she finds so attractive. Even though they eventually kiss on a beach, they both refrain from going any further out of respect for Robin’s engagement. Yet Robin still allows herself to enjoy a “good, safe” and thoroughly chaste cuddle with Quinn while her fiancé is having sex with Angelica. Quinn’s responsible, respectful behavior, despite his obvious sexual yearning, gives a further indication of his superior moral standing. Yet again, this creates a symbolic gap between the two masculine poles represented in the film. For all his sensitivity and forced romanticism, Frank’s insincerity is confirmed after his one-night stand with Angelica. Meanwhile, Quinn becomes the representative of a natural, unforced sort of masculinity that is reminiscent of the heroes of the classical Western and adventure narratives. Such a style, though coarse at times, is the repository of traditional masculine values, such as altruism, nobility, and dependability. This differentiation is clearly strengthened by the fact that the two male performers belong to two ostensibly different generations, with different values and expectations, not to mention the connotations that Ford brings to the part. In fact, while Angelica tries to help Frank deal with his feelings of guilt by asserting “you’re a guy. You can’t help it!,” it is evident that the same could not be said about Quinn, a thoroughly different kind of “guy-guy,” indeed. The film’s final section portrays Robin’s romantic “epiphany.” She goes to visit Quinn at the hospital to find out if what happened during their adventure meant something to him too, but he rejects her and insists on not complicating his life with a steady relationship. Moreover, as he is aware of the generation gap between them, he believes that Robin has plenty of opportunities awaiting her and therefore deserves to grab them with “someone fresher” by her side. As a practical man, he senses that settling on the island and becoming his “co-

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pilot” would go as much against Robin’s nature as moving to New York and becoming her “receptionist” would go against his own. Hence, it is in the name of independence, and age difference, that the two would-be lovers separate. Yet at the very last minute, Robin decides to call off her engagement to Frank and stay on the island to try and change Quinn’s mind. She does not need to, of course, because by that time Quinn has realized that his life is far “too simple” and what he really needs is to complicate “the hell out of it” by Robin’s side. The screwball formula is therefore resumed now that Quinn is willing to allow Robin to disrupt his uncomplicated lifestyle for good. Still, it seems that Robin’s own lifestyle has actually undergone the most disruption, judging by her final decision to leave her former life behind in order to, metaphorically at least, become Quinn’s co-pilot. In this sense, she chooses to follow the specific path toward domestic “retreatism” that Negra considers to be at the heart of many a contemporary romantic comedy, especially those produced in the aftermath of September 11, a turning point in recent US history that prompted a resurgence of more traditional, conservative notions of nation, family, and gender. According to Negra, women’s retreatism is the direct consequence of what she labels the contemporary “drama of miswanting,”175 which basically involves (professional) women’s voluntary retreat from the public arena and renunciation of the idea of “having it all […], lest they lose their femininity.”176 Negra177 places this trend within a more general pattern of “historical reversion,” which has fostered a resurgence and rehabilitation of traditional patriarchal institutions and accelerated after the events of September 11, 2001. Indeed, unlike those “38.6 percent of […] women [who] are pressured into quitting their jobs in the first year of marriage,” as Dazzle apparently falsely reports, Robin voluntarily decides to replace both Frank and her sophisticated New York lifestyle with Quinn and a simpler lifestyle in his beach hut. Like the heroines in Kate and Leopold (2001), Robin’s

Negra, “Structural integrity,” p. 53. Negra, “Quality Postfeminism?” Mortimer has made a similar point: “the modern-day heroine learns that she cannot ‘have it all,’ and can only achieve happiness by sacrificing her urge to compete in a male world and coming to terms with her feminine instincts to be married/coupled and settled” (Claire Mortimer, Romantic Comedy (London and New York, 2010), pp. 30–1). A significant exception to this more or less general rule is Ford’s Morning Glory, which may be explained on the grounds that romance per se is not the main focus of the narrative. 177 Negra, “Structural integrity,” p. 62. 175 176

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“retreat” is markedly punctuated by a desire to “go back in time,” so to speak, and recuperate an (anachronistic) gender order that, allegedly, is more in tune with women’s actual aspirations since, as Negra178 suggests, “women’s professional and romantic interests do not, at present, coincide or coexist in the mainstream working woman romantic comedy.” Anne Heche seemed precisely to be referring to such a retreatist drive in her own assessment of the film: Of course the character is falling in love against her will. She’s been a little preoccupied with what she’s supposed to be doing, not what she’s feeling. This movie should ring a bell with any woman who puts up barriers in her life, but then decides she wants people to see who she really is. She’s saying “why don’t we just throw supposed-to’s out the window?”179

Within this context, Heche’s final summary of the film, “it’s an old-fashioned love story, but it could shift stereotypes,”180 was surprising, to say the least. Nevertheless, given the couple’s age difference and Robin’s sassiness, which the film’s epilogue keeps reminding us of, a shadow of doubt remains as to the couple’s eventual viability, which some critics recorded: “As the film crawls to its bathetic reunion, the idea that the lovers will now languish together on their island paradise feels like a horrifying prospect. What’s Robin going to do for the rest of her life? Mix cocktails? Mend dinghies?”181 While I largely agree with Romney’s assessment, he fails to record the film’s firm allegiance to generic parameters, which the popular song that closes the film, yet again another incongruously Caribbean element, inevitably reminds us of: I wanna love you and treat you right; I wanna love you every day and every night; We’ll be together with a roof right over our heads; We’ll share the shelter of my single bed; We’ll share the same room, yeah! For Jah provide the bread. Is this love, is this love, is this love Is this love that I’m feelin’?

Ibid., p. 54. Anne Heche, quoted in Pond, “On the set,” p. 44. 180 Quoted in Cathy Booth, “Out on her own,” Time 151/23 (1998), p. 70. 181 Romney, “Six Days,” p. 54. 178 179

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Bob Marley’s romantic utopia places the lovers out of place and out of time, in the fantasy territory of romantic comedy, which provides the lovers with the necessary shelter and in which only love matters since, after all, “Jah provide the bread.” Six Days, Seven Nights’s playful intertextual referencing confirmed that throughout the 1990s Ford’s star persona had acquired a set of predetermined meanings without which the script might have generated fewer laughs. The film’s risk-free stretching of Ford’s aforementioned “cultural identity” and tongue-in-cheek treatment of the star’s aging process achieved the intended results, perhaps because it also allowed for the expectations about its main protagonist to be confirmed, eventually. This is interesting because it was the first time that age had become a significant narrative issue in Ford’s career. His next project, the romantic drama Random Hearts, similarly focused on the aging process but lacked any safety measures, which caused the film to become Ford’s most catastrophic failure of the decade.

Random Hearts: Grief Encounter For Harrison Ford, the decade did not end with a bang but with a whimper since Random Hearts turned out to be a further unsuccessful collaboration with Sidney Pollack. Epithets attached to the film included “a long, weary and totally boring flick”;182 “a glum romance lacking wit, glamour or passion […]; a grim and draggy romance in which even the clothes and sets are dismal.”183 Although Harrison Ford, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Sydney Pollack had previously been involved in successful romantic melodramas, including Witness, The Horse Whisperer (1998), and Out of Africa (1985), Random Hearts largely disappointed the public’s and critics’ expectations. Most reviews derided the film, albeit on different grounds. Some blamed the script, while others put the blame on the director: Given the challenging concept of Random Hearts, perhaps Pollack should have sat this one out and just directed. Then he might have noticed that Jonathan Pryce, “Slow pace loses Random Hearts,” The New York Amsterdam News, 7–13 (October 1999), p. 24. 183 Richard Schickel, “Heartstick,” Time 154/15 (1999), p. 54. 182

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Harrison Ford lumbered undramatically through the movie wearing the same frown in every scene, that there was no chemistry between Ford and Scott Thomas and that the movie was […] insufferable.184

However, the majority blamed the two stars’ ostensible lack of chemistry. Travers185 jokingly stated, “Even a search party would be hard-pressed to find a spark between Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas.” Such explicit criticism might certainly have had an effect on the audience’s visible lack of interest in the story. Ford, nevertheless, was attracted to the project from the start, and especially to the fact that the script did not seem to have been written with him in mind, which made the Dutch role particularly challenging for him as a performer. The actor often declared feeling attracted to the vulnerabilities of the character, a trait shared by many of the characters that Ford had played before. In promotional interviews, he particularly drew attention to the main characters’ inexorable questioning of their own identities and of the truth about their private lives. In any case, despite the actor’s best efforts to construct a believable character in an attractive story, both reviewers and the public seemed to find little interest in the film. The plot’s nonetheless interesting premise involves the trauma that two very different people, Dutch Van der Broeck, a dedicated Washington D.C. Internal Affairs sergeant, and Kay Chandler, a Congresswoman and a member of the Washington élite, have to undergo after losing their respective spouses in a plane crash. Little by little, it transpires that the two dead spouses had been having an affair. As a result, the protagonists are suddenly faced with the tremendous emotional challenge of having to simultaneously grapple with bereavement and an intense feeling of betrayal. As the two characters try to come to grips with their respective traumas by finding comfort in each other, they fall in love. Such is the random nature of love, the film claims. Unfortunately, this attractive premise was never adequately translated to the screen for a number of possible reasons. First, and perhaps most importantly, Dutch is never entirely able to let go of his wife and remains relentlessly fixated on her betrayal, which makes it hard for the romance that the second part of the plot attempts to construct Nancy Rosenblum, “Review of Random Hearts,” Lesbian News 25/4 (November 1999), p. 13. Peter Travers, “Review of Random Hearts,” Rolling Stone 824 (October 1999), p. 55.

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to become believable and therefore appealing. Indeed, Dutch’s reaction to his wife’s infidelity is an essential ingredient in the story, the one that drives his characterization, in both his private and public life. Nevertheless, even though both Kay and Dutch still seem to be very much in love with their respective spouses, despite their betrayal, their reactions are markedly different. While she prefers to remain in denial and leave her husband’s infidelity behind for the sake of their daughter and her political career, Dutch’s damaged manly pride makes him a more complex and, in truth, reprehensible character. As a man in crisis, he becomes dangerously obsessed with his wife’s extramarital liaison, to the point that his growing paranoia starts to affect his personal relationships and his performance at work. Therefore, while Kay’s attitude toward her husband’s infidelity and incipient romance with Dutch would make the story more believable, Dutch’s obsession and violent conduct prevent the spectator from accepting that he might also be falling in love with Kay. In her consideration of Dutch’s negative characterization, Rosenblum186 concluded that it was “hard to believe that [Kay] would ever let him in her life sexually, if at all.” Hence, the film falters due to the script’s inability to consistently stick to the parameters of the romantic melodrama (or the rocky story of Dutch and Kay) in favor of the male melodrama (the dramatization of Dutch’s plight as a betrayed husband), the police thriller (Dutch’s investigation), and to a lesser extent, the political campaign film (Kay’s running for Congress). The end result is that the love story, which is constantly peppered with corny phrases such as “I was thinking of your mouth” or “nobody knows who I am anymore,” seems forced and farfetched. Random Hearts is certainly little convincing as a romantic melodrama, but it is undeniable that it begs to be read as such. In their study of contemporary romantic melodramas, Dowd and Pallotta187 conclude that as a result of the democratization of contemporary societies and the dissolution of certain social pressures and taboos that made romance a near impossibility in the past, romantic melodramas set in contemporary times have become harder to come by. They argue that a common solution to this “problem” has been the setting of romantic melodramas in the past, a time in which Rosenblum, “Random Hearts,” p. 13. James J. Dowd and Nicole R. Pallotta, “The end of romance: The demystification of love in the postmodern age,” Sociological Perspectives 43/4 (2000), pp. 549–80.

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such social pressures were still “in operation,” which makes dramas such as Ford’s own Hanover Street, The Notebook (2004), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and Atonement (2007) more convincing in comparison. While certain sociological changes led Brian Henderson188 to announce the demise of the romantic comedy at the end of the 1970s, Dowd and Pallotta189 went as far as to announce the end of the great romantic melodrama or “high romance” at the turn of the twentieth century: To be of interest to the […] viewer, […] romance must constitute a struggle against some outside force that, intentional or not, serves to separate the lovers and in other ways make difficult the progress of their love. […] In romantic fiction, then, love invariably thrives where it is forbidden. […]. Without war, without the more vicious forms of racial intolerance, without the drama of feuding families that continues across generations, without—in short—the type of conflict that creates as a by-product a major impediment to young lovers […] intent on becoming a unified couple, we have witnessed the end of the era of high romance.

