Elite rejection of Wayne’s films reinforced conservative embattlement and resolve.

Evidence

Many of Wayne’s films were politically charged, none more so, unsurprisingly, than the two films he directed. The Alamo (1960) was inspired by Wayne’s Cold War activism in the late 1940s; Davy Crockett’s sacrifice for the cause of liberty offered a heroic model for Cold War America. But The Green Berets (1968)—the only major motion picture in support of the Vietnam War filmed during the war years—was Wayne’s most direct contribution to Cold War militarism. A commercial success, The Green Berets offered fans a make-believe substitute for the actual war, one that perpetuated the myth of American greatness. To conservatives, the fact that both films were “viciously panned and vilified, dismissed as rightest message films and artistic duds,” was another point in their favor, even more confirmation that cultural elites disdained heroic masculinity. Like the heroes Wayne played onscreen, conservatives’ sense of embattlement only heightened their resolve. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 128

Categorization

• XREF: The embattlement-tightens-resolve dynamic echoes the reader’s interest in how perceived elite disdain consolidates in-group identity.