The American Anti-Hero

What historical factors influenced the rise of the American Anti-Hero in cinema and how does this hero contradict the Classic Hollywood Ideology.


What is an Anti-Hero? Well, the article "The Rise of the American Anti-Hero: The Character that Changed the Way We Watch Movies" states that, an Anti-Hero in today's films and books will perform acts generally deemed 'heroic', but will do so with methods, or intentions that may not be heroic" (1). WWII was a big influence that changed the role of the traditional hero, and between 1945 and 1980 was the rise of the American Anti-Hero. There are four main reasons that influenced the dramatic change of the hero to the American Anti-Hero. One of the reasons was because America was looking for new types of heros in the stories. The second reason was because American's wanted their heros to rebel against "the status quo". The third reason was that American's wanted a true representation within a hero. The article states that Americans wanted a hero that was, "faulty and vulnerable, like American's real life heros" (1). Lastly, Americans wanted their heros to have a true American spirit, wether it was good or bad or ugly. 


A reason why the American Anti-Hero took off was due to the cynicism during and following World War II. Americans started, ".. relating to the hip non-hero who was not involved with in world problems but devoting his time to overcoming his personal problems" (2). The films Duel in the Sun and The Best Years of Our Lives represented that life was not beautiful after the war and there wasn't always happy endings. Garfield was the true creator and promoter of the anti-hero. He made his characters visceral and palpable individuals. He didn't care if he lost his audience in a scene or not. He thought that being true to the character was most powerful. He made his characters much more relatable to the human race which is what Americans wanted in a hero. "The anti-hero was daring the audience to relate to doing wrong or being wrong even for the wrong reasons" (2). Being able to see how someone can do wrong reflects on our own failures. This then lets us learn a lesson. 


During the Cold War in the 1950's, the characters started to embrace the duality in the nature of man. This allows a person to be both good and evil. An example of this was the movie A Place in the Sun. In this film we see that the protagonist is never obviously seen for what they are and we the audience have plenty to think about and weigh in one's head after the film. 


The Anti-hero contradicts the Classic Hollywood Ideology because the anti-hero is more realistic and has flaws whereas the normal hero is pure perfection from what we see. But as time has moved on, films have developed the anti-hero making it more relatable to society. An anti-hero creates a sense of realism through their character. We see that the classic hero does good on purpose/consciously whereas the anti-hero makes good, but sometimes without the knowledge of it.