america adrift

The research group that I’m part of at Aalborg University – IrgIc (long story about the name) – just had a seminar on cultural traffic, were I discussed Clint Eastwood’s iconic presence in two different spheres: music and comic books. This is the paper I presented.

In recent years, Clint Eastwood has emerged as a darling not simply of the Hollywood industry – with no less than 10 Oscar nominations in 18 years, winning five including the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for which there is no nomination – but also as the darling of left-wing, bleeding heart members of the “pussy generation” as he refers to them in his 2008 Esquire interview (Fussman, 2008). It is this perception of Clint Eastwood as having changed from a gun-carrying, vigilante-supporting, hard-ass Republican to a cuddly humanist with sensitive insight into those living on the fringes of society, which this paper will focus on.

While there are many examples of people revising their perception of Eastwood, what I find particularly interesting here, are a number of media texts which explicitly refer to Clint Eastwood and his iconic status as an actor and celebrity: the virtual band Gorillaz with two songs, “Clint Eastwood” (2001) and “Dirty Harry” (2005) and Danish comic artist Thomas Thorhauge’s small comic book Clint Eastwood (2008). These three texts circulate and so transform Eastwood’s image, typically in ways that emphasize only certain aspects of Eastwood’s career and status.

A useful method for discussing this circulation of images is that of imagology – a relatively recent theory which draws together much earlier research into stereotypes, national and ethnic images. However, as imagologist Anthony Johnson argues, imagology is much more versatile by focusing on the broader iconosphere in question, and investigating the material images that are circulated. Johnson points to the concepts of resurfacings, accessibility, displacement, portability and loss as the significant aspects of a broader and more inclusive imagology. The most basic argument of imagology is that images matter and that we are not simply discussing visual images, but a broader conceptualization of images as falling into five semantic categories, following W.J.T. Mitchell in his Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (1986): graphic, optical, perceptual, mental and verbal. Beller goes on to argue that imagology is the elucidation of the textual codification of these images in texts.

Images may be distinguished as either auto-images, or self-images, and the hetero-images, our views on others. In both cases, we are dealing with what is referred to as an imaginated discourse – characteristics and attributes which are not statements of facts but of sentiment, and often deal with explanations of cultural difference and identity (Leersen 2007, 27-28). To clarify the division between what is actual and what is imaginated, imagology speaks of the spected (the described) and the spectant (the textual description). One needs not work hard to see that this is in fact the Saussurean sign of signified and signifier, and it is also obvious that semiotics is in many ways parallel to imagology, although imagology is usually more interested in the circulation of images and the following effects.

For this reason, Clint Eastwood is interesting because not only has his image circulated for several decades and holds a special status as all celebrities’ images do – he has also himself engaged in the circulation of images quite deliberately. Consider two of his latest movies; Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Flags of Our Fathers can almost be seen as a cinematic essay in imagology; the deconstruction of one of the most celebrated images in US history, questioning and criticizing not simply the construction of the image but also its entrance into and circulation in popular culture and national imagination (creating a cultural memory, even), especially at a time when US images of war hold very special significance, is a powerful and incisive statement.

All the more disappointing is Letters From Iwo Jima, which casts a rugged individualist – not unlike Eastwood’s own earlier roles – against the madness and bureaucracy of a doomed nation, the naive but foolish honor of the common Japanese soldier and the underlying sense that even though the Japanese soldiers were misguided, they were still overly cruel and merciless in their defense of their land. This film, like the first, is very much seen through American eyes, casting the conflict in the generic terms of US war movies with little sensitivity to Japanese culture and national identity.

In imagological terms, Flags of Our Fathers dissect the auto-image of American World War Two involvement and the resultant cultural memory, which is circulated first in visual media (the photo and the resultant war memorial) but then inevitably creeps into US and Western culture’s mental images of the conflict as heroic and simply of the image as authentic and real. Eastwood bravely tears this image – the spected – apart through his film – the spectant. However, Eastwood’s hetero-images of the Japanese are maybe more sympathetic than previous attempts, yet never fully engage with the complexity of the battle or the war as a whole.