I would nevertheless argue that it is still possible to construct more or less compelling romantic melodramas in contemporary times, albeit against more or less convoluted or increasingly fantastic backgrounds, such as war itself (Dear John, 2010), religious creed (Witness), amnesia (The Vow, 2012), transgenderism (Boys Don’t Cry, 1999), incest (Lone Star, 1996), vampirism (Twilight, 2008), celestial love (City of Angels, 1998), time travelling (The Time Traveller’s Wife, 2009), gravity (Upside Down, 2012), unconventional sexual tastes (Fifty Shades of Grey, 2015), but above all death (Message in a Bottle (1999), P.S. I Love You (2007), The Fault in Our Stars (2014)). Random Hearts, however, fails to convince because there seems to be no obvious taboo or tragic obstacle impeding the successful development of Kay and Dutch’s romance other than Dutch’s growing paranoia, as evidenced through his maniacal obsession about finding “the truth” behind his wife’s infidelity. Random Hearts, therefore, leans more toward the melodrama of beset manhood than the romantic melodrama per se. The narrative’s overall failure may thus be connected to Dowd and Pallota’s hypothesis regarding the scarcity of romantic Henderson, Brian, “Romantic comedy today: Semi-tough or impossible?” Film Quarterly 31/4 (1978), pp. 11–23. 189 Dowd and Pallotta, “The end of romance,” pp. 552; 568. 188

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melodramas in contemporary US cinema, which, their argument goes, springs from “the difficulty of setting up a convincingly substantial barrier that keeps the lovers apart but does not alienate the audience.”190 In short, the script does manage to set up a “substantial barrier” to Dutch and Kay’s love, but such a barrier, that is, Dutch’s obsession and paranoia, certainly alienates the audience from character, star, and story. I would also agree with Roger Ebert’s191 assertion that the narrative’s point of view presents a further problem that also seems to mar the effective development of the story. According to Ebert, Random Hearts was fundamentally a star vehicle for Harrison Ford (hence the introduction of a more or less accessory action subplot, as in The Devil’s Own). Kay’s own political and personal subplot seems a lot less contrived in comparison, but the film chooses not to focus on it as intensely, especially as the film draws to an end. Since the script fails to balance the two protagonists’ stories, it seems clear that it is mostly his story and his plight that the film is interested in. These differences were also reflected in the film’s promotional material, and the film’s poster and international trailer in particular, both of which capitalized on Ford’s presence heavily. As a result of the film’s placing a closer focus on Dutch’s side of the story, the spectator is allowed to witness his gradual fall into the abyss of jealousy and obsession, which frequently borders on the pathological, thereby alienating those spectators expecting to find star Ford in the skin of a goodnatured, fair-minded hero. Simon192 echoed Ford’s audiences’ predicament in his assessment of the plot: “[t]he maniacal frenzy with which Dutch hopes to discover heaven knows what (used prophylactics?) makes him a less than sympathetic character, not helped by Harrison Ford’s brutish stolidity.” Dutch must indeed have been a complicated character to play, especially for a star like Ford, whose persona will be forever associated with fairness, even-handedness, and positive values in general. Even the most die-hard fan of Ford’s must have found it difficult to digest the star playing a bully and a “bad lieutenant” whose behavior was consistently described by critics as “maniacal,” “demented,” or “pathological.”193 Perhaps if the film had taken the Ibid., p. 562. Roger Ebert, “Review of Random Hearts,” in Rogerebert.com (1999). Available at http://www. rogerebert.com/reviews/random-hearts-1999 (accessed January 27, 2008). 192 John Simon, “Horror shows,” National Review 51/6 (1999), p. 67. 193 Rosenblum, “Random Hearts,” p. 13; Schickel, “Heartstick,” p. 54. 190 191

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unlikely romance that the promotional material advanced more seriously and devoted less time to depicting Dutch’s moral and psychological disintegration, the audience might have warmed to the story more easily. While it is therefore true that Kay and Dutch’s romance does not exactly make sparks fly, for the particular purposes of this book, Random Hearts offers an interesting case study for the analysis of the representation of masculinity (in crisis) in Harrison Ford’s films. The film starts with a mood-setting mystery call to a secret location where two glasses of wine and an unmade bed suggest sexual intimacy. The mystery, however, is not dispelled as the film chooses instead to shift to Dutch’s routine early-morning jog. Although he seems to be rather tired when he gets home, he still has the stamina for engaging in sexual intercourse with his younger wife, Peyton (Susanna Thompson). By making explicit reference to Dutch’s physical and sexual prowess in (late) middle age, the film sends a powerful message regarding his thoroughly vigorous manhood, which is about to be drastically beset as a result of the plane crash against which the narration develops. The first part of the film is then devoted to depicting the different characters’ daily routines, Kay’s political campaign, and Dutch’s work as a sergeant in the Washington Police Department. In his sixth role as a member of a national security or police department, it was fitting for Ford to play a sergeant in the Internal Affairs division, whose main responsibility involves the investigation of incidents of professional misconduct of its own members. The star’s customary association with honesty and hard work would warrant this. The film focuses closely on the character’s work in the division from the start, which, incidentally, involves a court case in which Dutch’s own professionalism is questioned. After eleven years in service, he has not yet received a promotion, which, the defense attorney cynically suggests, may point to the sergeant’s own professional faults, rather than a lack of professional ability or ambition. These faults are highlighted early on in the narrative as Dutch agrees to pretend to have lost a detainee’s documentation so that, unlawfully, she will have to stay in a police cell for a week without a charge, hopefully forcing her to provide him with a name so that he can conclude his IA investigation. On the evidence of this clear act of misconduct, one could speculate that Ford hoped, but yet again failed, to make his characterization more challenging and attractive by performing against type and allowing dark undertones to infiltrate his

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clean-cut persona. In terms of (masculine) representation, therefore, Random Hearts seems to be a lot closer to Ford’s more “problematic” roles in Frantic and Presumed Innocent than those in Witness or The Devil’s Own, all of which involved some kind of detective or investigative work. As the film introduces the audience to the two main characters’ routines, it makes a conscious effort to present them as completely removed from each other, which is meant to make their eventual romance rather unexpected and thus more intense. Kay’s political, upper-class origins are strongly emphasized, while Dutch is characterized as an ordinary, happily married guy of immigrant stock who, while in search for the truth about his own marriage, stumbles upon a Congresswoman in distress. Indeed, the film’s tagline emphasized the unlikeliness of Dutch and Kay’s romance: “In a perfect world, they would have never met.” This message, however, is rather misleading, since the plot strives to highlight the imperfection of Dutch’s and Kay’s married lives both before and after the plane crash. In other words, their world, before the crash, was anything but perfect. However, the plot’s mild exploration of the shortcomings of marriage falls, unfortunately, rather short of becoming the main focus of the story, unlike in, say, Husbands and Wives (1992), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), two films incidentally starring Sydney Pollack, or Friends with Kids (2011). In this particular case, the director chose to play the star card and focus mainly on Dutch’s plight as a humiliated widower. As a result, any criticism or even consideration of the institution of marriage, or of the reasons that might lead two people to initiate an affair within apparently functional marriages, becomes silenced and superseded by Dutch’s bitter reaction to Peyton’s unfaithfulness. There is therefore no serious consideration of Dutch’s role as a husband, or Peyton’s as a wife, or of their marriage. Despite the rather problematic aspects of the character, Dutch’s “virtue” is taken for granted from the start. This, in a way, might justify his questionable reaction upon discovering the affair and his need to investigate the matter further. While Dutch shares a large measure of sensitivity and vulnerability with other characters that Ford has played throughout his career, his violent reaction distances the character from other, more appealing ones in Ford’s filmography. It is probably for this reason that his sullen alter ego failed to strike a chord with the audience. Even though the plot focuses extensively on Dutch’s predicament, Ford’s aggressive performance makes it difficult for the spectator to empathize with

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him, despite the star’s best efforts to make the story and character attractive to the public in his interviews during the film’s promotion stage. It has always been the star’s contention that his success as a performer has thrived on his ability to make the spectator empathize with him, or rather, with the characters he has portrayed. However, it seems that in this particular instance, spectators did not seem interested in connecting emotionally with Dutch Van der Broeck, just as they had not seemed interested in identifying with Allie Fox, another paradigmatic example of masculinity in crisis in Ford’s career. While it is evident that the audience did not support Ford’s casting in such a dismal, unpleasant role, one may also speculate that, on the whole, spectators disagreed with the star’s own assessment of the plot, particularly as regards Peyton’s unfaithfulness, which he194 described, literally, as a crime: So this character, a policeman, chooses to investigate this situation as though it were a crime. And in fact to him it is a crime—a crime of betrayal, of infidelity, which transpired right under his nose, calling into question his manhood and his skill as a policeman. That to me was interesting and very unconventional.

After being humiliated at Peyton’s workplace, where Dutch is informed that his wife could not have been traveling to Miami on business, he starts to break down. His manhood has been publicly questioned, and he vows to repair the damage done to his male ego. It is after this incident that he initiates the investigation into the affair, eager to find out what led his wife to find romance and excitement with another man. At home, he gets rid of the things that remind him of her, from her toiletries to the sheets they shared to the leftover food she might have cooked. Throughout the rest of the film, rather than sad or upset, Dutch seems to be resentful and driven by a desire for retribution, which begins to affect his performance at work. He starts to resort to more and more violent and unlawful means as a result of both his growing personal insecurity and his inability to close the case. As Ford195 reflected: Quoted in Tony Earnshaw, “An ordinary superstar,” in The Birmingham Post (1999). Available at http://web.archive.org/web/20091005090132/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/Random_ Hearts/ordinary_superstar.php (accessed June 20, 2009). 195 Quoted in Bob Strauss, “The 20-million-dollar man,” in Los Angeles Daily News (1999). Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20091005101347/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/Random_ Hearts/dollar_man.php (accessed June 20, 2008). 194

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He’s not so much described by his grieving as by other forces on him. The betrayal, as a husband, is the first thing he deals with. The second thing is the question of his value in what he’s chosen to do in life. As a policeman, he wonders how he might have missed the crime that was going on in his own house. That calls into question all of his capacities. The guy is really as devastated by that as by the loss of his wife.

His professional breakdown is therefore also a reflection of what he takes to be his failure as a husband, as a man even, for he seems to take it for granted that it was his fault that Peyton was attracted to her lover. At some point he tells Kay he is disappointed in himself as he gets paid “to notice stuff, to know who’s lying.” However, he could never have imagined that his wife was having an affair. He is thus forced to reconsider his married life and feels cheated: “What’s the last thing you remember about you and your husband that you know is true? I gotta find out how far back I have to go to do that,” he asks Kay in desperation, “replicant-style.” In order to recover his lost sense of manhood, he needs to retake control and find out “how it started, how long it was going on, […] what their plans were,” even, ludicrously enough, “how they did their laundry.” Perhaps by solving the enigma and finding the truth about the affair, Dutch may reconstruct his past existence and close the gaping wound in his manhood, an impossible task indeed, for it is difficult to imagine where or how far his search might actually lead him. Therefore, far from needing to find “a prescription for venereal-disease medicine”196 or “used prophylactics,” as Simon above light-heartedly put it, what Dutch is trying to do is to find the missing piece in his manhood, which, he suspects, led his wife to become unfaithful. While it is obvious to Kay that his is a never-ending pursuit (“You’ll never find out what you are looking for. You want to know why, and there is no why!”), Dutch becomes a sort of Sisyphus whose damaged male psyche will never be fully repaired. What is striking is that never for one minute, despite his work partner’s constant warnings, does Dutch stop to assess the way in which what he takes to be a personal failure is also starting to become a professional one. His hurt pride makes him blind to his own faults, which turns him into a morally reprehensible character with whom it becomes rather difficult, if not impossible, to empathize. While the film never makes Ron Gleiberman, “The plot thickens,” Entertainment Weekly 507 (October 1999), p. 48.

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a clear statement as to the reasons that led Peyton to initiate an affair, Dutch’s problematic behavior provides interesting clues. However, the film also intimates, however fleetingly, that Peyton’s motivations may have lain beyond her husband’s grasp, which would make his desperate search even more futile. Dutch’s investigation of his wife’s private life involves interesting conversations with some of Peyton’s colleagues. One of them actually attempts to make Dutch feel better by telling him about the affairs that both she and her husband have had during their perfectly functional marriage. She explains that although she found out about her husband’s unfaithfulness by chance, after the shock of realization she preferred to turn a blind eye, especially because she was also having an affair. Thus, not only does this character seem to endorse her husband’s and her own rights to a private life within marriage, but she also admits that if she had to give up on the excitement that romance, “not just casual sex,” brings to her life, she “would feel old.” This is perhaps one of the most interesting moments in the whole narrative, for it offers a positive perspective on infidelity as a catalyst for long-term marital stability, rather than marital breakdown.197 This conversation, however, is left unexplored, and far from assuaging Dutch and helping him reconsider his behavior and Peyton’s motives, it seems to reinforce his obsession and growing lack of trust in others. It was certainly not Random Hearts’ intention to make waves on the institution of marriage.198 Kay, for her part, chooses not to question the truth about her own marriage for the sake of her campaign and daughter, but also because she is simply not interested in finding out “how stupid to feel,” as she puts it bluntly. She would only like to know what Peyton, not her husband, thought when she thought about her. Her reaction to the affair is a lot more sensible and perhaps

Isabel Coixet’s My Life without Me (2003) offers a somewhat similar perspective on infidelity, though the dying protagonist’s lust for life is presented as “an alibi.” Admittedly, it is difficult to identify other examples focusing on unfaithfulness in a similar manner for, as Dowd and Pallotta argue, infidelity is still very much taboo in contemporary society, unless, I would add, it is set against a violent marital background, as in Sleeping with the Enemy (1991) and Waitress (2007) (Dowd and Pallotta, “The end of romance,” p. 567). 198 There is, however, another instance in which Kay’s closest friend Wendy (Bonnie Hunt) laments that “college was best,” a time full of adolescent romantic excitement and anticipation. Although this would certainly qualify as a critical comment on the dullness of marriage in middle age, which the narrative corroborates by having Wendy confess to having had an affair with Kay’s deceased husband, the narrative refuses to go down this alternative path and instead remains conventionally fixated on Dutch’s pointless pursuit and seemingly irreparable male crisis. 197

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understandable, given the difficult circumstances. Rather than masochistically obsessing about her betraying husband, a rather difficult task, since Dutch constantly bullies her into giving him more and more information, she starts to reassess her own values and priorities. Unlike Dutch, she feels liberated, rather than humiliated, and though she may feel cheated, she does not seem to blame herself for the affair. Still, her desire to settle the matter and leave the trauma, and the scandal, behind leads her to Miami in search of Dutch. Once there, they go to a nightclub and watch some tango dancing, the sheer sensuality of which disturbs Kay. She is, for the first time, forced to acknowledge her husband’s desire for another woman. Kay’s shock, coupled with the alcohol she drinks during their flight back to Washington, leads to her sudden burst of (rebound) passion in her car. At the end, she says dryly “well, that was fun,” which suggests that she, an upstanding, recently widowed Congresswoman, is disappointed at her own reaction, for it seems to be driven by revenge. But yet again, rather than choosing to explore this instance of the (random?) nature of passion, which would have perhaps supported the effective development of the romance, the narrative immediately shifts to Dutch’s IA investigation. As a result, the whole incident remains in our minds as nothing but some sort of desperate attempt to “get even,” a rather unromantic beginning to an ultimately rather unconvincing affair. After this encounter, they start seeing more of each other. Dutch follows Kay to a fundraising event in her hometown, after which he invites her to join him in his hut in the woods near the coast, with no phone and no TV. It is there that Dutch can get some “manly” manual DIY work done and it is also there that he hopes to set up an independent private security business one day. To any Ford fan, these sequences offer some manner of relief, as they look like familiar territory. It is within such an environment (the Walden-like remote wooden hut in the woods, the motorbike, the fishing, the plumbing) that the spectator might start to identify with the character, since Dutch finally starts to “look like Ford” (see Figure 37). Indeed, the film’s shift from the city to the woods and the clear change in Dutch’s characterization (he is wearing jeans and a lumberjack shirt and seems to be a lot more at home and relaxed) make Ford’s fit with the character that he is playing a lot less problematic, hence a lot more believable and attractive. As a result, the couple’s lovemaking and romantic talk in the hut are not so awkward to watch and listen to. They even joke about their respective political

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Figure 37  Back to familiar territory: mise-en-scène is employed as a form of dramatic relief. Random Hearts (produced by Warren Adler, Sydney Pollack, Marykay Powell, Ronald L. Schwary. Directed by Sydney Pollack).

affiliations and romantic involvement. They seem to be more “in the mood for love” than ever. Nevertheless, the narrative opportunities missed along the way mean that the film has to work extra time to make the relationship convincing, and it does not help that Dutch, even at such a crucial moment in their incipient relationship, keeps obsessing about his wife’s affair. While Kay tries her best to help Dutch forget and focus on theirs instead, he dryly concludes their tense conversation by saying “maybe you didn’t lose that much … or you’re lying to yourself.” It looks like this brooding man in misery could not be any more unromantic if he tried. His deep masculine crisis keeps obstructing the road to romantic success. Once again, therefore, the script lets the spectator (and long-suffering Kay!) down and refuses to allow us to have faith in the love story. Unable to rid himself of his masochistic obsession, Dutch’s self-hatred, possessiveness, and resentment remain the main focus of this melodramatic narrative and, it appears, can never be resolved. Unsurprisingly, the film concludes with the lovers separating. Kay loses the election and goes back home. For his part, Dutch is made a lieutenant after being shot trying to catch the corrupt police officer while suspended from his post. While his personal crisis remains, in theory, unresolved, his professional reputation has been restored, which may help repair his damaged male ego.

