Sean Thornton and Leonidas

In Iron John, Robert Bly mentions how John Wayne as a guiding image would fail a man after he reached a certain age. I think I know what he means. I can imagine certain Wayne characters being a little too narrow to live in. Even if I thought he handled every situation well, would my own situations really run parallel to his? But if I look at one of my favorite John Wayne movies, The Quiet Man, I wonder if his character Sean Thornton would not be livable in a wider variety of situations. Further, I wonder if his character doesn't provide a good foil for the current model of masculinity found in the King Leonidas of the 300 movie.

I watched again the portion of the movie where Leonidas rejects the deformed Ephialtes because he cannot really be part of the Spartan phalanx. I was reminded of how brittle strategies won't work over the long haul. In the Sparta of the 300, if you did not serve the war machine, you did not live. And this was supposed to be based upon a calculating realism. Only as with many such calculations, it failed to take the messiness of reality into account. You kill children and you may well end up with more enemies than you bargained for. Or, as Kenneth Bailey pointed out, Christian missionaries were able to point out to Chinese Communists how in the Parable of the Shepherd leaving the ninety-nine sheep to find the one, while this appears to make the individual more important than the group, each person in the group feels more secure since he knows he won't be left behind. Spartan realism proved unrealistic.

Sean Thornton in The Quiet Man was a fighter by profession. Perhaps that makes him more Spartan than Athenian, whose warriors were sculptors and farmers by profession. Thornton's fighting was sport, however. And when sport led to death, he was done with it. He is a modern man. He is able to fight well, but desires peace. But when he walks into a community where the rules are different, he has the strength to stand alone.

The "strong silent type" as he was known in the past is interesting here. A Spartan is part of a unit. Sean Thornton is not. It is interesting that the visceral appeal of many martial cultures often mixes with this organic sense of unity. I wonder whether there isn't some kind of gendered proportionality to it. When you strip back enough of the softer comforts of life in one area, you have to compensate in another. This Dionysian unity among the Spartans brings a maternal sustenance to people undergoing hardships. Perhaps it is underlying unity that makes this attractive. The "strong silent type" of the old American ethos misses out on that degree of unity. He has the moral strength to do so. His comforts have to be comforts other than that kind of organic unity.

I can't see Sean Thornton mistreating Ephialtes. Come to think of it, the The Quiet Man's town drunk, Michaleen Flynn, looks just a little like Ephialtes (The two actors do actually bear some resemblance out of makeup. I use IMDB to get all the names and dialog right. It has pictures of the actors.), and he and Sean got on quite well! I'm not sure exactly what Sean would have done, but I would trust it.

I think there is a lot that is admirable in the world portrayed in 300. There is even more that is admirable in Steven Pressfield's take on the story in Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae. Where 300 is not admirable, it is still striking, and that is the challenge. We have to carefully unwind what is useful from what is not. But the vision of a movie like 300 is visceral in its appeal. To be part of a phalanx appeals on a level that runs far beneath rationality. It appeals to something old in us. If we are wise, we will not attempt to completely stifle such attraction. Better to feed it healthfully, as was done in Sean Thornton's Innisfree. Tolerance and individualism don't mean your world can't pull together when it is appropriate.

Gorgo was pretty hot. Kobra loves her line "Come back with your shield or on it." He has pointed out how supportive it is to a man who wants to feel free to pursue his values unto death. I enjoy the argument between Sean Thornton and Mary Kate Danaher on similar subjects. She wants him to go out and fight, which he will do. But he won't have himself questioned on what he will or won't do. She is not to imagine that she is the engine driving him forward. This is not clear to her earlier in the movie. "What manner of man is it that I have married?" she asks. "A better one, I think, than you know, Mary Kate," she is told by an insightful villager. Sean settles it so that she finally trusts him. And she tells him she'll have his supper ready after the fight. That's her Gorgo line. Though I don't think Gorgo would have been half so happy to serve one of the Persians after the fight.

It's hard to imagine Leonidas and Sean Thornton in the same movie. I wonder how it would go.