For all that, Eastwood remains deeply aware of the power of images as well as his own status within the Hollywood industry, in particular his image as grim anti-hero in the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergei Leone. He clearly draws on this image, resurrecting it and displacing it not only in Unforgiven (for which he received his two first Oscars) but just as much in Gran Torino. Being image conscious for Eastwood has entailed more than standard typecasting and capitalizing on the symbolic capital of previous characters and roles. Eastwood has remained just as interested in undercutting and renegotiating his celebrity image.

From an imagological point of view, then, Eastwood has constantly problematized the association of his material image as constructed through films, interviews, articles, etc with his “true” self – what Chris Rojek refers to as the veridical self in his book Celebrity, following social psychologist George Herbert Mead. Yet, Eastwood is certainly no chameleon and does thrive on a consistent image, with an intellectual capacity to navigate the pitfalls of celebrity culture. Potentially, this is one reason for his broad appeal; he remains on the one hand authentic and recognizable, while on the other he is often reflexive and even ironic about his tough guy image.

Little wonder, then, that the generations growing up completely in a world of endlessly circulating images, are so attracted to Eastwood’s image – and more than simply the authentic Eastwood image (do we really believe that Eastwood stared down his political opponents during his job as lawyer in Carmel with the words “go ahead, make my day”?), they engage with the complexity of image and use it not simply to say something about Clint Eastwood (which of course they do) but they also say something more and different and in the process they alter his image. In this way, we are talking about the portability of Eastwood’s image – how can his image be made to speak in different contexts and what can his image say in these different contexts, all the while retaining parts of Eastwood’s imaginated status.

The first example is usefully Gorillaz; useful because they themselves are extremely aware of the circulation of images and employ this circulation to generate the image of the band. Gorillaz is referred to as a virtual band, because its main band members – 2D, Murdoc Niccals, Russel Hobbs and Noodle – are not real but cartoon characters. Instead, the band was created by Damon Albarn of Blur and Jamie Hewlett, the artist of comic book Tank Girl. This awareness of the significance and impact of images may have been the reason that they released “Clint Eastwood” as their first single in 2001.

Neither the music nor the lyrics seem particularly associated with Eastwood in any way. The music is a mix of hip hop, rock and dub resulting in a breezy, feel-good pop song, sung mainly by Del tha Funkee Homo Sapien, very far from the jazz and blues which we know are Eastwood’s favorite genres. The lyrics are filled with dichotomies and dreamy images that suit the music well but not Eastwood’s image. The chorus goes:

Oh oh oh oh oh

I ain’t happy,

I’m feeling glad

I got sunshine in a bag

I’m useless but

Not for long

The future is coming on (Gorillaz, “Clint Eastwood”)

While the verses are not very coherent, there does seem to be some taunting going on, with Del tha Funkee Homo Sapien rapping

All you different crews

Chicks and dudes

Who you think is really kickin’ tunes?

Picture you gettin’ down in a picture tube

Like you lit the fuse

You think it’s fictional

Mystical? Maybe

Spiritual

Hearable (Gorillaz, “Clint Eastwood”)

Originally, the creators of Gorillaz remained anonymous so the lines above seem to teasingly question the audience about who they are really listening to. Here we can see the awareness with which Gorillaz has been created and how Albarn and Hewlett themselves attempt to move away from their own celebrity status, in addition to engaging with the image conscious world in which they exist. In itself, this challenges our celebrity driven culture and denies what Chris Rojek refers to as mediagenic generation of desire (Rojek 2001, 187) and serves as an ironic statement about celebrity.

The resurfacing of Eastwood’s image which Gorillaz employ may seem an odd choice, considering that in 2001, it had been a while since Eastwood had starred in a prominent movie. In reverse order, he acted and directed Space Cowboys, True Crime, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Absolute Power and The Bridges of Madison County in 1995, which was at the time his most well-received film of his career. Being dangerously close to a has-been in 2001, we might best understand the choice of title as a matter of dissonance: the associations of Clint Eastwood in 2001 would mainly have been of his classical Westerns and his career as Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry series. This gritty image corresponds poorly with any part of the Gorillaz song, and this then seems to have been the point. Looking more broadly at the Gorillaz phenomenon, blending many different elements, styles and musicians to a particular style, we may even regard the titling of the song as part of its aesthetic expression – a deliberate undercutting not just of Eastwood’s particular image, but by contrasting the images the music conjures with Eastwood’s stereotypical celebrity image, the distortion all images perform is highlighted. Celebrity images – whether Eastwood’s or Albarn and Hewlett’s – are problematized and subtly criticized.

