The Last Real Man in America: From Natty Bumppo to Batman

Abstract

Abstract In the summer of 1989, one of the glossiest men’s magazines appeared with a picture of Sean Connery on the cover. Dressed in a creamy ivory tuxedo, standing with arms folded against a beige background, visible only to the waist, he embodied elegance, sensuality, and virility. The caption proclaimed him “The Last Real Man in America.” Why should the Last Real Man in America be a British actor? The taunting ambiguity implies that no American can claim true manliness anymore; to see it at all is to see it vanishing. Only a working-class Scotsman who secured his international image as James Bond, an Englishman equally skilled in civility and violence, can temporarily import virility to American shores. Yet the pleasurable visual framing of his face as white on white on beige seems curiously reassuring. Connery represents the last, best hope, the master of everything not quite seen, dark, and below the belt. He can protect a civilized, yet effete Us from a barbaric though enviably violent Them. The July cover of Gentleman’s Quarterly slipped from my mind until late August, when I was standing in a checkout line at a Florida supermarket and noticed the September cover of Celebrity Plus, a decidedly downscale fan magazine. This cover featured Harrison Ford in a woodsy setting, with a yellow blurb announcing, “Rare Interview! The ‘Last’ Real Man.”‘ Faced with such a flagrant intertextual rip-off, I began wondering: in what other country could variations on that come-on sell magazines? To ask the question exposes the strange mixture of bravado, anxiety, and nostalgia in the motif. Male readers in more traditionally patriarchal cultures might well feel insulted. Why did I feel a bit wistful, even teased? The motif has a beleaguered quality to it, as if urban, yuppie, corporate, feminist America had become intrinsically emasculating.