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Hence, after recovering from his injuries, Dutch goes in search of Kay at the airport, an ending reminiscent of those in Sabrina and Six Days, Seven Nights, perhaps in a last-minute attempt to make amends for all the opportunities that he has missed along the way. However, this is no romantic comedy and therefore the film denies us a conventional “happy ending,” as Kay refuses to stay with Dutch and returns home instead (to many a spectator’s relief, one should imagine). The film, nevertheless, leaves the door open as far as the rekindling of their romance is concerned and ends on a more or less positive note, as if making a final apology to the audience for everything that has gone wrong before. Still, this short epilogue is simply not enough for the narrative to dispel its constant negativity and gloom. Ultimately, Random Hearts is nothing but a very unhappy film about two unhappy people who try, but fail, to find consolation in each other. While bereavement may not be the best of moods to start a new relationship, in the end, it is Dutch’s desperate refusal to “live and let die” that finally drives Kay away. In The Way We Were, Pollack exploited the 1970s’ hot climate of political activism and constructed a very convincing romantic melodrama in which the lovers part because they remain faithful to their own political beliefs and refuse to hurt each other. In the era of the crisis of masculinity, Pollack attempted a similar feat, but failed for the various reasons I have attempted to sketch above. Ford’s casting as Dutch will remain one of the most striking and problematic ones in his career. The character’s masochistic tendencies, coupled with his sadistic treatment of Kay, make the character difficult to forget, though for all the wrong reasons.

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Harrison Ford and Aging Masculinity in Hollywood A Waning Star? Harrison Ford and the Complications of Aging It was not long ago that I came across an anti-smoking campaign featuring an actor, now campaigning against smoking, who had played the Marlboro man in the past and later developed lung cancer. The power of the succinct slogan employed in the campaign, “Bob, I’ve got cancer,” resided in the way it deconstructed the myth of the indestructible all-American cowboy, one of the most enduring tropes in popular culture. It did so precisely by drawing on the same classic Western iconography that characterized Marlboro advertisements and classical Hollywood Westerns. The later phase of Harrison Ford’s career, which roughly coincides with the beginning of the new century, has, I believe, evolved in a similar fashion. Since turning sixty, the ever-popular star has been trying to stay afloat in Hollywood by poking fun at himself and subverting the very same elements that brought him fame over previous decades. In order to accomplish this transformation, Ford has regularly recognized and foregrounded his aging process. Yet, this strategy, which has worked wonders for Clint Eastwood, proved generally unsuccessful for Ford. At the beginning of the decade, Ford, already in his late fifties, received two of the most prestigious honorary awards in Hollywood, the AFI Life Achievement Award (2000) and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award (2002). Both are bestowed on artists whose contributions to film and culture have been outstanding. Naturally, the recipients are usually “of a certain age,” and, while neither honor entails a valediction (after all, many Hollywood artists never formally retire), they constitute a public celebration of a remarkably

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long, successful life in motion pictures. Indeed, a cursory look at recipients reveals that, with some exceptions, they were fast approaching or past the average retirement age. Still, the awards are not meant to be celebrations of major Hollywood “has-beens.” As the AFI strives to make clear, their award is intended to honor “individuals with active careers and work of significance yet to be accomplished.”1 Diminishing opportunities for actors “of a certain age” have made it crucial for film stars of the older generation, whether male or female, to excel at choosing projects that allow them to carefully reconcile their well-established trademarks with the aging process. This constant refashioning allows successful stars to stay professionally active and maintain their fragile status within youth-obsessed Hollywood. According to Basinger,2 in recent times, Ford’s persona has become “more urban, more complex. [He has been] playing confused husbands, burdened leaders and beleaguered institutional employees.” Indeed, the past decade was characterized by a more self-conscious treatment of his heroic credentials and a closer focus on the unavoidable effects that aging has had on his persona. While not explicitly acknowledged as such, this downbeat characterization had started to have an impact on Ford’s off-screen image, especially after he started divorce proceedings from his second wife in 2000. When the actor turned sixty, he expressed his desire to make some fundamental changes in his life and career, despite potentially negative consequences for his public image. In an article aptly entitled “Life Begins at Sixty,” he3 remarked: I am not the first man who want[s] to make changes in his life at sixty, and I won’t be the last. It is just that others can do it with anonymity. […]. I have always had the ability to […] become other people through my acting. I took a good look at myself and decided that I wanted something different. That’s not such a bad thing, is it? But, because of my past, I think it took a lot of people by surprise. They wondered what was happening to me. I was very much aware of what was happening. I’m living the way I want to live.

Anon, “The AFI Life Achievement Awards,” afi.com, 2013. Available at http://www.afi.com/laa/ default.aspx (accessed November 21, 2013). 2 Jeanine Basinger, The Star Machine (New York, 2007), p. 539. 3 Quoted in Sarah Cassidy, “Life begins at sixty, says Harrison Ford,” in The Independent (2005). Available at http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/life-begins-at-sixtysays-harrison-ford-301482.html (accessed June 4, 2008). 1

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Ford was here declaring his wish for professional and personal transformation. In professional terms, he had already started to make choices that involved an important revision of his persona, favoring roles that either incorporated complex, dark undertones or dealt with his persona from a self-consciously comic perspective. In personal terms, Ford, who had come to incarnate the new man/father ethos of the 1990s to perfection, seemed to be very much enjoying his new bachelor status. Much was then made of Ford’s purported mid-life crisis during the first half of the 2000s, which was supported by an infamous drunken spree in Mexico, an equally infamous earring, and the fact that he started dating much younger women, including his current wife, actress Calista Flockhart. At the same time, Ford’s production during the past decade, with the exceptions of What Lies Beneath (2000) and the fourth installment in the Indiana Jones saga, proved to be rather disappointing in economic and critical terms, which signals a lack of ability to choose parts that provide a good enough “fit” with his well-established, albeit inevitably evolving and aging, persona. These circumstances no doubt had a direct impact on Ford’s standing within the industry. In fact, publicity posters for his more recent films generally foreground his co-stars and only rarely do they picture Ford on his own. Despite having been poorly received on the whole, Ford’s production during the first decade of the twenty-first century was consistent in the sense that his roles can be viewed as self-conscious, though not always successful, attempts to rework his persona. What Lies Beneath, one of Ford’s few runaway successes in the 2000s, successfully exploited Ford’s largely unexplored dark side, or “what lies beneath,” with more than acceptable results. Moreover, insofar as his character’s flaws stem from his desire for constant adulation in late middle age and his inability to match his father’s achievements, the part constituted a significant further incursion into the painful crisis of masculinity. The film’s investment in the physical and, above all, psychological effects of aging is also worth mentioning since they have inevitably played a prominent part in the development of Ford’s on-screen persona and off-screen image in more recent years. Interestingly, Ford’s image did not feature on the film’s main publicity poster. Director Robert Zemeckis decided not to include images of the film’s stars, perhaps because audiences would not identify Ford or Michelle Pfeiffer

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with the horror film. This was Ford’s first foray into the genre and the risk paid off. In the film, he plays a secondary role compared to Pfeiffer’s, and he could be considered to be miscast in the role of murderer. However, the film was a box-office success, which reflects that Ford’s complex persona, and its darker aspects in particular, could be mobilized to great effect within the right context. Admittedly, it was easier for Ford to play against type in a secondary role because the audience followed Pfeiffer’s character more closely and had less time to ponder on Ford’s villain, whose less prominent standing meant that the associations he usually brings to a role did not easily interfere with the film’s suspense or narrative development. Ford was happy with the final result and the fact that his casting managed to confuse audience’s expectations, this time with the desired effect: I care a lot about the audience […]. I’m not so concerned about the people you might call fans. I’m concerned about them as moviegoers; I’m not concerned with their expectations about me. It has been my business, my professional goal, to upset their expectations from time to time. I’ve tried to do this since the very beginning of the viable phase of my career.4

This is an apt summary of what Jeanine Basinger5 considers the principal characteristic of today’s “neo-star.” She claims that, unlike the movie stars in the classical period, contemporary stars can create their own trademarks and then successfully break with them in order to prove their acting abilities. As she puts it, “an ability to be both actor and star in a way the public will allow—and pay to see—is the mark of the neo-star.” While Basinger sees Ford as one of the most important neo-stars of the older generation, it seems to me that Ford’s ability to be both actor and star in a way the public will allow, and pay to see, is debatable, as critical assessment of the most recent phase in his career suggests. What Lies Beneath was described as a mature film, a reference to both its two stars’ respective ages but also to the narrative, which is closer to classic Hitchcock than to the contemporary horror film. The film hinges on the crumbling Spencer marriage and, significantly, on Norman Spencer’s personal crisis. Claire Spencer is a professional musician who gave up on her career Ford, quoted in Joe Mauceri, “What Lies Beneath. A Shivers interview,” Shivers 82 (2000), p, 31. Basinger, The Star, pp. 537–8.

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ambitions to become a “proper wife” to her second, apparently loving husband. Still, not all is bliss in their marriage and it appears that Norman’s narcissistic desire for admiration and adulation has led him to initiate an affair with a student (Amber Valletta). Norman, the plot makes clear, is a proud, academically successful man with a deep inferiority complex. As it happens, even though he is a workaholic, he cannot replicate his father’s legendary successes in the field of genetics. When his young lover threatens to make their extra-marital relationship public, he fears his professional reputation will be ruined, and thus he murders her. What Lies Beneath is ultimately an interesting film in that it manages to mobilize “what lies beneath” Ford’s complex persona in a rather successful manner. The negative aspects that were only intermittently visible during the previous decades were in this case exploited fully, suggesting that the dark side of his persona, when correctly handled, could be as magnetic as the successful, heroic aspects of his star brand. Meanwhile, journalists were becoming increasingly insistent on the possibility of Ford, Spielberg, and Lucas producing a new Indiana Jones film. While keen on the idea, the star acknowledged that it would be fundamental to make reference to Indiana Jones’s, or his own, aging process and the impact it would have on the character. In an IMDB interview6 in 2000, he noted, Adding some flaws and layers is what is going to make Indy even more interesting. We can address issues like whether his virtues are based on his youth or on other aspects of human nature like his wisdom, his toughness, his resourcefulness, his integrity.

This comment reveals that Ford was ready to start making his age—and the character’s—a more prominent narrative concern, although he still considered himself fit enough to return to type in the action adventure formula. As he7 jokingly reflected, “No one wants to see a hero have to pick up a cane to hit someone, but I’m still quite fit enough to fake it. It’s all smoke and mirrors anyway.” While Ford used this metaphor to allude to the visual spectacle the action genre thrives on, it could also be said to apply to the nature of stardom. Ford only Quoted in Anon, “A breed apart,” Imdb.com, 2000. Available at https://web.archive.org/ web/20030118234306/http://www.imdb.com/NewsFeatures/hford (accessed April 25, 2011). 7 Quoted in Brad Duke, Harrison Ford: The Films (Jefferson and London, 2005), p. 261. 6

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reluctantly refers to himself as a star or an icon, preferring to describe himself as a public servant or assistant storyteller. This modesty reflects his desire to please the audience and, at the same time, to project an aura of familiarity, rather than the aloof sophistication that characterizes Hollywood stardom. Ford believes his success derives from the audience’s sense of closeness to and trust in the characters he plays, a bond that explains why he wants to establish associations between himself and the characters he is famous for playing. He insists that viewers can find out more about his true self through his characters than by reading interviews, where his customary evasiveness becomes evident. However, when it comes to those features that might make Ford a more glamorous star, or a legendary Hollywood icon, the self-deprecating star is always ready to reveal the gap between reality and fantasy, or the “smoke and mirrors” that Hollywood stardom is predicated upon: “Maybe Indiana Jones is a sexy guy, but not me. I’m an average looking man whose sexiness is a wonderful illusion that’s created by the movies I’m in.”8 Ford’s desire to stretch out the limits of his image by not hiding the effects of his own aging process therefore constitutes a clear attempt to retain the apparent ordinariness and normality that have made him such a popular star over the years. Before reprising his iconic role in the fourth Indiana Jones film, Ford continued to enjoy the possibility of experimenting with his popular heroic persona. His personal investment in the big-budget K-19: The Widowmaker was such that, for the first time in his career, he would be an executive producer, able to influence every final decision regarding the film’s development. For the first time too, he commanded a fee of $25m, plus 20 percent of the film’s profits, which never materialized because K-19 became a major economic disappointment. Indeed, Ford’s performance and part, while ultimately heroic, proved too somber for mass audience consumption. At a time when the United States was preparing itself for war against Iraq in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Ford’s “defection” to the Russian enemy in a film that strove to redefine the notion of heroism was certainly not well received. The film was directed by “genre-bender” Kathryn Bigelow.9 Although some critics claimed that Bigelow’s auteurist imprint was absent from K-19, on the Quoted in Anon, “A breed apart.” Deborah Jermyn and Sean Redmond, The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgressor (London, 2003).