It is clearly a very discreet way of engaging with images and their effects, yet it seems to me that Gorillaz are extremely self-reflexive of their own production, use and recycling of images. Indeed, in late 2004, Gorillaz inserted the slogan “Reject False Icons” into the music video for “Rock It” and later launched the website REJECT FALSE ICONS, which is in essence a culture jamming project and so certainly gives credence to the idea that Albarn and Hewlett dislike celebrity culture.

Furthermore, on their second album the Gorillaz return to the image of Eastwood once again, yet to very different effect and with a very different Eastwood image circulating in the iconosphere. Eastwood has by point directed Mystic River, which catapulted him back into the limelight of directors to watch and parallel to Gorillaz’s release of the first single of their new album “Dirty Harry”, Eastwood released Million Dollar Baby in theaters, which went on to win Best Director and Best Picture. Gorillaz, however, explicitly invoked the old image of Eastwood, clearly associated with violence, vigilantism and even overtones of misanthropy, yet their ire seemed less directed at Eastwood and more at a different gung-ho Republican.

The song opens with the chorus:

I need a gun to keep myself from harm

The poor people are burning in the sun

But they ain’t got a chance

They ain’t got a chance

I need a gun

Cos all I do is dance

Cos all I do is dance (Gorillaz, “Dirty Harry”)

Immediately, we are in the iconosphere of violence and guns, certainly reminiscent of Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character. The poor people in the sun make less sense taken in this context, yet at the end of the song we are given more clues about the iconosphere in which the song moves

The cost of life,

it seems to get cheaper

out in the desert

with my street sweeper

The war is over

So said the speaker with the flight suit on

It seems evident that these lines are referring explicitly to George W. Bush’s fateful statement “Mission Accomplished” on May 1^st, 2003 which took place on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. In itself a very discussed event, we can argue that this is another image which has reached a high degree of circulation and as such holds a prominent place in our iconosphere, whether we view it critically or celebratory. It is precisely the titling of the song “Dirty Harry” which engages critically with the mediated event and does so through the use of Clint Eastwood and the Dirty Harry character.

Whether Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech is an auto-image or hetero-image depends on ideology and political persuasion. Seen through the lyrics of Gorillaz’ song, it is evidently presented as a hetero-image in two ways. First, the poetic voice of the song seems to be an American soldier dissatisfied and frustrated with his presence in Iraq, evident in lines such as these:

I got a 90 days visit

And I’m filled with guilt

From things that I’ve seen

Your water’s from a bottle

mine’s from a canteen

At night I hear the shots

Ring so I’m a light sleeper

The cost of life,

it seems to get cheaper

out in the desert

with my street sweeper

The difference of life as a soldier in Iraq and life back in the US is emphasized with a sense of resentment and bitterness, along with a lack of respect for life. The poetic voice seems to cynically not believe the message that the war is over and still relies on his (or her) gun to be safe. This hetero-image is generated through the distance between reality and politics: in fact, the situation in Iraq did not change after Bush’s speech and the attempt at rhetorically creating a difference is the reason why the event is a hetero-image for the poetic voice – things are not perceived as such for him (or her).

The other way of seeing this event as portrayed as a hetero-image, is through the title of the song. While Dirty Harry could refer to the poetic voice, it seems more likely that the title – and association – is directed at the speaker with the flight suit on: George W. Bush. This interpretation, however, is interesting in itself and depends a lot on the image construction of the Dirty Harry character. On the one hand, in the original film Dirty Harry is a rebellious figure who is certainly violence prone. However, he is not only portrayed sympathetically by the film, he is also seen as being more concerned about justice and morality than his incompetent superiors. Harry Callahan might be dirty because he transgresses the law, but he never transgresses moral law – is not on the take (another meaning of the phrase ‘dirty cop’) and always choses what is shown to be the moral high ground. At the time of its release, the film for obvious reasons sparked debates over violence, vigilantism, police brutality and perpetrator rights. Yet at the same time, it was one of the most popular films in 1971 and was also well-received by critics, even if Roger Ebert denounced the film’s “fascist moral position”

In the years since the first film, both with the four sequels but also the image of Dirty Harry circulating freely in popular culture, the imaginated discourse surrounding the Dirty Harry image has become more focused on excessive violence and extreme force. Certainly there is very little in the Dirty Harry image which connotes justice or fairness; instead, it has been subsumed into the typical anti-regulation image so typical of American action films. It seems ironic, then, that the very image of government regulation and control – the President – is associated with such an image. While this is the likely aim of titling the song “Dirty Harry” it also points to the well-established Republican image of being anti-government, even when in office. Indeed, considering Ronald Regan and his approval of the first Rambo film First Blood, it becomes easier to see why drawing a connection between Dirty Harry and George W. Bush makes sense.

