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WILLIAM S. HART
The first American hero
". . . THERE was William S. Hart with both guns blazing and his long, horse face and his long, hard lip, and the great country rode away behind him as wide as the world." So the first great Man of the West appeared to a small boy named James Agee, opening for him and his generation a vision of spaciousness and freedom that had once been an integral part of the American dream, but which was now, in a rapidly urbanizing nation, disappearing.
As the land was changing, so were the people, and if the West seemed like a lost Eden, Hart seemed to be the last Adam. Neither God nor man dictated to him. He appeared to have arrived on the side of goodness through reason and free choice. Characteristically, he appeared out of nowhere, giving no hint about either background or motivation, suggesting only that in his past lay an unnamed evil which he had to expiate.
The fact that he portrayed a good guy was more important to the moralistic Hart than it was to his audience. His rectitude provided an acceptable sanction for his real business, which was to "defend the purity of his own image — in fact his honor." It was this defense of the self, in a world which increasingly forces the individual to compromise with his idealized self-image, that was the root of Hart's popularity, and, for that matter, the popularity of all his successors in the role of the great American archetype.
In addition, Hart demonstrated ways and means by which the individual could defend his self-image against intrusion. They were manly ways, having nothing to do with keeping your nose clean and waiting for the boss to notice you. "The essence of the hero," Parker Tyler notes, "may be defined as a super sort of professionalism. All men desiring greatness
Face of a Hero : the difference between
pleasure and disgust was no
more than the twitch of a tiny muscle.
Hart established the convention that the Western hero loved his horse more than his heroine. He was capable of sensuality, but not of real love.
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