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evidence provided by Ford’s problematic casting as USSR submarine Captain Alexei Vostrikov, Bigelow’s penchant for genre manipulation was still very much present in K-19. On the other hand, her desire to turn the war film on its head by explicitly turning the Soviets into heroes was also evidence of her innovative tendencies. Indeed, in such warmongering times it was a bold move on her part to make a film about the archetypal US enemy’s unknown heroic deeds during the Cold War. The film’s stakeholders were in fact adamant that the fundamental Sovietness of the story should be stressed. On the other hand, the film, which was based on true historical events, sent a very powerful antinuclear and anti-war message, which was in tune with both the director’s ideology and the political and ecological concerns of the film’s main star, whose environmental work in order to, literally, save the world was becoming increasingly active. Still, as a critical film with, according to Ford,10 “no hint of American jingoism [and] no bad guys in it” K-19 seemed to be out of tune with the nationalistic fervor that was sweeping the United States. Therefore, perhaps because it was out of step with the warmongering times and because it challenged the audience’s typical understanding of Cold War propaganda and the nature of bravery and heroism, the film performed rather disappointingly at the box office. Not only were the audience not seduced by the film’s bold political proposition—i.e., the fact that “we are the same, that geopolitical borders aren’t real”11—but the director’s innovative take on heroism clearly extended to Ford’s bona-fide persona with unsuccessful consequences. Ford’s is rather an unsympathetic character and the features that had until then constituted an integral part of his popular persona actually belong to Liam Neeson’s character, Captain Mikhail Polenin. The film pitches two styles of masculinity against each other, initially portraying Vostrikov as the stern, older “bad father” and Polenin as the caring, younger “good father.” However, the narrative eventually reveals Vostrikov’s hard-line, traditional command style as necessary and effective in the extreme dramatic circumstances the crew are placed in. It is thanks to Vostrikov’s capacity to make difficult decisions

Quoted in Dotson Rader, “Dark star. Harrison Ford: Hollywood’s melancholic hero,” in The Sunday Times Magazine (2002). Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20101124034733/http://www. harrisonfordweb.com/Article/Miscellaneous/dark_star.php (accessed December 9, 2008). 11 Bigelow, quoted in Dan Chavkin, “Action figure,” Premiere 15/2 (2002), p. 88. 10

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that the threat of nuclear war is averted, despite the death toll involved. While ultimately heroic, therefore, Ford’s hard-hearted character did not find a sympathetic audience. While Zemeckis had managed to subvert his persona to great effect, Bigelow’s extreme form of “star persona-bending” alienated the audience instead. K-19’s box-office disappointment did not deter Ford, who remained keen to stretch the audience’s understanding of his persona, this time in the comic buddy cop film Hollywood Homicide (2003), which enabled him to test his comic abilities outside the more familiar territory of the romantic comedy. The fact that Josh Hartnett, a popular teenage idol at the time, had agreed to star as rookie J. C. Calden made the project more attractive, since Ford, who was keen to recuperate his box-office clout, thought that Hartnett’s presence would draw the crucial teenage segment of the audience to the cinema. However, the film was another economic disappointment. While the plot was criticized for being excessively formulaic and devoid of truly effective comic moments, Ford’s performance was attacked for lacking enthusiasm and genuine comic spirit. Loewestein, one of Ford’s harshest critics, reported that the film failed because Ford, “unlike Jack Nicholson,” had given up on his ambition to be “an actor” and was content with simply being “a star doing variations on a theme.” In other words, the star was criticized for adhering too closely to (his own) formula as a “professional” actor and not taking enough risks as a “performer,” in the sense proposed by Geraghty, even though it was due to his desire to diversify and, to a certain extent, play against the audience’s expectations that he had accepted the role. Still, this criticism may well be extended to the rest of Ford’s output during the decade, with the partial exception of the muchdisliked Crossing Over. On the whole, despite his purported desire to confound audience expectations, Ford’s choice of parts was ultimately dictated by his desire to continue generating profit-making entertainment products for the mass audience rather than more artistic, less profit-driven pursuits. While it is true that the film and Ford’s part in it are forgettable, neo-star Ford’s desire to push the envelope by incorporating the painful humiliations of aging should also be acknowledged. Sergeant Joe Gavilan is a veteran police officer, though lately ineffectual, who needs to rely on the powers of his psychic girlfriend (Lena Olin) in order to solve his latest case. In addition, he is a three-time divorced man who

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relies on his second income as a realtor to pay alimony to his three ex-wives (paralleling Ford’s expensive divorces and real-life personal difficulties to a large extent). Gavilan is being investigated by the Internal Affairs Department for “commingling of funds,” a lapse that undermines the virtue and honesty audiences expected from a typical Ford character. Significantly, his failures are also partly attributed to his age throughout the film, though, in most respects, he still compares favorably to the much younger, under-prepared and undermotivated Calden. Indeed, Gavilan’s retirement from the frontline of duty is never considered a possibility. While this is a buddy film, the homosocial or homoerotic subtext that had by then become commonplace in the genre was notably absent. The characters’ antagonism apparently also reflected the actors’ lack of off-screen rapport. Meanwhile, the heterosexuality of both characters is continually stressed throughout the narrative, especially that of Calden/Hartnett, who, true to type, is an irresistible sexual magnet. Gavilan, for his part, is also portrayed as seductive and sexually active, which was rather a novel aspect in a Harrison Ford role. Still, the character’s sexualization becomes the butt of the film’s only truly comic joke. Referring to his sexual ability in old age (Ford was sixty-one), Gavilan confesses to his lover: “If I take my ginkgo, I can still remember where I put the Viagra,” a line that, as one reviewer commented, “could kill a lesser man.”12 This no doubt signals Ford’s continuing self-awareness as an aging star in the competitive Hollywood marketplace and his willingness to start reconfiguring his rapidly deteriorating heroic manly man trademark. In 2005, Ford’s long-term personal manager Patricia McQueeney passed away. Their artistic collaboration had spanned thirty-five years, which certainly set a record high within the industry. Ford took a drastic decision then and started to work solely with United Talent Agency (UTA), a collaboration that has endured until these days. This change, however, did not initially revolutionize Ford’s career. Indeed, shortly after joining UTA Ford reverted to type as a virtuous heroic father in the formulaic “family-in peril” vehicle Firewall in a part with which Ford seemed to be comfortable since “family,” Cindy Pearlman, “Ford stays focused despite Hollywood ‘hardships’,” in The Chicago Sun-Times (2003). Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20101104021024/http://www.harrisonfordweb. com/Article/Hollywood_Homicide/stays_focused.php (accessed December 9, 2008).

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despite his two divorces, together with “flying, conservation and human rights” continued to be Ford’s most enduring interests.13 While Firewall performed a little better than his previous two films in economic terms, it did little to redeem his damaged box-office performance, possibly because the character and the actor’s age were not considered to be an important enough issue to deal with directly. Hamad14 contends that in recent Hollywood cinema “fatherhood […] functions as a recuperative salve to the aging male subjectivities […] embodied by a range of senescent male stars” but since the aging issue was not directly confronted in Firewall, Ford’s strategic return to familiar turf backfired instead. The plot revisited familiar action territory and was aptly described as “Patriot Games with a laptop.”15 The film’s investment in new technologies is notable indeed and constitutes a good attempt at updating the Harrison Ford brand for the internet generation. However, the “home invasion” trope, while appealing to the star, did not seem to resonate with the public’s concerns in 2006. While family values had become a key dramatic focus in Hollywood during the 1990s, it was not what cinema audiences in the more cynical, less sentimental 2000s seemed to be interested in. On the other hand, most reviews mentioned Ford’s advanced age and unwillingness to take artistic risks. One critic described Ford as “desperate”;16 others criticized him for repeating himself to exhaustion: “Ford, in late middle age, seems bored stiff playing taciturn Harrison Ford-type heroes, with their suits and their gravitas, their honour and their tired old sprees of derring-do.”17 However, the star, who in the past had stated that he had no time for more artistic projects, had no qualms about confessing his preference for more commercial, formulaic, or less artistically driven projects since “entertainment for entertainment’s sake [had] been paying [his] bills for a long time.”18

Quoted in Debra L. Wallace, “Harrison Ford: el último gran héroe,” Cinemanía 138 (March 2007), p. 86. 14 Hannah Hamad, Postfeminism and Paternity in Contemporary US Film: Framing Fatherhood (New York, 2014), p. 71. 15 Neal Smith, “Review of Firewall,” BBC.co.uk, March 30, 2006. Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ films/2006/03/17/firewall_2006_review.shtml (accessed April 27, 2008). 16 Ibid. 17 Lisa Schwarzbaum, “Review of Firewall,” in Entertainment Weekly (2006). Available at http://www. ew.com/article/2006/02/08/firewall (accessed April 24, 2008). 18 Quoted in Rebecca Keegan, “Harrison Ford,” Time 167/7 (2006), p. 99. 13

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Ford was also criticized and ridiculed for accepting a physical role for which he was considered far too old. One critic joked about the possibility of mistaking Ford’s uneasy walk after the film’s final showdown for “signs of osteoarthritis.”19 It is evident that by the time Firewall was released, age had become a complicated, difficult-to-accommodate matter in the evolution of Ford’s star persona. The overall negative reception of the film revealed that Ford’s aging body no longer fit the action formula. While the actor denied being worried about the scarcity of interesting projects available to him, he also reflected on Hollywood’s ageist culture, conceding that he would retire only when he felt he had ceased to be useful to the industry.20 More than ten years later and despite the past decade’s many disappointments, Ford continues to work with more or less success maybe because, as Indiana Jones used to say, “it’s not the years, it’s the mileage,” a maxim that Ford frequently applies to his long career. Ford’s case therefore seems to exemplify McDonald’s21 view on star status and longevity, which seem to be dependent on regular hits, rather than consecutive ones. Eventually, the most awaited cinematic comeback in years materialized in 2008 with the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, almost twenty years after The Last Crusade. This time, age was a central concern of the narrative and Ford refused to dye his hair in order to make the character look younger. To the star, age was just one more “physical challenge” that the character had to overcome.22 To critics and filmmakers, acknowledging Indy’s aging process was essential, mostly because the star and character have become indissoluble, unlike, say, Tarzan, Batman, James Bond, or, interestingly, Jack Ryan, all mythical ageless heroes embodied by different actors at various points in the history of Hollywood. Ford23 also conceded that he felt there was a perfect fit between his own identity and that of the character

Michael Atkinson, “Fire Bomb,” in The Village Voice (2006). Available at http://www.villagevoice. com/film/fire-bomb-6400361 (accessed April 24, 2011). 20 Ian Nathan, “The new Ford solo,” Empire 161 (November 2002), p. 116. 21 Paul McDonald, Hollywood Stardom (Malden and Chichester, 2013), p. 131. 22 Quoted in Anthony Breznican, “Harrison Ford is a portrait of rugged individualism,” in USA Today (2008). Available at http://web.archive.org/web/20161006084733/http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/ life/movies/news/2008-04-16-harrison-ford_N.htm (accessed April 29, 2011). 23 Quoted in Jim Windolf, “Keys to the kingdom,” in Vanity Fair (2008). Available at https://web. archive.org/web/20100119163048/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/Indiana_Jones_4/ keys_to_kingdom.php (accessed April 24, 2011). 19

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that made him an icon “because the minute I put the costume on, I recognize the tone that we need and I feel confident and clear about the character.” Several critics24 have theorized the relatively successful comeback of certain popular action (or action-adventure) heroes of the 1980s, such as Indiana Jones, John McClane, or Rocky Balboa. There is general agreement that these nostalgic revisions constitute celebratory resurrections of older, tougher forms of masculinity that were in tune with the “recuperative discourse extolling the virtues of recidivist masculinities”25 in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Gates,26 for her part, concludes that by acknowledging age, failure, and vulnerability and by renouncing individualism and embracing family values and team spirit, these heroes have successfully adapted to the times. Despite these heroes being noticeably older, they are still fit enough and able to perform many of the prerequisite action stunts. In Gates’s27 view, they represent a further example of Hollywood’s continuing ability to generate myths, especially as far as the representation of heroic masculinity (in old age) is concerned, for these characters are paradoxically able to show their age, though at the same time, she concludes, “these stars and their heroes are once again popular, because they are not acting their age” (emphasis in the original).28 Indeed, most reviews remarked on “the sinewy sixty-five-year-old star”29 still being in good shape and looking like he did when he was “fifty-five or forty-six.”30 Finally, I would suggest that the fact that the plot reunited Indiana and Marion at last did not simply constitute a clear homage to fans, who had Philippa Gates, “Acting his age? The resurrection of the 80s action heroes and their acting stars,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 27 (2010), pp. 276–89; Hamad, Postfeminism; Dominic Lennard, “Too old for this shit?: On ageing tough guys,” in I. Whelehan and J. Gwynne (eds), Ageing, Popular Culture and Contemporary Feminism. Harleys and Hormones (New York and Houndmills, Basingstoke, 2014). 25 Hamad, Postfeminism, p. 49. 26 Gates “Acting his age?” p. 289. 27 Ibid., p. 288. 28 Neal King has similarly argued that Hollywood’s older action heroes’ capacity to act young and attract extremely beautiful women who are half their age does not necessarily reflect the reality of the older generation but rather the filmmakers’ industrial concerns and Hollywood’s deeply ingrained ageist culture (Neal King, “Old Cops: occupational aging in a film genre,” in V. Barnes Lipscomb et al. (eds), Staging Age: The Performance of Age in Theatre, Dance and Film (New York, 2010), pp. 60; 73). 29 Geoff Boucher, “Harrison Ford returns as Indiana Jones,” in Los Angeles Times (2008), http://web. archive.org/web/20100119163324/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/Indiana_Jones_4/ returns_as_indy.php (accessed April 29, 2011). 30 Roger Ebert, “Review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” in Rogerebert.com (2008). Available at http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/indiana-jones-and-the-kingdom-of-thecrystal-skull-2008 (accessed April 29, 2011). 24

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been longing for this reunion for almost thirty years. By pairing the hero with what could be described as a “real,” average-looking woman of his own generation, the plot manages to handle the age issue in a more realistic manner and contributes to both characters’ likeability for mature cinemagoers.31 Spielberg once expressed delight that the character, and the star, “knew how to suffer, be afraid.”32 To Spielberg’s appreciation, one might now add that he knows how to age, too. Still, the late film critic Roger Ebert33 remarked that Ford has one of those typical “Robert Mitchum faces that does not age.” Ford’s enduring associations with the male stars of the classical period continued to feature prominently in the film’s reviews and promotional features. Co-star Karen Allen34 thought of him as “Jimmy Stewart,” while producer George Lucas35 likened him to Bogart and Gable and concluded that Ford was “a movie star because he is a character actor.” What Allen and Lucas were surely referring to was Ford’s characteristic self-effacingness and status as a “professional actor,” or to his ability, like the stars of the studio era, to personify a certain set of enduring yet evolving attributes that started to develop after the release of Raiders of the Lost Ark and have remained more or less in place until more recent times, as Crystal Skull’s ability to draw the audience to the cinemas demonstrated. The fact that the shooting of a fifth installment in the saga has been announced further corroborates this point. The film was a great financial success and became the second most internationally watched film in 2008. After a string of cinematic failures, Ford finally achieved success thanks to his rather self-conscious reprising of the second most popular hero in Hollywood. Much of the money that Ford earned from this film was to be reinvested in his main interest, environmental protection. As a firm believer in social responsibility, the star had become involved in environmental and other social causes, which drew him to the small-budgeted, politically aware ensemble film Crossing Over. Although completed in 2007 the film performed poorly at previews and was not released Admittedly, Ford’s real-life relationship to Calista Flockhart, who is more than twenty years his junior, would easily contradict this argument. 32 Quoted in Laurence Caracalla, Harrison Ford (San Francisco 2007), p. 46. 33 Ebert, “Crystal Skull.” 34 Quoted in Allison Glock, “Blade Runner,” The Telegraph Magazine (May 10, 2008), p. 50. 35 Quoted in Windolf, “Keys.” 31