Not that Bush has anything to do with the titling, of course, yet we can see how Gorillaz choose exactly this image to describe their hetero-image of the war, which Britain was and is involved in as part of the “coalition of the willing”. The maverick image of Dirty Harry as a loose cannon always choosing violence over words is used critically to destabilize the image of President Bush. The recognition value of Dirty Harry is highlighted, rather than the actual original character in the first film. At the same time, fortuitously if accidentally, Eastwood himself gravitated towards a more humanist view of the world, where vigilantism is viewed with tragedy rather then the glorification of the Dirty Harry films. Taken together, it provides a peculiar depth to the title of the song. We can see how the circulation of images against each other help generate a particular kind of subversion, adding even further to the possible identifications of the Dirty Harry image. It also reveals how no image can escape portability, resignification and recontextualization.

In many ways, this is also the case with Thomas Thorhauge’s small comic book Clint Eastwood based on an interview Eastwood gave Esquire in 2008. Thorhauge reworks parts of this interview into his comic – obviously translating it into Danish but also changing the context by having Eastwood speak directly to the reader rather than a journalist. First off, the interview itself is slightly different in that there are no questions listed and Eastwood’s replies come across more like statements and beliefs, without any form of context to frame them. The only frame is a photo of Eastwood – at the time 78 years old – facing the viewer and pointing his finger in a mock gun, obviously mimicking the original Dirty Harry poster and publicity shots.

This image makes sense in the way that most of what Eastwood says in the interview really is a criticism of current (American) society, rhetorically pointing the gun at the generations that came after him, particularly the current generation which he labels “the pussy-generation”. Again we see how the tough guy image of Dirty Harry not only clings to Clint Eastwood but is also used to connote dissatisfaction and social frustration. Also, Dirty Harry is conflated into our hetero-image of Clint Eastwood; he is supposedly “like” Dirty Harry. Equally tough on crime, upset with the breakdown of social norms and unaccepting of bureaucracy. This is certainly the image which Esquire gives us, but Thorhauge’s is slightly different.

Significantly, Thorhauge is Danish and not American (as we can assume the Esquire journalist is) and so we are not simply dealing with a hetero-image of Clint Eastwood (which we all have, only Eastwood and very close friends and relatives could have what would be an approximate auto-image), but also a hetero-image of USA. The Esquire journalist Cal Fussman employs the conflation of Dirty Harry’s and Eastwood’s images to generate a particular auto-image of USA; it is difficult not to read the entire interview as a critique of US society year 2008 and an attempt at portraying a sense of the “real” USA as being fed up with the state of the country.

Thorhauge’s comic book instead circulates what is a typical hetero-image of the US: not only through his portrayal of Clint Eastwood but also the setting and images which he uses to portray the USA. This is evidently quite deliberate, as can be seen from Thorhauge’s website, where he contextualizes the comic as a “dose of Americana” (To read the first half of the comic book, go here). It is interesting, then, to see what constitutes Americana in Thorhauge’s view. Evidently, Clint Eastwood must be considered to be somehow archetypically American, since he is chosen as the vehicle for this Americana. The previous comic book in this series centered on Jørgen Leth, yet did not discuss Danishness or Leth’s relationship with Denmark, so there is no reason that this comic book deals with images of USA, yet it clearly does. This is a way for us to see what hetero-image Thorhauge generates.

Let it be said right off the bat, that I do not believe that Thorhauge has any kind of ulterior motive in presenting Eastwood in this manner, nor do I believe that his comic book represents any kind of attack on the US. Rather, most of what Thorhauge associates with Americana seems to be a rather nostalgic view of the US, in this way not unlike the views expressed by Eastwood himself and so there is definitely a likelihood that Thorhauge attempts to match the views expressed by Eastwood, rather than express his own. Yet, the images chosen are obviously not innocent and revolve around events, objects and places which are considered inherently American, just as we get to see a specific representation of Eastwood.

