Lessons from the Man with No Name, for a secular society – forgive.
It is generally accepted Clint Eastwood’s character, The Man with No Name, that appeared in the 1960’s was the first anti-hero. This fact has been established for many years as was indicated recently in an article posted on Ultimateactionmovies.com, March 30, 2018, by Will Carter, with the subtitle, “The Birth of ‘The Man with No Name’ Action Movie Archetype’.
It is interesting to note that throughout the 20th century and into the next, spirituality has been in decline, not just in America, but all over the world, as noted by W. Sundberg in his article “Religious Trends in Twentieth-Century America” published in Word & World Volume XX, Number 1, Winter 2000.
A primary tenant of spirituality is forgiveness. An understanding we are all flawed. As fate would have it, just as this very important Christian belief was in decline, the Man with No Name was born and soon the character became a template for story lines of all types. By 2021 StudioBinder posted an article titled, “8 Character Archetypes – Examples in Literature & Movies”.
Before Eastwood’s character, when forgiveness was still an important belief in America, two-dimensional characters played by actors like Randolph Scott, were epitomized good with white hats and evil with black. As the Man with No Name began to spawn three dimensional characters across many story lines, the lines blurred, and heroes began to show personal flaws.
The concurrent decline in society’s belief in Christian values and the rise of the anti-hero has contributed to a culture increasingly bereft of its ability to forgive. The view of our fellow man has narrowed to seeing them as two-dimensional characters, strictly good or evil. In the same decades since the introduction of, The Man with No Name, that became a standard popular character archetype displaying a wide array of traits and faults, society lost the ability to see each other by the same standard.
Polarized by politics and cultural decline, no different than those families 160 years ago that sat across supper tables and argued about states’ rights, our society is fracturing. Eastwood’s character, while dark, was intended to show all men have feet of clay, but somehow that important message of the Man With No Name doesn’t seem to translate in a progressive society.
The Man with No Name is almost 60 years old, and while his violent character remains popular the lessons he teaches fall on deaf ears – “No man is all good and no man is completely evil”, American secularism, has spawned an increasingly narcissistic society, ready to find offense at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile the ability to forgive has given way to polarization between family and friends that we haven’t seen since the war between the states.
Fathers and mothers watched their grown children arguing 160 years ago, and subsequently many gathered their families and escaped across the Oregon Trail before the bloody Civil War they knew was coming, would break out and see brother shooting brother. The culture war is on my friends, but there is no Oregon Trail. The frontiers are gone. There is no escape, and we are all drug in, and dug in.
May God take mercy on our souls, there are yet lessons to be learned from the Man with No Name, even in a secular society – no one is perfect; forgive.