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commercially until 2009 (or 2011 in countries like Spain). It was reported that Ford accepted the role because he regretted not accepting the lead roles in Traffic (2000) and Syriana (2005) and although he rarely expresses his political opinions in public, he made an exception in this particular case. When asked in an interview36 whose job he would like to have for a day, he ironically responded, “I’d like to be George W. Bush, and boy, I’d get a lot done. You’d remember me for a long, long time.” For the first time in decades, Ford chose not to become involved in the film’s production process and decided to keep a low profile by exclusively performing his work as an actor. Nevertheless, Crossing Over’s opening and closing sequences featured Ford prominently, which clearly indicated the film’s desire to capitalize on his presence. The star played the character of LAbased immigration officer Max Brogan, who tracks illegal aliens and returns them to their countries of origin. In this sense, the character was reminiscent of Rick Deckard’s replicant chasing and eventual moral re-awakening. This film, nevertheless, was a commercial and critical disappointment that was often criticized for being overly contrived in its depiction of melodramatic coincidences. Ford’s performance and part in the film were, in the critics’ opinion, the only redeemable features. While the plot was regularly described as predictable, Ford’s critical input was summarized as follows: His role is more that of a witness than a participant, but he lends integrity and truth to his role as a compassionate INS officer. Indeed there’s more genuine conviction in Ford’s face, more complexity, honesty and ability to incite compassion, than everything else in Crossing Over combined.37

It is easy to identify Ford’s enduring trademark star persona in the assessment above, from his “ability to incite compassion,” to his “complexity, honesty” or his lending “integrity and truth” to a plot that was described as almost laughably implausible. To these, one could add Max Brogan’s compassionate belief in democratic opportunities in the land of the free. While Ford’s perfect

David Hochman, “Harrison Ford interview: Ford in focus” in Reader’s Digest (2008). Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20100119163042/http://www.harrisonfordweb.com/Article/Indiana_ Jones_4/ford_in_focus.php (accessed April 29, 2010). 37 Mick LaSalle, “Review of Crossing Over,” in The San Francisco Chronicle (2009). Available at http:// www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Movie-review-Crossing-Over-3248212.php (accessed May 3, 2011). 36

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fit with the part could easily add to the plot’s alleged predictability, his solid performance and willingness to play “just one more character” in this failed art-house project received the critics’ approval, nonetheless. Ford’s following project, Extraordinary Measures, which Ford executively produced, was a further box-office disappointment. Ford played Robert Stonehill, a maverick university researcher who helps John Crowley (Brendan Fraser), the father of two children with a rare disease, to find a cure. Most reviews criticized the film for having little ambition and resembling a TV movie in its melodramatic treatment of the Crowley family’s predicament. Ford’s and Fraser’s respective star performances were not considered powerful enough to attract attention. Ford’s part as the gruff, taciturn scientist in particular was also considered to evince little artistic ambition. What was interesting about the part, however, is the fact that, at almost seventy, Ford seemed bent on reprising some of the elements of his earliest 1970s star persona, that is, that of the maverick or a self-centered, twice-divorced hero with no strings attached and no social skills—but ultimately a very persevering professional with a conscience who is able to relent and compromise for a good cause—yet again reflecting his desire for artistic renewal in old age. In addition, the star was certainly not afraid to let his reputed surliness emerge through this role, or in his cameo part in Brüno (2009), for that matter, which was dramatically modified to fit his persona (the original scientist was a Taiwanese researcher). The film’s plot also revisited familiar territory for Ford, as it criticized the internal workings of pharmaceutical companies (interested in making money by selling drugs, rather than curing people), a trope that had already figured in Ford’s successful The Fugitive almost two decades earlier and clearly continued to resonate with the public. The second decade of the century proved to be a turning point in Ford’s career. Whether or not by personal choice, Ford started to accept supporting roles in both big-budget productions and more modest ones. Although these roles may suggest that Ford has entered a new “guest star” phase in his longstanding career, the actor partly justified his choice of parts as emanating from his lifelong desire to simply be “a character actor.”38 Ford’s next project in the comedy Morning Glory was comparatively better received than Extraordinary Ian Freer, “I am no longer a leading man. I’m a character actor,” Empire (March 2010), p. 107.

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Measures. This was mainly thanks to Rachel McAdams’s typically energizing star performance as a beleaguered TV producer, rather than Ford’s own, which was generally described as slow or flat. However, such a performance was simultaneously considered to be in tune with both Ford’s subdued performance style over the years and the character’s own standing within the narrative. In the film, Ford plays the supporting part of Mike Pomeroy, a formerly popular investigative journalist, now in professional decline, who is forced to present a lightweight morning news program because of a loophole in his contract. Naturally, Pomeroy accepts the offer reluctantly and creates all sorts of problems for the program’s producer, including demanding divalike perks such as a daily basket of fresh tropical fruit, which goes against the star’s actual on-set reputation. Co-star Melanie Griffith39 once described Ford as “not the kind of guy who before a take has a mirror in front of his face to see if he looks good [but] the kind of guy who’d be helping the dolly grip move the dolly,” which suggests that his characterization in the film is yet again an indication of Ford’s continuing willingness to take a humorous approach on his enduring, though also fading, stardom. Most interestingly, however, Pomeroy’s comic diva-like reluctance to adapt to new trends in TV news programs could also be understood as a self-conscious reflection of Ford’s own standing within Hollywood today. As one reviewer40 put it, “Forget that Mike doesn’t want to be on the show; Ford looks like he barely wants to be in the movie. And that’s why he’s easily the best thing in it” (emphasis in the original). This assessment may appear to be contradictory but it exposes Ford’s role in the film, and in contemporary Hollywood, quite adequately. Though over the years Ford has plainly stressed his interest in devoting his professional efforts to the generation of entertainment, a trend that highconcept Cowboys and Aliens (2011) confirmed, one cannot help but wonder whether the many failures that he accumulated during the 2000s as a result of his desire to experiment and add complexity to his aging persona (excepting Crystal Skull, the epitome of Hollywood entertainment after all) did not force him to sell his soul to the Hollywood devil, so to speak, in an attempt

Quoted in Jill Smolowe, “Harrison Ford,” People 51/10 (March 1999), p. 155. Owen Gleiberman,”Review of Morning Glory,” in Entertainment Weekly (2010). Available at https:// ew.com/article/2010/11/12/morning-glory-3/ (accessed November 9, 2015).

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to bolster his deteriorating stardom. Reflecting on his enduring career, Ford41 confessed to still being in the entertainment business “for the money […] and I mean it in the nicest possible way. […] I don’t have another job. It’s my craft.” Because of the recognizable cultural baggage he has accumulated over the years (the Harrison Fordness of Harrison Ford, so to speak) the star’s difficult rebranding attempts have been likened to “a vast oil tanker trying to change direction.”42 Yet Ford’s initial cumbersome movements seem to have turned nimbler during the second decade of the twenty-first century. In 2011, when Ford was approaching the age of seventy, he appeared on the cover of the July–August issue of the ARRP Magazine,43 which clearly suggested a change of tactics. Ford’s evolving brand seemed to finally have embraced the aging issue. Given Hollywood’s ageist culture, it is easy to understand why Ford seems to have lost his formerly unchallenged leadingman status in more recent years and become an honorable supporting figure, or a “guest star,” belonging to a bygone cinematic era and seemingly happy to pass the leading-man mantle to the next generation of actors. Maybe, in the autumn of his career, the time has come for Ford/Han Solo to become what Alec Guinness/Obi Wan Kenobi meant for the first Star Wars generation. Director Jon Favreau44 compared Ford’s cantankerous character in Cowboys and Aliens to the older John Wayne in movies like The Searchers and True Grit. As repeatedly suggested throughout this book, Ford’s associations with the stars of the classical period, both as regards his performance style and his brand of stardom, still feature prominently in publicity materials and film reviews. The actor45 fosters such associations and often refers to himself as unfashionable or “unhip,” as those “old shoes” that you like to wear over and over again because “they never go out of fashion.” This is perhaps one of the main reasons why his film career has lasted so long and why, one may assume, we might see Ford die with his boots on. Quoted in Gill Pringle, “Harrison Ford: I’m in it for the money,” in The Independent (2010), http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/harrison-ford-im-in-it-for-themoney-1903806.html (accessed November 4, 2015). 42 Kim Bielenberg, “Act your age,” in The Irish Independent (2006). Available at http://www.independent. ie/unsorted/features/act-your-age-26361576.html (accessed November 4, 2015). 43 AARP is the acronym for the American Association of Retired Persons. 44 Quoted in Nancy Griffin, “Harrison Ford: Hollywood hero,” in AARP The Magazine Online (2011). Available at http://www.aarp.org/entertainment/movies-for-grownups/info-05-2011/harrisonford-interview-full-throttle.html (accessed March 27, 2013). 45 Quoted in Tony Horkins, “In conversation with Harrison Ford,” Empire 202 (April 2006), p. 133. 41

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In Cowboys and Aliens Ford played old rancher Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde, who could easily have been the “black hat” character in the story had it not been for the eventual brutal alien invasion. The film’s main protagonist, however, was Daniel Craig’s man-with-no-name character, which was clearly reflected in the film’s promotional material. Indeed, Ford was deferential and grateful to Craig for his generosity “about sharing a bit more space for [his] character.”46 Ford was delighted to play an unpleasant character that, in its initial characterization, used a whip and wore a hat that were remarkably similar to Indiana Jones’s although the star refused to use them for evident reasons. As he stated, “costume is character”47 and therefore any possible references to Indiana Jones had to be discarded. The hybrid Cowboys and Aliens proved to be a magnificent example of a concept movie. Reportedly, it was based not on a graphic novel, but on the cover of a graphic novel.48 Executively produced by Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard, directed by Jon Favreau, of Iron Man (2008; 2010) fame, and starring Craig and Ford, the $163m film was, however, an unexpected economic disappointment. Although it opened to mixed reviews, it barely broke even in the worldwide box office, maybe because, as one reviewer49 reported, the director was careful not to privilege special effects over characterization, plot, and dialogue, which apparently was not what the film’s main “fanboy” demographic demanded. Or maybe the classical Western scenario (even if eventually invaded by aliens) did not appeal to them either. Tellingly, director Jon Favreau did not direct another film feature, the much smaller-budgeted Chef (which he also wrote, produced, and starred in), until three years later. Ford, for his part, did not appear in any films in 2012, but 2013 was a busy year, with the release of three features in which he played, once again, supporting roles, or character parts. Although there are different definitions available for the term, Ford’s understanding of the concept implies an actor who plays a distinctive and important supporting role, not simply a “bit part.” Quoted in Roth Cornett. “Interview: Harrison Ford talks Cowboys & Aliens,” in Screenrant (2011). Available at http://screenrant.com/harrison-ford-rothc-125550/ (accessed November 4, 2015). 47 MymagicSTAR, “Jon Favreau & Harrison Ford interview,” YouTube.com, July 25, 2011. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgJYHsqJ6Ag (accessed November 8, 2015). 48 Roger Ebert, “Review of Cowboys and Aliens,” in Rogerebert.com (2011). Available at http://www. rogerebert.com/reviews/cowboys-and-aliens-2011 (accessed November 3, 2015). 49 Kirk Honeycutt, “Review of Cowboys and Aliens,” in The Hollywood Reporter (2011), http://www. hollywoodreporter.com/review/cowboys-aliens-film-review-214687 (accessed November 3, 2015). 46

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During 2013, Ford also received the “Career Achievement Award” at the comparatively less-known Hollywood Film Awards’ ceremony. Awards are excellent sources of publicity for the film industry, hence the proliferation of more or less prestigious film-award ceremonies. The career achievement award, in particular, helps to draw invaluable attention to established performers like Ford, whose economic viability for the industry may have become compromised as a result of old age, leading to limited career opportunities. In 42 Ford played the role of Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey. “Character actor” Harrison Ford resorted to the use of prosthetic make-up and a fat suit in an effort to actually look like Rickey, rather than one more version of himself, which he felt would be detrimental to the success of the film.50 Ford described the experience as “liberating” as the chance to play a character part finally relieved him of “the burden of having to carry the audience along.”51 In other words, Ford had started to believe that in order for a film to succeed, he did not need to be “Harrison Ford” any more: I can be anybody I want—if they’ll let me. […]. I was done. I’d exhausted my potential as a middle-aged leading man. And I’m getting to the point where people don’t want to see me […] hit people and kiss girls. So I began looking for the next phase of my career.52

With this role, Ford seemed to be attempting to transition into a novel “star as performer” phase in his career. Despite its limited release, 42’s takings more than doubled its budget at the domestic box office alone. There were rumors also that Ford would obtain a second Oscar nomination for his performance, almost thirty years after Witness, though they never materialized. 42 celebrates the iconic figure of Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), the first African American to play in Major League baseball, one of the first US “institutions” to become desegregated in 1947, before “public schools, water faucets, restrooms or […] churches.”53 Robinson and Rickey’s historic feat, which was achieved Quoted in Gregg Kilday, “Han Solo’s behind him. Or is he?” The Hollywood Reporter (October 25, 2013), p. 419. 51 Quoted in Adam Sternbergh, “I hate it when they change stuff,” The New York Times Magazine (August 11, 2013), p. 12. 52 Quoted in Scott Feinberg, “42 supporting actor Harrison Ford: ‘I Don’t Have to Be ‘Harrison Ford’ Anymore’,” in The Hollywood Reporter (2013). Available at http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ race/42-supporting-actor-harrison-ford-666537 (accessed July 18, 2015). 53 Jack Kenny, “Breaking barriers,” The New American 29/9 (May 6, 2013), p. 39. 50