Starting by judging the book by its cover, we see a drawn close-up of Eastwood’s face, although very stylized. The drawing emphasizes Eastwood’s wrinkles along with his characteristic squint and hard-set mouth, certainly echoing some of the expressions he is well-known for, particular from Leone’s films. In later drawings, we see Eastwood dressed in white button-down shirt with black pants – a rather relaxed and informal attire, giving off a distinct “every-man” feel to this version of Eastwood. There is definitely no connotation of Hollywood celebrity in this attire and helps to align Eastwood with the reader, along with a particular working-man connotation. Eastwood is relaxed, at ease, just like us and the common American. In this way, we are invited to read Eastwood not as participating in Hollywood glamor but in the more rugged individualist image which his characters usually represent.

The first image inside the comic book is also very telling: Eastwood in a car, surrounded by other cars. Cars are an obvious association with the American society, also the more frustrating experiences of gridlock and traffic jams, and seeing Eastwood in this environment furthers the alignment of Eastwood equals America. Furthermore, Eastwood is of course driving the car himself, which is significant not just because him having a chauffeur would reduce his alignment with the every-man American, but also because the car represents something very basic for the American culture – freedom and control. Eastwood forges his own path ahead, moves wherever he wants to, he is in control of his environment and where he is going. He is a maverick, a loner, an individual. Just as in High Plains Drifter, the Eastwood of this comic book answers to no one and goes where he chooses.

Of course, the place he chooses is a diner – not a franchise, not a restaurant, but John’s Coffee Shop, complete with an “Open” sign in the door and “Today’s Special” advertised in the window. As Eastwood enters the diner, we see that this is “Home of Hamburgers,” that most America cuisine. He has breakfast – toast, eggs, sausages and coffee – presumably served “All Day”, and we see the distinctive Heinz ketchup bottle along with salt and pepper. The booth set-up along the windows and the counter with bar stools; everything signifies American-ness and oozes Americana, down-to-earth, working-class, friendly and welcoming.

Yet this is all movie Americana. The ketchup bottle gives it away. No American diner would dare to offer their customers only one condiment. That is only one choice, which is no choice at all. American diners overflow with every imaginable condiment, with no consideration for whether it is appropriate for breakfast, lunch or dinner. If someone wants Tabasco sauce on their eggs, they can have Tabasco sauce on their eggs. The rustic simplicity overplays its role in signifying Americana and ends up revealing a hetero-image of America; this is our perception of USA, not USA as it really is (whatever that might be

After Eastwood wakes up, he walks out of the diner and disappears into the multitude of cars, leaving us only with his sage comments about the current generation and the state of US society. He does not walk up the mountain but the effect is much the same. His words are framed only by the focus on Americana, essentially a nostalgic view of USA, which is clearly also very much the case of Eastwood’s arguments in the interview, remediated here in comic book form. The images brought to the surface here thus support the nostalgic mode which Eastwood himself employs, framing Eastwood simultaneously as the every-man American, yet also drawing on the mythology which surrounds him: the tough guy, the straight-talker and the loner who goes against the power of the bureaucratic system. Casting Eastwood as all-American and placing him in an all-American environment, grants his words a special status, one which is not present in the Esquire article. This is, in the words of Warren Ellis, a slab of culture and it is one which communicates Americana very clearly, presenting a very specific image of the US.

So, to conclude, Eastwood is used in all three cases to provide a very specific and concrete image of the USA, whether it serves subversive or affirmative ends. For Gorillaz, Eastwood’s image becomes a way of articulating a criticism of specific events and cultural states – celebrity culture and war – and so the otherwise conservative image of Eastwood is used for subversive ends. For Thorhauge, Eastwood is framed very similar to his film roles and the entire comic book functions much more like a homage or an instance of cultural participation, where Thorhauge attempts to provide a view of a cultural moment, a distinct corner of the US society. In any case, imagology serves us well by providing a tool-box for talking about the uses of images, their cultural history and origin, as well as what happens when images resurface and interact, whether they are critically investigated or reproduced. It is worthwhile considering the image-construction generated by specific and particular uses of a culture’s iconosphere and the material manifestations which take place within cultural transfers and cultural traffic.