Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Heroes Anyone?
In the movie The General Johnnie Gray, a simple engineer, tries to win the heart of his girlfriend by enlisting in the army. Although he is refused, he eventually takes on a group of Northern soldiers who hijack his train. Not only does he rescue his beloved Anabelle (and General), but he also helps defeat a Northern army in battle. Yet, his methods are hardly standard derring-do. Is Johnnie just lucky or a true hero? Does this film endorse standard ideas of military heroism or make fun of them? Or does this movie redefine a hero? What does this movie tell us about heroism (or related concepts of machismo, chivalry, or militarism)?
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ReplyDeleteBuster Keaton’s comical presentation of the structure, behavior, and authority of both the Union and Confederate armies throughout "The General" serves as a critique of military heroism. Although Johnnie Gray’s misadventures comprise the majority of film’s humor, the military’s inability to organize itself effectively is a key running joke in the film. Near the beginning of “The General”, Johnnie attempts to enlist in the Confederate army by obviously snatching forms and crudely disguising his identity with a hat. Each time, Johnnie nearly gets away with his endeavors - until an officer happens to spot him. In this scene, the military is introduced as incapable of effectively running a simple task – enlistment – without the aid of coincidence. This trend of incompetency is compounded by the film’s characterizations of military figures themselves. Deep into his pursuit of his stolen train, “The General”, Johnnie finds himself stashed under the table of a Union base. The Union officers, however, fail to notice Johnnie even after kicking him and burning him with their cigarettes. Once again, the military force is shown to be completely unaware of their surrounding world, further emphasizing the idea that the military does not consist of heroes, but of confused fools. As “The General” approaches its end, the Confederate army’s confrontation of the Union attack ensures the viewer leaves the film doubtful of the glory often associated with the military. Not only is a Union officer’s order for a train to charge result in complete destruction and tragedy, a Confederate officer’s pompous way of waving his saber is mocked by Johnnie himself. Time and time again, “The General” shows all militaries to be defined by incompetency, reminding the audience to think critically about the institutions often conveyed as untouchable.
ReplyDeleteFrom the start of the film Johnnie is depicted as unlucky since he was declined from being enlisted. This rejection also led to Johnnie getting rejected by Annabelle. Each of these events were out of his control and in the control of another party (ie. The enlistment officer and Annabelle), in turn determining the next string of events. When Johnnie has his course of good luck (after the instance his train was stolen and throughout the end of the movie), he is only partially in control of each situation. In each situation Johnnie is depicted as being in the right place at the right time that in turn leads to a beneficial set of events. In terms of heroism, Johnnie is just a lucky bystander that gets credit. Even during Johnnie's most clever and effective plan (trying to burn down the bridge to prevent Northern trains from crossing the river), he fails to demonstrate bravery and courage. Johnnie also never has his life directly threatened except for when he mistakenly aims the cannon at himself. In terms of military heroism, Johnnie doesn’t fit any of the criteria. At the end of the film the enlistment officer changes his mind about Johnnie, enlists him as a lieutenant, and Johnnie "gets the girl". This depiction of Johnnie is a slight mockery of military ranking. It also shows that one part of chivalry is to have luck. Although in the end Johnnie is depicted as the hero, The General does not redefine what a hero is. Throughout the movie there is never a sense of fear or seriousness, instead the film is light in mood and comical. Generally heroism in movies has elements of life threatening situations, strong acts of bravery and courage, and struggle. None of which are present in the film, so Johnnie could never be seen as an actual hero in the first place, and The General isn't an attempt to redefine what a hero is. On a broader note, the overall string of events seem to have been controlled by fate rather than any individual intervention. This narrative vehicle demonstrates that the outcome of wars aren't necessarily determined by people and that fame or even love are strokes of luck in life.
ReplyDeleteAt its heart, Buster Keaton’s “The General” is a film about the underdog that becomes a hero, showing that a hero does not have to be confined to a certain archetype. Johnnie Gray, the main character, starts out in the film seeming to be “losing” at everything in life. Physically, Johnnie’s slender frame is the exact antithesis of the “ideal” macho man. Socially, Johnnie is not able to win the heart of his love interest Anabelle Lee because of his lack of a soldier status. Despite all of his faults, Johnnie actually becomes a great hero further down the plot. One of Johnnie’s key heroic qualities is his sense of duty. For example, upon discovering the North’s plans to advance on the South, Johnnie recognizes his obligation as a loyal member of the South to warn them of the upcoming attack. In this scene, Johnnie is speaking with all the conviction and seriousness of a man who understands his profound duty to his people and his struggle to deliver his warning later in the film further exemplifies a hero’s tenacity to his duty. Johnnie’s determination to undertake responsibility makes him at heart a great hero while his unconventional methods show that a hero does not necessarily have to do things the “hard and fast” way. Instead, Johnnie simply uses his wits and his expertise of his train in order to outsmart the North after they discover him as a spy. From collapsing a bridge to dragging a telephone pole onto the railroad, Johnnie time and time against expends his resources at hand in order to prevent the North from capturing him and possibly hinder him from his mission. From Johnnie’s interesting methods, the audience sees that a hero need not use guns and cannons to defeat the enemy, but simply a train and an steadfast sense of duty.
