“The Faces May Change, the Names, but They’re There, Now and Fifty Years from Now”: The Myth of the Cavalry in Post-9/11 US Armed Forces Recruitment Commercials

A third of a century has passed since John Wayne rode off into the sunset one last time, yet the Duke’s legacy is alive and well. Annually featured around the top of Harris Interactive’s “America’s Favorite Movie Star” rating and still the reigning number one among old timers, Wayne’s status as an American icon seems solidified (Harris Interactive Poll). His apparition still strides across TV screens in the heartland, yet it has also acquired a life of its own in popular culture, exceeding a mere embodiment of conservative sentiments. Mockingly sketched in Sherman Alexie’s Dear John Wayne as a crypto-feminist secretly romancing with a Native American extra while shooting The Searchers, reincarnated as a sadistic drill sergeant in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket or ironically evoked for his grit in Morning Joe during Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Democratic nomination campaign, the Western hypermale as epitomized by Wayne (and scores of his epigones) has become part and parcel of American popular culture, inspiring American copywriters to market all sorts of goods, from Marlboro cigarettes through Wrangler jeans. Although this mode of advertising began to wane toward the end of the past century—the crackdown on the tobacco industry purged the wilderness of the Marlboro Man, and the associative power of denim transcended the confines of the rodeo arena—images and slogans informed by the myths of the Frontier are still employed by major agents on the American market, including the US Armed Forces.