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without government intervention of any kind, arguably paved the way for many other civil rights victories yet to come. Maverick manager Rickey’s challenge to Jim Crow laws, which came to be known as “the noble experiment,”54 was remarkable indeed. Still, the film does not exactly represent a paean to Rickey (though it is one to Robinson) and is careful to stress that the experiment did not solely emanate from this businessman’s sense of moral justice. Rickey’s managerial instinct dictated that there was a lot of money to be made. As he says during the course of the film, “dollars aren’t black and white […] Every dollar is green.” It is as if there were two sides to Rickey, who, despite being a secondary character, comes out as a comparatively more nuanced one than Robinson. Therefore, it is difficult to ascertain whether, as one critic55 grandly put it, “mankind was [Rickey’s] business.” As already pointed out, Ford was willing to remain “in the background” so that the significance of the historic events and characters depicted in this biopic would stand out. Still, Ford’s fit with the Branch Rickey character would appear to be quite seamless, which certainly draws attention to Ford’s presence in the film after all. Like Rickey, Ford is a more complex icon than has generally been acknowledged. Likewise, Ford’s association with the spirit of democracy and equal opportunities in the land of the free and the home of the brave establishes a further connection with the character. Ford’s performance as Branch Rickey, in fact, helped to fill a noticeable gap in Ford’s career in terms of the representation of race relations. Finally, critics also agreed that Ford seemed to relish the opportunity of playing a benign character with a cantankerous side, which suited his increasingly off-screen gruff reputation just fine.56 According to Gleiberman,57 one of the film’s highlights was Ford’s Scott Foundas, “Baseball Great gets bland bio,” Variety 9–15 (April 2013), p. 106. Joe Neumaier, “Jackie Robinson biopic 42 is a home run,” in New York Daily News (2013). Available at http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/jackie-robinson (accessed July 29, 2015). Link no longer available. 56 Ford’s reputation as a gruff man has been growing steadily over the last few years, but as I have tried to demonstrate throughout this book, the not-so-pleasant side of Ford has always been close to the surface. For an amusing take on Ford’s “other side,” see Schager, who declares: “cynicism, and a more general world-weariness are traits perhaps destined to intensify as one grows older, but Ford’s transformation into the cinema’s preeminent grouch […] remains an extreme case. […] Ford has come far from where he once was—even if close inspection reveals that hints of his badtemperedness were always there” (Nick Schager, “Harrison Ford: A grumpy timeline,” in Esquire (2013). Available at http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a24343/harrison-ford-grumpy/ (multiple access dates)). 57 Gleiberman, “42.” 54 55

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convincing performance as Rickey, “a grump with a heart of gold,” who the star played “with that growl of Fordian anger just beneath it” (my emphasis). Thus, it would appear that what has always lain beneath Ford’s image is finally finding its way into the star’s characterization and best performance. The fact that Ford received general praise for his work in 42 reveals that this move has yet to prove detrimental to his career. Ford58 claimed that he followed Ben Kingsley’s/Oscar Wilde’s advice for his work in 42: “give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.” In other words, in true “star as performer” fashion, Ford was trying here to vindicate himself as a credible performer, one able to “tell the truth,” by refusing to wear the well-worn Ford mask and hiding behind Branch Rickey’s instead. Had he not resorted to prosthetics and heavy make-up, he would not, in his view, have been able to play a real-life character in an effective way, since “Harrison Ford” would have got in the way. However, Ford’s comment is interesting in more ways than one, as the star also seemed to be acknowledging that there was essentially no truth behind the more familiar and iconic “Ford mask.” By highlighting the performative essence of “professional” stardom, Ford was breaking the “fourth wall,” so to speak. Therefore, it is also possible to speculate that by inaugurating a new stage in his career, star-as-performer Ford finally managed to fulfill his alleged lifelong wish, that is to say, becoming a character actor.

Nadine Schiff-Rosen, “Harrison Ford talks 42, acting and conservation,” in Michigan Avenue (2013). Available at https://michiganavemag.com/harrison-ford-talks-acting-conservation-international (accessed April 27, 2014).

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Conclusion This book has attempted to unveil the “fictional truth” behind the Harrison Ford persona. Since this analysis has focused mainly on the representation of contemporary masculinity in Ford’s oeuvre, some aspects have inevitably been considered more relevant than others. As a result of the inherent multidimensionality of star images, omissions are likely to be found, and it is therefore hoped that future research will close the gaps in this initial study. Ford was once described as “the definition of absolute stardom.”1 He has done work in most Hollywood genres, except for the musical, although he has mainly been associated with the action/adventure formula. Nevertheless, unlike other performers of his generation, Ford has never come across as a stereotypical action hero in the sense that “brains” have always been more prominent than “brawn.” Indeed, inasmuch as his persona has regularly encapsulated such notions as “everymanness” and vulnerability, he has always stood out as a unique breed of action hero, thereby subverting stereotypical notions of heroic masculinity within the genre. Still, far from generating inconsistencies and dissonances, Ford’s special brand of heroism has been well received over the years. It is precisely his atypicality within the action formula that has allowed him to produce work in other genres, where his unique heroic persona has been used to varying degrees of effectiveness. Ford’s iconicity started forging itself in the 1970s through the popular Han Solo character in the swashbuckling sci-fi Star Wars saga. However, his small part in American Graffiti also introduced nuances, such as a certain lack of maturity, egotism, and a mild form of arrogance that continued to develop to more or less comic effect in the Star War films and other roles

Robert Zemeckis, quoted in Judy Sloane, “What lies beneath,” Starburst 268 (December 2000), p. 23.

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during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Ford’s off-screen reputation as a rowdy twenty-something “with an attitude” contributed significantly to the establishment of such elements in his nascent star persona. These notions were also reinforced through his early roles in The Frisco Kid, Hanover Street, and Force Ten from Navarone, although these parts also managed to imbue the actor’s persona with a certain “patriotic” symbolism, in the sense that his characters often came face to face with men of other nationalities, who, on the whole, compared unfavorably to Ford’s characters. The star then came to symbolize “the American way,” especially in terms of the representation of successful masculinity. This devil-may-care attitude is a significant element of his acting persona that further established itself during the following years. Ford’s much-commented from-rags-to-riches story also had a strong impact on the construction of his early star image. As is well known, despite the difficulties that led him to pursue a parallel carpentry career outside Hollywood, he never gave up on his ambition to become a successful actor. His perseverance eventually had the desired effect, which is how the actor also came to stand for the values encapsulated in the hard-work ethic and, more generally speaking, “the American Dream” of opportunity and advancement. The film Working Girl and more recently Crossing Over and 42 were exemplary in this respect. In the 1980s, the role of Indiana Jones catapulted Ford to superstardom and it was fundamental for the reinforcement of the notion of “all-Americanness” in his persona. Apart from the ideals of individualism, imperialism, and patriotism, the role introduced the important notion of the “frontier” in the construction of Ford’s star image. Such purely generic associations were supported by Ford’s off-screen reputation as a “new wester” living in the Wyoming “frontier.” On the other hand, despite Indy’s romantic involvement with various females, the film’s attempt to reach a wide audience led to the conscious displacement of sexuality in the construction of the part. Such a displacement, with minor exceptions, eventually became an essential element in Ford’s trademark crossover, child-friendly persona, which, together with Indiana Jones’s vulnerability and comic use of violence, established the foundations for the development of his unique contribution to the action/ adventure formula and its concomitant articulation of contemporary masculinity. It was certainly thanks to this iconic character that the notion of

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vulnerability became firmly attached to Ford’s developing persona. As Knee2 asserts in his assessment of Ford’s 1980s’ work, “the feelings had always been present” (emphasis in the original). Vulnerability is key to understanding the star’s subsequent roles as John Book, Rick Deckard, Dr. Richard Walker, and Jack Trainer. Many of these melodramatic (action) films also emphasized the intense suffering Ford’s characters endured as a result of dramatic disruptions to their personal lives, frequently involving the family. Still, Ford’s characters finally overcome victimization by regenerating their beleaguered sense of masculinity through the (restrained) use of violence. Blade runner Rick Deckard was in fact the first in a number of important roles that attempted to stretch the persona of the star a bit further by adding complexity and introducing dark undertones that reflected the contemporary crisis of masculinity. While these novel aspects made the actor an apt casting choice for auteurs like Scott, Weir, or Polanski, they were not well received by mass audiences. Ford’s failures (at least in terms of box office and immediate critical reception) in Blade Runner, The Mosquito Coast, and Frantic during the 1980s exemplify the power of audiences to discourage stretching the limits of established star identities. Witness, meanwhile, successfully exploited Ford’s developing persona, as it drew on his associations with the frontier, individualism, heroism, and vulnerability, while also highlighting the character’s sense of morality, a characteristic that Deckard had already displayed. The film’s sentimental undercurrents also reveal the star’s increasing inclination toward the melodramatic mode in his choice of characters. In Ford’s later output, melodrama is present at several levels, in both structural and thematic terms, since conventional Manichean conflicts and resolutions together with the suffering hero’s victimization often combine with familial concerns. Although Witness could be considered to have been an important precursor, Frantic inaugurated an enduring trend in Ford’s career in which the defense of the family became the backdrop against which narrative conflict unfolded. Ford’s subsequent rebranding in the broad media as a successful 1990s’ “new man” and a reformed “new father” certainly made an impact on his screen characterization and vice versa. During the 1980s, his roles had already Adam Knee, “Harrison Ford: A well-tempered machismo,” in R. Eberwein (ed.), Acting for America. Movie Stars of the 1980s (New Brunswick and London, 2010), p. 179.

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displayed a “different” sensibility as far as the portrayal of masculinity was concerned, while still conforming to hegemonic notions of gender. On the whole, his most popular characters displayed the usual attributes that characterize conventional heroics in mainstream Hollywood, but they also exhibited a large measure of emotional sensitivity and physical vulnerability, which helped Ford stand out in the overcrowded Hollywood firmament. His second marriage and second chance at fatherhood subsequently turned him into a popular role model for contemporary men,3 and possibly fathers in particular, in the more “caring” 1990s. This new tenderness, which is also noticeably present in the Jack Ryan films and in Regarding Henry, reflected contemporary social and political discourses regarding gender and the family that had a great impact on politics and the broad media. However, Ford’s increasing construction as the über-father for the 1990s was not without contradictions, since a certain degree of ambivalence toward the family could be observed in many of these narratives. This ambivalent attitude was evident in some of Ford’s darker roles, including Allie Fox, Dr. Richard Walker, Rusty Sabich, or even Henry Turner, which may be interpreted against this background. However, this undercurrent was also more or less discernible in the rest of his output, which reflects the difficulties involved in reconciling family life and the typical individualistic drives of Hollywood heroes. Such contradictions were usually resolved, or at least partially hidden from view, by placing a stronger emphasis on the narrative development of Ford’s part over and above other characters, which inevitably confirms Hollywood’s strong reliance on the economy of stardom. While this type of investment paid off in the archetypal Harrison Ford vehicle Air Force One, it proved to be a problem, though for different reasons, in The Devil’s Own and, in particular, Random Hearts. Ford’s last film of the 1990s was in fact one of his most notorious artistic disappointments. While Six Days, Seven Nights had more or less successfully subverted the star’s persona with attempts at a comedic role, Random Hearts failed to achieve the same feat because of its obsessive focus on Ford’s character’s male crisis in late middle age. Nevertheless, the notion of the crisis Harrison Ford has frequently featured on the covers of such non-cinema magazines as GQ, Esquire, and Men’s Journal, which evinces his popularity among men. The cover story in the September 1999 issue of Men’s Journal, for instance, featured Ford and was entitled “The Great Life.”

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of masculinity has featured in Ford’s work more than is generally acknowledged and surfaced in one way or another in many of his films belonging to different genres, including science fiction (Blade Runner), the adventure film (The Mosquito Coast), the romantic comedy (Working Girl; Sabrina; Six Days, Seven Nights), the neo-noir and courtroom thriller (Frantic; Presumed Innocent), and the male melodrama (Regarding Henry; Random Hearts). Resolution of the crisis (or, less often, lack thereof) in these films was generally dictated by generic parameters, although the more positive elements in Ford’s persona could also be said to have played a prominent part in the achievement of a more or less happy resolution. Nevertheless, unlike past positive responses to Ford’s melodramatic vulnerability, viewers and critics were disturbed by Dutch Van der Broeck’s aggressiveness and obsessive jealousy in Random Hearts. Pollack’s film was a turning point in Ford’s career. For the first time in many years, Ford’s bankability and ability to select film roles became widely questioned. Just as the narrative had (unsuccessfully) probed the crisis of masculinity as a dramatic concern, Random Hearts also inaugurated a period of artistic decline. However, this critical phase led to a process of artistic renewal in Ford’s career that has lasted until more recent times. Not surprisingly, the notion of “the crisis” continued to play a prominent part in Ford’s output during the 2000s. Apart from this, the eventual acknowledgment of the aging process gave way to new configurations of Ford’s image in which his performance abilities have become foregrounded and vindicated. Shingler4 has argued that in order to assess a star’s broad cultural significance and longevity it is essential to analyze the shifts taking place in the course of their whole careers, rather than focus on a particularly significant moment. While this book has placed a very strong emphasis on the establishment and consolidation of Ford’s persona during the course of the 1980s and 1990s, the heyday of his artistic success, it has also addressed the initial stages and the more recent shifts. In recent years, the meanings that became consolidated during earlier decades have inevitably continued to evolve but still make an impact on Ford’s work, often though not always with parodic intentions.

Martin Shingler, Star Studies. A Critical Guide (London, 2012), p. 174.

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According to McDonald,5 some stars “seem to transcend historical fashions, enjoying continued popularity over different periods of time.” From a Star Studies’ perspective, this inevitably entails that the constant process of transformation of a star’s image needs to be reassessed continuously, since studying these changes can provide us with particularly interesting insights into changing (male) identity paradigms. This study of Ford’s stardom has tried to foreground such important changes in the contemporary paradigm of US male identity by tracking Ford’s career over the course of almost fifty years. By focusing on the rebelliousness of Ford’s early career years, the brashness characterizing the 1980s, the mellowness displayed during the mature phase of his career, and ending with the difficult accommodation of the aging process, this book has attempted to facilitate our understanding of evolving gender roles and changing formations of US male identity in the last five decades. And the beat goes on …

Paul McDonald, The Star System: Hollywood’s Production of Popular Identities (London, 2000), p. 8.