ReplyDeleteEven though Jonnie is not the typical hero type, he does fill the role of a hero in The General. The humor is that he falls into this role accidentally after failing to pursue heroism at the beginning. When he is turned down from the army, he is seen as a coward and a disgrace to both society and himself; however, what he doesn’t know is that he turned down since he was too valuable to be sacrificed. Basically, his everyday work was more important to the South than anything the average soldier could bring to the battlefield. This movie redefines heroism while still perpetuating the idea of toxic masculinity. In order to be a man, one must be a macho, strong, big guy. Society didn’t care about your brains unless they were very good in figuring out military strategies. However, at least at the beginning, the movie calls into question why one can only be a hero if they fight physically. Jonnie is seen as a valuable ‘hero’ to the south due to his job and brains, but society still didn’t see him as a real man. In the end, though, he still couldn’t get the girl or be a real man unless he was taking part in fighting and the army. The movie perpetuates the harmful idea that men can only be real men if they are strong and able to fight. This idea stems from the belief that men can’t show emotions or like ‘girly’ things. Society pushes these ideas onto us in media like this.
ReplyDeleteThis film is one of the most differently interpreted films of all time. Yes, it is one of the first modern examples of a slapstick comedy, but is there more? Does this film convey an instance of military heroism and/or is Johnnie Gray just lucky or is he a hero? My answer to this question is, yes. I do think that Johnnie Gray is a hero. My reasoning for this is fairly simple I assure you. I think that Johnnie Gray was put in a situation that required quick wits and immediate and action and I think that he came through. There is another part to my reasoning. Even though he is rescuing the damsel in distress Annabelle Lee, and that most definitions of a hero describe an admiration towards a certain savior because of heroic acts, I don’t think that she views him as that savior. Throughout the scenes where they are treading through very treacherous conditions, (going through windows, on trains, getting in the bag going on to the cargo train), she seems very at ease at with the job she is doing and somewhat displeased with the things that Johnnie is making them get into/making them do (because of the condition of the bag/where it is going/the dress that she is wearing). In the theoretical sense and if you look at it from the audience and the analyzers perspective, he is most definitely a hero. He could have just quit at any point and just sat on the couch at home and did nothing all day. But he wanted to be better than everyone else and to let out all of his courage and to save Annabelle. He has the blood of a warrior coursing through his veins.
ReplyDeleteIn Buster Keaton’s “The General” Johnny Gray is portrayed as the films protagonist, and ultimate hero of the story. Although he may not be considered a true “hero” because he was not enlisted in the army and many of his actions and choices all helped him by luck (as one could argue) he still was victorious in the end and saved the day. Even though there were many small miracles along the way that helped Johnny in his quest to save Annabelle, I think by definition he is still the hero of the story. I think this movie can easily relate to many movies in the modern era-some movies today have the smallest and/or weakest characters as the heroes. In the Incredibles 2, it is the youngest in the family (Jack Jack) who ends up as the hero of the film. I am not comparing Johnny Gray to a cartoon baby, but rather as a symbol of an unlikely hero. While some may say Johnny is not a hero because he does not fit the stereotype of one and it was all due to luck, he still saved Annabelle and defeated the enemy. Imagine if he was not in the picture-the Union soldiers would have succeffully taken Annabelle and would not have lost when their train fell of the bridge at the end. It is safe to say that without Johnny’s role in this film, things would have been significantly different and probably in a negative way. Therefore, in conclusion, Buster Keaton’s character Johnny Gray may not be the stereotypical hero in films from that era, but when looking at his role in the way events played out, he should still be considered the hero as he saved Annabelle and took down the northern forces.
ReplyDeleteJohnnie Gray is extremely lucky throughout The General, as seen through example scenes such as his train almost being hit by the canon he himself loaded or his sword falling into the back of a sniper, but this luck does not undermine his heroic intent. Gray’s journey, representing themes of courage, wit, and determination, serves to show military heroism in a new light; The General shows that anyone can become a hero as long as their actions coincide with the values of an ideal leader.
