Rambo

The film character John Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone, became an icon in the United States during the 1980s. A former Green Beret, Rambo's manly assertiveness represented the conservatism and aggressive global interventionism of the Reagan era, as well as a widespread rejection of the liberal policies of the 1960s and 1970s.

Rambo first appeared in 1972 as the main character in First Blood, a novel by the Canadian-American writer David Morrell. The film version of the novel, directed by Ted Kotcheff, was released in 1982 and was followed by two sequels: Rambo: First Blood II (1985), directed by George Pan Cosmatos; and Rambo III (1988), directed by Peter MacDonald. Rambo successfully fights bland politicians and smug bureaucrats in the United States (First Blood) and the proxy governments of the Soviet Union in Southeast Asia (Rambo: First Blood II) and Afghanistan (Rambo III.) Critics praised the first film, and, despite the critical rejection of the sequels, the public embraced Rambo. The character embodied a masculine, patriotic, and national toughness well suited to the conservative political and cultural climate of the period. Rambo and Stallone, who also co-wrote the screenplays, became symbols of a conservative, nationalistic America.

The John Rambo character draws on several archetypes associated in American popular culture with masculine and national strength. His combined white European (German) and Native American ancestry gives him superior physical endurance and helps him survive in hostile environments. He also plays the role of rescuer common in captivity narratives (much like James Fenimore Cooper's character “Hawkeye” Natty Bumppo in his Leatherstocking Tales). These traits make Rambo a modern hero of the mythic American frontier. The Rambo films present a white, muscular male American hero who patronizes and protects nonwhites abroad, strengthening the myth of benevolent imperialism that had come to define U.S. foreign policy during the twentieth century. Rambo's paramilitary prowess and the success of his missions mirrored President Ronald Reagan's promises to strengthen the U.S. military and restore the international respect that the United States had lost due to the Vietnam War and the embarrassing Middle East foreign policy crises of the 1970s (all of which Reagan blamed on liberals).

In the three films, as well as in the novel, Rambo reflects Reagan's defense of manly individual initiative against big government, as well as his emphasis on militarism and warlike masculinity. Rambo resents Americans who refuse to accord the same honor to Vietnam War veterans that was given to veterans of the nation's prior wars. In First Blood, a wailing Rambo complains that “somebody”—by which he means the civilian bureaucrats that had conducted the war in Vietnam— “wouldn't let us win.” Supported emotionally by Colonel Tautman, a fatherly military figure modeled on John Wayne's character in the film The Green Berets (1968), Rambo believes that the pusillanimous but pervasive political establishment should be replaced by a more aggressive one. Reagan's rhetoric of conventional gender hierarchy, military strength, and conservative triumph over liberalism were embodied in Rambo's transformation from enraged outcast in First Blood into a brawny warrior in its sequels.

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