5

Films Cited Harrison Ford’s Films 42 (Brian Helgeland, 2013) Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997) American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) Blade Runner. The Director’s Cut (Ridley Scott, 1992) Blade Runner. The Final Cut (Ridley Scott, 2007) Clear and Present Danger (Phillip Noyce, 1994) Conversation, The (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) Cowboys and Aliens (John Favreau, 2011) Crossing Over (Wayne Kramer, 2009) Devil’s Own, The (Alan J. Pakula, 1997) Extraordinary Measures (Tom Vaughan, 2010) Firewall (Richard Loncraine, 2006) Force Ten from Navarone (Guy Hamilton, 1978) Frantic (Roman Polanski, 1988) Frisco Kid, The (Robert Aldrich, 1979) Fugitive, The (Andrew Davies, 1993) Getting Straight (Richard Rush, 1970) Hanover Street (Peter Hyams, 1979) Heroes (Jeremy Kagan, 1977) Hollywood Homicide (Ron Shelton, 2003) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg, 2008) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg, 1984) K-19: The Widowmaker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2002) More American Graffiti (Bill L. Norton, 1979) Morning Glory (Roger Michell, 2010) Mosquito Coast, The (Peter Weir, 1986) Patriot Games (Phillip Noyce, 1992) Presumed Innocent (Alan J. Pakula, 1990)

286

Films Cited

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981) Random Hearts (Sydney Pollack, 1999) Regarding Henry (Mike Nichols, 1991) Sabrina (Sydney Pollack, 1995) Six Days, Seven Nights (Ivan Reitman, 1998) Star Wars: Episode IV. A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977) Star Wars: Episode V. The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980) Star Wars: Episode VI. Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983) Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015) What Lies Beneath (Robert Zemeckis, 2000) Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) Working Girl (Mike Nichols, 1988) Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970)

Other Films and TV Series 300 (Zack Snyder, 2006) African Queen, The (John Huston, 1951) Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) In America (Jim Sheridan, 2002) Around the Bend (Jordan Roberts, 2004) Atonement (Joe Wright, 2007) Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941) Boys Don’t Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999) Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945) Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938) Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005) Brüno (Larry Charles, 2009) Candidate, The (Michael Ritchie, 1972) Champ, The (Franco Zeffirelli, 1979) Chef (John Favreau, 2014) City of Angels (Brad Silberling, 1998) Das Boot (Wolfgang Petersen, 1981) Dear John (Lasse Hallström, 2010) Deep Impact (Mimi Leder, 1998) Devil Wears Prada, The (David Frankel, 2006) Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946) E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)

Films Cited Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987) Fault in Our Stars, The (Josh Boone, 2014) Fifty Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015) Flight Plan (Robert Schwentke, 2005) Friends (David Crane and Marta Kauffman, 1994–2004) Friends with Kids (Jennifer Westfeldt, 2011) From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953) Gunga Din (George Stevens, 1939) Guns of Navarone, The (J. Lee Thompson, 1961) High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952) History of Violence, A (David Cronenberg, 2005) Horse Whisperer, The (Robert Redford, 1998) Housesitter (Frank Oz, 1992) Hunt for Red October, The (John McTiernan, 1990) Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen, 1992) Incredibles, The (Brad Bird, 2004) Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996) It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934) It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946) Kate and Leopold (James Mangold, 2001) Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955) Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979) Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944) Little Mermaid, The (Ron Clements and John Musker, 1989) Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, 2006) Lone Star (John Sayles, 1996) Mad Men (Matthew Weiner, 2007–2015) Magnificent Obsession (Douglas Sirk, 1954) Man Who Knew Too Much, The (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956) Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979) Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock, 1964) Message in a Bottle (Luis Mandoki, 1999) Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) Model Shop, The (Jacques Demy, 1969) Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939) My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946) My Life without Me (Isabel Coixet, 2003) Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, 2003)

287

288

Films Cited

North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) Notebook, The (Nick Cassavetes, 2004) Ordinary People (Robert Redford, 1980) Out of Africa (Sidney Pollack, 1985) Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) P.S. I Love You (Richard LaGravenese, 2007) Panic Room (David Fincher, 2002) Patriot, The (Roland Emmerich, 2000) Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990) Purple Rose of Cairo, The (Woody Allen, 1985) Ransom (Ron Howard, 1996) Remember Me (Allen Coulter, 2010) Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954) Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang, 1945) Searchers, The (John Ford, 1956) Serpico (Sidney Lumet, 1973) Shane (George Stevens, 1953) Sleeping with the Enemy (Joseph Ruben, 1991) Spy Kids (Robert Rodriguez, 2001) State of Play (Kevin Macdonald, 2009) Syriana (Stephen Gaghan, 2005) Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008) Time Traveller’s Wife, The (Robert Schwentke, 2009) Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000) True Grit (Henry Hathaway, 1969) True Lies (James Cameron, 1994) Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008) Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992) Upside Down (Juan Solanas, 2012) Vow, The (Michael Sucsy, 2012) Wag the Dog (Barry Levinson, 1997) Waitress (Adrienne Shelly, 2007) Way We Were, The (Sydney Pollack, 1973) When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner, 1989) Wild One, The (Neil Jordan, 2007) Woman in the Window, The (Fritz Lang, 1944) Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1931)

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Index action-adventure films 23, 56–7, 77, 228, 230, 240, 261, 279–80 adventure films 23, 45, 103–5, 136, 236, 239, 283 The African Queen (Huston) 231 aging process, complications (Ford) 284 anti-smoking campaign 257 awards 275 crisis of masculinity 259 criticism 264, 266–7 guest star phase 271, 273 heroes (1980s), comeback 268 neo-star 260 off-screen gruff reputation 276, 276 n.56 opportunities 258 production 259, 261 professional and personal transformation 259 psychological effects 259 as public servant/assistant storyteller 262 star as performer phase 275, 277 star status and longevity 267, 269 Air Force One (Petersen) 22, 23 n.35, 24, 29, 189, 282 awards 213 best Movie President 212 Clinton years, during 216 communist fanatics 219–20 critics and reviews 212, 216 generic elements 210, 216 n.147 medias-res secret operation 221–2 quality elements 209 special feature on 218 storytelling 227 terrorists and attacks 224–5 totalitarian administration 225 Alien (Scott) 77, 123 Allen, Karen 57, 269 American Graffiti (Lucas) 32, 42–3, 46, 51, 279

Andrews, Keith 151 Apocalypse Now (Coppola) 50, 78 Atkinson, Michael 3 n.4, 70 Atticus Finch 55 attractions, new cinema of 76 Baldwin, Alec 170–1, 171 n.64, 173, 175, 196 Ball of Fire (Hawks) 159 Barrett, F. J. 13, 13 n.6 Basinger, Jeanine 38, 258, 260 Baym, Nina 116 Bennet, Ray 117 Beynon, John 167 Bigelow, Kathryn 262, 264 Blade Runner (Scott) 1, 3, 8, 77 actor-role analogy 81 box-office takings 82, 82 n.78 controversy 78 cynicism and individualism 85 Dempsey’s review 80, 80 n.77 “Director’s Cut” 82 film critics 82 gender roles 85 masculinity 85 mortality 84, 84 n.82 performer-role analogy 81 post-modern cultural artefact 82 n.79 romance and affection 83 Scott’s vision 81–2 Starburst critic 79 blockbusters’ formulaic plots 76 Bly, Robert 12, 163 Boggs, Carl 185 Branch Rickey 275–6 Bringing Up Baby (Hawks) 123, 128, 159 Brosnan, John 79 Brown, Jeffrey A. 16, 16 n.17, 17 n.19 Brüno (Charles) 271 Bruzzi, Stella 14, 14 n.9, 18, 21–2, 109, 214, 216

Index Bukatman, Scott 85 Bush, George, Sr. 19, 214 “By Endurance We Conquer” (Shakleton) 190 Byrge, Duane 68 Cameron, James 211 Campbell, Neil 68 Capra, Frank 125, 159 career (Ford). see also fictional characters (Ford); specific films as carpenter 39–41 cultural significance and longevity 283 early life 37–8 minor roles in films 39, 42, 50 as performer (and performance) 37–8, 41–3, 51 Star Wars saga 37, 43, 49 Carrasco-Carrasco, Rocío 82 n.80 Carroll, Hamilton 5 n.6 Carter, Jimmy 56 Chan, Jackie 72 Chef (Favreau) 274 Chidley, Joe 209 Christopher Cross 139 Claire Spencer 260 Clarke, Gerald 82 n.79 Clear and Present Danger (Noyce) 189–90, 196, 211 Ford as auteur 199 politics and morality 198 Reciprocity operation 197 “Truth Needs a Soldier” tagline 197 Clinton, Bill 214, 223 n.153 legal difficulties 215 popularity 215 portrayal of 217–18 presidential films 216 star quality 214–15 Clover, Carol J. 16 n.13, 136 Cohan, Steven 16, 16 n.16, 18 n.21 Coixet, Isabel 253 n.197 Connell, Robert W. 11 contemporary Hollywood cinema 31–2, 34–5, 62 and blockbuster productions 62 crisis of masculinity 14–25 terrorism, portrayal of 185 The Conversation (Coppola) 43–4, 50, 78, 80

309

Cooke, Sam 93 Cooper, Gary 159, 208 n.128 Coppola, Francis Ford 43, 44, 50 Cowboys and Aliens (Favreau) 272–4 Craig, Daniel 274 Crawley, Tony 60, 62 Cronenberg, David 22 n.33, 188–9 Crossing Over (Kramer) 269–70, 280 Cullen, Jim 61, 61 n.27 culture/cultural significance 6, 25, 28, 65, 210, 218, 257, 267, 273, 283 Curtis, Tony 39 Das Boot (Petersen) 209 de Niro, Robert 98–9 DeGeneres, Ellen 228 Deleyto, Celestino 122, 201 Dempsey, Michael 80 Demy, Jacques 39 Denby, David 98 The Devil Wears Prada (Frankel) 122 The Devil’s Own (Pakula) 32, 190, 204, 282 conversations 207 Pitt 204–5 pre-production 204 reviews 206 script, modifications 205–7 US cultural mythology 208 Dick, Philip K 79, 79 n.75 Dixon, Simon 26, 69 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Dick) 79 Douglas, Michael 196 Dowd, James J. 246–7, 253 n.197 Duel in the Sun (Vidor) 46 Duke, Brad 27, 37, 38, 76, 134, 157, 212 Dyer, Richard 2, 3 n.5, 26, 28–9, 34, 59, 95 n.96, 211 Eastwood, Clint 257 Ebert, Roger 88, 102, 134, 190, 248, 268, 269, 274 Eimer, David 108 Ellis, John 60 emotion(s) 95, 152, 183, 201 emotional gap 75 E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial (Spielberg) 66 n.34 Extraordinary Measures (Vaughan) 271

310

Index

family adventure movie 23, 24 n.39, 136 Fatal Attraction (Lyne) 180 father/fatherhood functions 20–5, 70–3, 87–9, 101, 109–10, 116, 149–53, 161–6, 173, 226, 266, 281–2 Favreau, Jon 273–4 feminism 12, 19, 146 pro-feminist men’s movement 13 social changes 16 Fernández Valenti, Tomás 188 fictional characters (Ford) Allie Fox (The Mosquito Coast) 97–107, 150, 238, 251, 282 Bob Falfa (American Graffiti) 32, 42–3, 51, 54 Branch Rickey (42) 275–7 Captain Alexei Vostrikov (K-19: The Widowmaker) 263–4 Colonel Lucas (Apocalypse Now) 50–1 Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Cowboys and Aliens) 274 David Halloran (Hanover Street) 51–2, 86 Dr. Richard Kimble (The Fugitive) 192–6, 198 Dr. Richard Walker (Frantic) 106–16, 142, 236, 281–2 Dr. Stonehill (Extraordinary Measures) 271 Dutch Van der Broeck (Random Hearts) 29, 245, 251, 283 Han Solo (Star Wars) 44–7, 62, 273, 279 Henry Turner (Regarding Henry) 150–68 Indiana Jones (see Indiana Jones (fictional character)) Jack Ryan (Patriot Games & Clear and Present Danger) 169–89, 177 n.75, 196, 198–9, 267 Jack Stanfield (Firewall) 24, 265–7 Jack Trainer (Working Girl) 118–20, 123, 126 n.150, 127, 281 John Book (Witness) 52, 68, 86–93, 95–7, 109, 130 Lieutenant Barnsby (Force Ten from Navarone) 49–50 Linus Larrabee (Sabrina) 200–2 Martin Stett (The Conversation) 43

Max Brogan (Crossing Over) 270 Mike Pomeroy (Morning Glory) 272 Norman Spencer (What Lies Beneath) 260 President James Marshall (Air Force One) 22, 197, 210, 212–13, 212 n.135, 215–27 Quinn Harris (Six Days, Seven Nights) 230, 230 n.162, 235, 238 Rick Deckard (Blade Runner) 77–86, 169, 270, 281 Rusty Sabich (Presumed Innocent) 133, 135–42, 144–9, 282 Sergeant Joe Gavilan (Hollywood Homicide) 264–5 Tom O’Meara (The Devil’s Own) 204–8 Tommy Lillard (The Frisco Kid) 53–4, 91 film noir 82, 111, 125–6, 137–40, 145 n.26 Firewall (Loncraine) 24, 24 n.39, 265–6 Fisher, Carrie 37, 46–7 Flockhart, Calista 35, 71, 259 Flynn, Errol 60 Fonda, Henry 135–6 Force Ten from Navarone (Hamilton) 49, 53, 280 Ford, Harrison 1–2, 3 n.5, 5–6, 22, 24, 25, 28, 35, 44, 56, 170 acting skills 60–1 American Dream 280 awards and honors 3, 41, 48, 257–8 blue-collar status 108 career (see career (Ford)) darker roles 282 environmentalist 67, 67 n.38 failures 281 family life 70, 71 n.53 fictional characters (see fictional characters (Ford)) frontier myth 70–1, 96 image 3, 3 n.4, 5, 7–8, 70, 74, 107 land concept diverges 68 magazines, covers 282 n.3 Mirren’s appreciation 58 off-screen reputation 108, 203, 238, 276, 280 ordinariness 107–9 outdoor activities 68 persona (see star persona)

Index Pitt and 32 structured polysemy 80 stunts 58, 75–7 unique trademark 75 Wyoming 66, 66 n.35, 69 42 (Helgeland) 275, 277, 280 Foster, Jodie 24, 28, 32, 182 Frantic (Polanski) 3, 8, 113 n.134, 118–19, 131, 236, 281 family values 109 illicit sexuality 113 masculinity 116 sense of manhood 115–16 Statue of Liberty, phallic 112, 115 Freer, Ian 221 Friedman, Lester D. 53, 59, 73 Friends (Crane and Kauffman) 237 The Frisco Kid (Aldrich) 51–4, 280 From Here to Eternity (Zinnemann) 231 The Fugitive (Davies) 189–90, 271 character study 195 chase scenes 194–5 heroic vulnerability 192 1990s, narrative 190–1 script 193 styles of masculinity 194, 196 Gabbard, Krin 24, 24 n.38 Gable, Clark 60 Gallagher, Mark 72, 75 Gates, Phillipa 138, 146, 268 George Bailey 28 Geraghty, Christine 6, 6 n.9, 33–5, 95, 191, 264 Gledhill, Christine 33 Gleiberman, Owen 276 Godunov, Alexander 92 Grant, Cary 159 Griffin, Nancy 188 Griffith, Melanie 117, 130, 238, 272 Gross, Lawrence 194 Grossberg, Lawrence 12 Gunga Din (Stevens) 62 The Guns of Navarone (Thompson) 49 Hackman, Gene 44 Hamad, Hannah 87, 266 Hanover Street (Hyams) 51–3, 152, 280 Hansen, Miriam 16 n.15