ReplyDeleteI suppose this more inclusive version of who can be identified as hero could be seen as redefining what heroism is relative to standard ideas based on military practices, but I think it’s more a showing of how noble intent and determination, values of military heroism, can eventually be reached by anyone with enough heart. In the beginning of the film, it’s very clear that Gray is only willing to enlist to capture the heart of Annabelle, but he is rejected and told he’s a better asset as an engineer. At this point, he is not seen as someone worthy of military respect. Later in the film, when his train is stolen and he decides to chase the northern spies, he begins his journey towards ideal heroism. He gets lucky many times during this journey, but the success of his actions isn’t what makes him a hero. The way he surpasses the obstacles placed by the northerners, sneaks Annabelle out of the guarded house, and devises a plan to warn the South of the northern invasion is heroic because his intent was always to either save Annabelle or help his side of the war. This shift from selfish to selfless allows him to prove himself to leaders of the southern military.
Essentially, Johnnie Gray’s development towards values of determination and selfless intent allow him to reach a military rank and earn a uniform, giving the audience the impression that the uniform symbolizes heroics and anyone can reach this valor with enough resolve.
Throughout the journey of Johnnie Gray, the realistic scenes always seem to end in an unrealistic manner. So despite Buster Keaton’s constant struggle to show Gray as a hero, he reduces the legitimacy and seriousness of the idea by using Gray as comedic relief. In the historically accurate civil war between the North and South, having a trained engineer would, realistically, be more crucial than another generic soldier. The movie could have easily portrayed his vocation in a positive aspect, yet it seems to prefer the concept that being a soldier is the only way to be seen as a hero. After Gray, alongside his dream girl who previously denied talking to him because he had not enlisted, returns, the narrow-minded “soldier=hero” concept becomes glaringly obvious as he re-enlists in the war as a soldier, contrasting the original enlistment scene when he said his job was an engineer and was denied. In two of the least rational conclusions I’ve seen, Gray both believes that he was worthless as an engineer, and that it was him, not luck, that discovered the plans of the secret flank and brought home Annabelle. Gray, despite being directly called a hero through his earned stature of Lieutenant, is represented by the film as nothing more than a complete idiot who gets lucky far too often. The gags are essential to the film and are what make it a comedy, but, if it lacked a single one, the Northern army would have definitively killed Gray. The main reason that soldiers were called heroes was for their bravery and dedication, and while Gray shows hints of the latter, he rarely shows legitimate bravery that isn’t simply being lucky enough to survive a horrible situation.
ReplyDeleteBuster Keaton’s “The General” rejects standard ideas of military heroism through the accidental actions of the unlikely protagonist Johnnie Gray that often lead to fortunate results as well as the atmosphere of incompetency that is associated with the armies of this film. Throughout the movie, Johnnie is consistently portrayed to be the antithesis of what a traditional military hero should be. Not only is he physically inept to be the heroic soldier that saves the day when the movie illustrates him to be below average height and build, his profession also limits him due to the fact that he is an engineer who operates on trains. This notion is further endorsed as his romantic interest, Anabelle, repudiates any affection she had for him until “he returns with a Southern uniform”. However, when the Northern army steals a Southern train that Anabelle was a passenger of, Johnnie surges to action and shows blind courage to attempt to save the day. After a series of fortuitous and timely events that includes the avoidance of close-death instances on wild train chases into (and out of) enemy territory and the sabotaging of enemy battle plans, Johnnie ultimately rescues Anabelle and secures a major victory for the Southern rebellion. Many occurrences of pure luck happen during Johnnie’s scheme to save Anabelle such as when he miraculously goes unnoticed during a meeting between Northern generals in which he hides with minimal cover under their dinner table or when he steals a Northern freight train in the heart of enemy territory. Furthermore, “The General” speaks to the incompetency of the militaries, which may have contributed to many of Johnnie’s successes. For example, when Johnnie hid under the table where the Northern generals were discussing battle plans, he went unnoticed even after he flinched from being burnt with a general’s cigar and from being accidentally kicked shortly thereafter, or when a Northern officer ordered a supply train to cross a burning bridge only to have it fold astoundingly in half. The Confederate army is also ridiculed when a Southern commander waves his sword wildly in the air only to have Johnnie do the same seconds later. The arguably most outlandish coincidence that occurs in the film happens when Johnnie fires a cannon blindly and cracks a nearby dam that washes the entire Northern army into retreat and inevitably secures victory for the Southern rebels. Obviously, the film portrays Johnnie to be an unsuspecting hero who ends up saving the day through immense luck and chance and the incompetency of his enemy that, all in all, effectively diverges from the standard concept of military heroism.
