Clint Eastwood Broke John Wayne's Biggest Western Rule
John Wayne refused to shoot anyone in the back in his Western films, but Clint Eastwood's morally ambiguous gunslingers made it a habit.
As the prominent faces of the Western genre and idealist representations of traditional leading men, it's easy to compare John Wayne and Clint Eastwood to each other. Playing heroic archetypes of cowboys, law enforcement officers, and combat soldiers, Wayne and Eastwood defined a vision of American masculinity for multiple generations. Their artistic sensibilities put them in conversation with each other. Still, the two movie stars differed in more ways than one, especially concerning their self-consciousness evoking a pristine image as heroes. Wayne portrayed dignified Western sheriffs with a proud sense of nobility, while Eastwood's postmodern take on the outlaw presented an uglier and nefarious underbelly of the Old West. The divide between the two stars is exemplified by Wayne's refusal to shoot someone behind the back, but Eastwood is always quick with the trigger, even if his enemy combatant is caught off guard.
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