311

Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era (Jeffords) 19, 56, 87 Hartnett, Josh 264 Harwood, Sarah 101 Heche, Anne 228–9, 243 Henderson, Brian 247 Heroes (Kagan) 49 High Concept (Wyatt) 133 High Noon (Zinnemann) 96 Hirsch, Foster 25 A History of Violence (Cronenberg) 22 n.33, 188 Hitchcock, Alfred 107 Hollywood cinema. see also specific movies of attractions 76 contemporary (see contemporary Hollywood cinema) emotion 152 film noir 125 masculinity (see masculinity) in 1980s and 1990s 19, 22 n.32 Hollywood Homicide (Shelton) 264–5 Holmlund, Chris 17 n.20 Horkins, Tony 118 Housesitter (Oz) 203 Howard, Ron 42, 274 Howe, Desson 126 n.149, 194 The Hunt for Red October (McTiernan) 170 Hussein, Saddam 223, 223 n.153 Indiana Jones 1, 9, 23, 23 n.35, 24 n.39, 56, 58, 72–3, 75, 96, 117, 182, 259, 261–2 Indiana Jones (fictional character) 1, 6, 8–9, 35, 52, 55, 86, 109, 261–2, 267–8, 274, 280 action-adventure 56–7, 62 Chan 72, 72 n.56 characterization 60, 63, 73 dark side of hero 63–4 erotic contemplation 59 frontier myth 61–2, 70–1 heroism 60, 73–4 individualism 56 installments 61 larger-than-life figure 57 legacy of 77 Lucas-Berger experience 64, 73 masculinity 57–8, 72

312 need for blockbusters 59 romantic relationships 64–5 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Spielberg) 55 n.2, 62, 63, 77 n.69, 267, 269 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Spielberg) 59 n.18, 62, 72, 267 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Spielberg) 55, 58, 62–4 Innes, Sherrie A. 16 n.18 Iron John: Men and Masculinity (Bly) 163 Iron Man (Favreau) 274 It Happened One Night (Capra) 128 It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra) 28, 116 Jack Ryan films 168, 176, 282 Jeffers McDonald, Tamar 230, 230 n.162, 232 Jeffords, Susan 19–20, 24, 56, 72, 87 Jenkins, Garry 30, 37, 66, 135, 150, 154, 171 Jermyn, Deborah 232 Jim Greer (Clear and Present Danger) 198 John McClane 77 John Rambo 77 Jolie, Angelina 28 K-19: The Widowmaker (Bigelow) 30, 262–3 Kardashian, Kim 33 Katie Morosky 17 Kauffman, Stanley 216 Kean, Alasdair 68 Kempley, Rita 127 Kendrick, James 64 n.32 Kennedy, John F. 212 Kimmel, Michael 13, 13 n.5, 14, 14 n.8 King, Barry 5 n.7 King, Geoff 27, 45, 58, 70 King, Neal 268 n.28 Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich) 111 Klein, Andy 46 n.26, 61, 112 Knee, Adam 2, 2 n.1, 39, 281 Kord, Susanne 90, 104 Krämer, Peter 23, 23 n.36, 46 n.25 Krimmer, Elisabeth 90, 104 Krutnik, Frank 129, 201, 203

Index Leitch, Thomas M. 96, 114, 141 Let the River Run (Simon) 119 Levy, Rochelle L. 74 Lewis, Michael 137, 147 Lichtenfeld, Eric 61, 61 n.26, 76 “Life Begins at Sixty” (Cassidy) 258 Lincoln, Abraham 212 The Little Mermaid (Clements and Musker) 120 Lovell, Alan 34 Lucas, George 42–3, 45, 48, 50, 269 Luzón-Aguado, Virginia 6 n.10, 180 MacKinnon, Kenneth 16, 22 n.33 Macnab, Geoffrey 209, 213 Mad Men (Weiner) 234 Magnificent Obsession (Sirk) 157 Mailer, Norman 214 male melodrama films 152, 152 n.37, 161, 246, 283 Marion Ravenwood 59–60, 61 n.25, 64 Marley, Bob 244 Martin, Richard 140 masculinity 3 n.5, 6, 9, 21, 24–5, 42–3, 49–50, 116, 150, 165–6, 189, 266, 282 aging (see aging process, complications (Ford)) Chan’s persona 72 and contemporary Hollywood cinema 14–25 crisis of 5, 8, 18, 59, 112, 138, 159, 256, 259, 281, 283 development of studies on 11–14 father/fatherhood functions 266 Ford’s brand of 5–8, 143, 149 frontier 62 macho-style detachment 46, 80, 238 masculinist regeneration through violence 146 millennial 21 n.30 portrayal of 18, 162, 282 “post-feminist” 4, 20, 24, 28, 117, 126–7, 127 n.151, 159, 240 and sex appeal 48–50, 52–3 star’s 69 styles of 51–3, 58, 93, 117, 120, 168, 194, 196, 237–8, 241 white 3 n.5, 4, 57

Index Maslin, Janet 191 Mathison, Melissa 35, 66 McAdams, Rachel 272 McCorkle, Suzanne 184 McDonald, Paul 26, 27, 29, 30, 86 240, 284 McQueeney, Patricia 117, 265 melodramatic mode 152 Mike Hammer 111 Mirren, Helen 58 The Model Shop (Demy) 39 Monroe, Marilyn 126 More American Graffiti (Norton) 51 Morning Glory (Michell) 271–2 The Mosquito Coast (Weir) 30, 97, 116, 135, 150, 156, 238 American Dream 101 classical genre 105 individualism and leadership 102–3 superior civilisation, creating 102 US foreign policy, critique 104 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Capra) 159 Mulvey, Laura 15 My Darling Clementine (Ford) 96 My Life without Me (Coixet) 253 n.197 Nadel, Alan 120 Nathan, Ian 41, 200 Neale, Steve 15, 18, 56, 128, 130, 181–2, 232 Neeson, Liam 263 Negra, Diane 234, 242–3 neo-noir film 133, 138, 141, 146, 283 Neufeld, Mace 170 Nichols, Mike 70, 151 Nicholson, Jack 98–9 the noble experiment 276 Noyce, Philip 169, 172, 176, 187 Out of the Past (Tourneur) 144 Pakula, Alan J. 133, 135, 146, 151, 204–5 Pallotta, Nicole R. 246–7, 253 n.197 The Patriot (Emmerich) 173 Patriot Games (Noyce) action film/thriller formula 168, 182 audiences, view 172–3 CIA’s illegal operations 187 cliff-hanger climaxes 181

313

epilogue 188 fascistic and blatantly anti-Irish 175 IRA as enemy 175, 186 masculinity and fatherhood 189 New World Order 174, 176, 178 nuclear target 177 post-feminist era 183 pre-production 169–71 remuneration package 171 star’s function in 177 superficiality 176 terrorism, portrayal 178, 185 trailer 179 violence, use 185 Petersen, Wolfgang 209 Pfeiffer, Lee 45, 58, 60, 165, 137, 147, 168, 212 Pfeiffer, Michelle 259–60 Pfeil, Fred 167 Pitt, Brad 16, 32, 204–6 Polanski, Roman 106–13, 281 political films 43, 211, 214, 269 Pollack, Sydney 199–200, 202, 233, 244, 283 Pollard, Tom 185 Pond, Steve 229 Powrie, Phil 14 n.7, 25 presidential portrayals 22, 209–27 Presumed Innocent (Pakula) 3, 9, 155, 184 contemporary neo-noirs 138, 140–1 explicit sexuality 143 femme fatale (Carolyn Polhemus) 137–8, 142, 144–5, 145 n.26 force and vulnerability 139 justice system 141 mise-en-scène, use 136, 144 paranoid imagination 148 reviewers 134 Pretty Woman (Marshall) 129 The Purple Rose of Cairo (Allen) 203 Rafter, Nicole 87, 141 Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg) 32, 56, 62, 65, 73 n.60, 74, 77, 143, 168, 269 hero, dark side 63–4, 64 n.32 Indiana Jones (fictional character) (see Indiana Jones (fictional character)) success of 56, 66 Random Hearts (Pollack) 29, 282–3

314 characters 245, 250 crime 251 criticism 250 Ford as sergeant 249 lovers, separating 255–6 marriage and unfaithfulness 252–3 promotions 248–9 romantic melodrama 246–7 Ransom (Howard) 24, 24 n.39 Rapping, Elayne 159 Reagan, Ronald 19, 56, 90, 104, 213–14 Reagan heroes 19, 56 Redford, Robert 16 referendum website 217–18 Regarding Henry (Nichols) 9, 22, 282 brain-damaged patient 151 feminist movement 162 gender roles and relations 167 high-contrast cinematography 164 man-to-child films 159 melodramatic mode 152, 161–2 narrative structure 163 promotion 153 rugged individualism 156 sentimental finale 166 shooting of 154 story, background 153, 155 title, change in 157–8 Reitman, Ivan 229 Rocky Balboa 77, 268 Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre (McDonald) 230 n.162 romantic comedy movies 117, 121–2, 129, 131, 143, 228, 232, 244, 283 romantic melodramas 121, 244, 246–7, 256 Rosenblum, Nancy 246 Rowe, Kathleen 121 Rozen, Leah 212 Rubin, Martin 182 Ryan, David C. 84, 84 n.82 Sabrina (Pollack) 199, 233, 256 masculinity 202 role, modifications 202 romantic comedies 200–1, 203 Sabrina (Wilder) 199 Sartelle, Joseph 58 Scarlet Street (Lang) 139

Index Schatz, Thomas 76 n.65 Schickel, Richard 177 Schneider, Karen 20 n.25, 23 Schwarzenegger, Arnold 56–7, 60 Schwimmer, David 235, 237 science fiction film 1, 81–2, 283 Scott, Ridley 77–8, 81 The Searchers (Ford) 96 Second American Revolution 104 Selleck, Tom 55 Sellers, Robert 28, 37, 42, 48, 66, 73, 99, 106–7, 198 Serpico (Lumet) 87 Shakleton, Earnest 190 Shane (Stevens) 96 Sharp, Joanne P. 177 Shenkman, Richard 214 Shingler, Martin 2, 283 Simon, Carly 119 Simon, John 248, 252 Six Days, Seven Nights (Reitman) 9, 256, 282 adventure 240 aircraft and pilot 235 assessment 243 conversations 236, 238, 241 critical moment in 239–40 drama of miswanting 242 heroic ordinariness 238 publications, critics 233–4 retreatist epiphany 234, 241, 243 romantic comedy 228, 232 sexuality 229–30 styles of masculinity 237–8, 241 women’s retreatism 242 Slotkin, Richard 146 social media 8, 33 Spicer, Andrew 140, 144 Spielberg, Steven 49, 55, 73, 76, 269, 274 Stallone, Sylvester 56–8, 60 star-as-professional category 34–5, 81, 106 star persona 2–4, 2 n.3, 21, 28, 52, 59, 86, 89, 131, 133, 136–8, 149, 172, 196, 208, 218, 244, 270–1, 282 and actual person 105 Chan 72 developing 49, 70, 281 evolution of 267 on-screen 221, 238

Index power of 59, 115–16, 203 Star Studies 25–35, 284 Dyer’s contribution 2 representation of masculinity 7 star system 30, 32, 147, 149, 232 “bankability” 31, 283 differentiation 33–4 features of character 29–30 frontier myth 71, 280 multidimensionality 2, 279 package-deal system 31–2 stars during Depression years 26–7 transformation 284 vulnerability 281 Star Wars: Episode IV. A New Hope (Lucas) 44, 44 n.22, 46–7 Star Wars: Episode V. The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner) 32, 46 Star Wars: Episode VI. Return of the Jedi (Marquand) 46 Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens (Abrams) 1 stardom 28, 33, 105, 154, 204, 262, 277, 279, 284 Sternbergh, Adam 8 n.12 Stewart, James 5 structured polysemy 29, 80

315

Valentino, Rudolph 16 vanity project 99, 99 n.103 “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (Mulvey) 15, 15 n.11

Tasker, Yvonne 17, 20, 23 n.35, 56–7, 72, 130, 145, 181 Taves, Brian 61 n.24, 63, 104–5, 182 tent poles 171, 171 n.63, 204 Theroux, Paul 98 Thomas, Kristin Scott 244–5 Thompson, Kirsten Moana 136–7 Thompson, Robert 216 Titanic (Cameron) 211 Tokovsky, Jerry 39 Tracy, Spencer 5, 37 Travers, Peter 209, 245 True Grit (Hathaway) 62 True Lies (Cameron) 109 Turow, Scott 133

The Way We Were (Pollack) 17, 256 Wayne, John 62, 273 Weaver, Sigourney 117, 120, 122, 123 Weir, Peter 79, 94, 98–100 What Lies Beneath (Zemeckis) 30, 259–61 When Harry Met Sally (Reiner) 129 Whitehead, S. M. 13, 13 n.6 Wiegman, Robyn 11 n.1 Wilder, Billy 199 Williams, Linda 73, 152, 161, 182 Willie Scott 64 Wisniewski, Kevin A. 85 Witness (Weir) 79, 86, 89, 94, 100, 130, 134, 143, 208, 281 Amish lifestyle 87–8, 91 coitus interruptus 95 Daniel Hochleitner (fictional character) 92–3 Ford’s role in 86 hero’s masculinity 90 policing 88–90 The Woman in the Window (Lang) 116 Wonderful World (Cooke) 93 Wood, Robin 116 Woodward, Steven 112–13 Working Girl (Nichols) 143, 233, 280 cross-class relationship 129 female empowerment 131 femininity and desirability 125–7, 131 Ford as Jack Trainer 119–20, 123–4 infantilization 130 invisible class barrier 119 performers’ pay discrimination 117 production process 117–18 romantic comedy 121–2 sexual compatibility, lovers’ 128–9 women, depiction 121 Wyatt, Justin 133

Unforgiven (Eastwood) 18–19

Zemeckis, Robert 259, 264

316