ReplyDeletetake the "as well as" and replace it with "and" in the first sentence
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ReplyDeleteMerriam Webster Defines a Hero as “A person admired for achievements and noble qualities /one who shows great courage.” While Johnnie Gray’s victory over the Northern army is largely built on happenstance, his courage and bravery in the face of overwhelming opposition cements him as a hero nonetheless. Although Jonnie is motivated by the theft of his train and the kidnapping of his girlfriend, (which may seem like selfish motivations at first) In the broader scope of the film these motivations are shown to be noble, as Jonnie throws himself into enemy territory to save “his two true loves.” A hero being motivated by true love is an extremely common trope and in western culture is shown to be one of the noblest motivations possible. Through Johnnie’s motivations The General attempts to somewhat subvert standard ideas of military heroism, possibly due to negative attitudes about the Confederacy in relatively socially progressive Hollywood. For instance, many of the gags are built off of the incompetency of various military officials, and most noticeably, Jonnie has a lack of an unfaltering loyalty to the militaristic cause (at first, Johnnie had no intention of joining the war.) The film certainly does have a deadpan, lampoonist attitude towards military heroism, but this is mostly for comedy and does not have a strong commentary on war and its victors. Ultimately though, the movie does not attempt to redefine what a hero is. Fundamentally, the journey of Johnnie Gray is no different from the hundreds of stories of brave knights venturing into dangerous territory in order to save a damsel in distress from some evil force.
Buster Keaton’s “The General” portrays the main character, Johnnie Gray, as an everyday man in over his head turned true hero through a combination of both luck and character development throughout the story. Through the beginning of the movie, the audience is able to see the selfish motives behind Keaton’s character and quickly realize that Johnnie is far from a traditional hero. It is apparent that he has no desire of going to war for a noble reason, instead using his enlistment to get a girl to like him. When he is denied the opportunity to enlist, we clearly see that the only thing weighing on his mind is that the girl and the community around him will cast him away in general. As the story progresses, the girl and his train are kidnapped by soldiers from the north and we begin to see Johnnie’s character develop into that of a hero as he chases after the intruders to save the day. Halfway through the film is the most notable act of heroism from Johnnie; however, as he is able to save the girl, but also decides that he can easily help the southern soldiers win a battle through the information he has gathered. He rushes back to town on the train, heroically informs the town of what he knows, and “leads” them into battle to fight. The moment at which the change in Johnnie’s character is truly personified, however, is when he gives up everything he has worked for in the movie as he takes off his jacket willingly in front of the commander of the army. At this moment, we realize that he has changed so drastically that he is able to give up everything that he worked towards throughout the movie and everything he wanted at the beginning of the story, which is an obviously heroic quality. While Johnnie is lucky throughout the journey, it is in the situations that he decides to be brave and face the north and oncoming threats instead of running that prove how heroic he truly is, not his good fortune in carrying out these brave acts. This movie doesn’t necessarily redefine a hero as much as it breaks the stereotypical hero archetype that is in the heads of audience members, showing that even someone as unintimidating in nature as Johnnie can still become a hero.
ReplyDeleteI believe that The General actually both redefines hero and makes fun of the military. Beginning with making fun of the military and the definition of a hero, we have Keaton being denied a spot in the military. It is not a lack of bravery or even a lack of competence, he is denied it due to the fact he is more useful elsewhere. This leads to him being looked as a coward, and even causes him to lose the girl he had fallen for. From then on, the movie attempts to redefine how being in the military equates to bravery. With unwavering courage, Keaton consistently takes on what should be insurmountable odds. He manages to foil an entire invasion while being alone and not even considered a hero by his own people. By the end, he is hailed as a hero, and is finally given his spot in the military. This helps to create a new meaning for being a hero, a meaning that is not rooted in your rank in military but instead rooted in the bravery you present in your actions. As for the second point about how Keaton pokes fun at the military. I believe that he does this to build credibility with his audience. He does very little to make fun of his own side of the war but consistently shows ineptitude of those on the other side. This can be seen in the way it took them so long to fix the track after Keaton damaged it when the solution was simple. It can also be seen in the way they chose to trudge over the burning bridge because, “it will hold,” and then are met by a complete collapse of the bridge during the attempt to cross it. Keaton also shows this ineptitude in the variety of mistakes he makes in order to build comedic effect. Below the surface, we are faced with the simple fact, despite his ineptitude he still managed to run circles around the opposition. All in all, Buster Keaton does a wonderful of job of both discrediting and humiliating the opposition in his piece, as well as redefining the militaristic view of heroism.
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