Outlaw Hero Essay

Week 1: Study Questions

1. Briefly (in several sentences or bullet points) define, compare and contrast the outlaw hero and the official hero as Ray defines them.

• Outlaw Hero – “are the explorers, adventurers, loners, and gunfighters,”

• They represented the “imagination of Americans who valued freedom from entanglements, and self-determination”

• Official Hero – “are typically portrayed as lawyers, teachers, farmers, politicians...”

• They stood for the “American trust in collective action, and the fair legal process that transcended private feelings of what is considered right and wrong.”

2. What kinds of ideas or beliefs make up the dominant American mythology according to Ray? What are the function of the outlaw hero and the official hero in this dominant mythology?

• The function of the outlaw hero in this dominant mythology is to serve as the opposition of natural man versus civilized man, or in other words to have the outlaw hero pitted against the official hero somehow. Some the ideas or beliefs that constitute said American mythology were aging, society, women, politics and law.

3. Using these two articles (Ray and Cohen) as guides, discuss the character of Sgt Al Powell. Is he an outlaw hero? An official hero? Or some combination of both. To answer this question, use the character details the film provides through dialogue, clothing, mannerisms, gestures, and actions as evidence.

• According to Ray, Sgt. Powell is indeed at least an official hero. He is a police officer, a respected public official devoted to protect the people of Los Angeles. He wears his uniform and is armed with his gun, which demands respect. Yet, according to Cohen’s description of traditionally manly virtues (that seem to insect with R...

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...g from a chain, which the hostages see later to their dismay.

vi. John is forced to run barefoot over shards of glass to escape the terrorists after they shoot glass windows in one of the later fight scenes. At the end he is dragging his feet which a large blood trail is seen following him. And after that we see him removing shards of glass out of his feet, which were large to say the least.

vii. There were a couple of large explosions, which were quite powerful and intense.

• Language:

There were countless uses of the word fuck and motherfucker. Also, there were instances of moderate to mild language such as “dickhead”, “jerking me off”, and “pricks”. Finally, some of the language used is sexual/biological such as "go fuck yourself", "motherfucker", and “butt-fucked.” (I apologize for typing the language used here, but I felt it helped to answer the question.)