Based on The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century by R.W.B. Lewis
by Kevin Walker
Chabot College
1990
Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman had noble intentions in wanting to break with European tradition in their literature. Their Adam, like the original, would view life innocently, unencumbered by history. He would be compassionate, unitary, mystical, proud and optimistic. Even Jesus declined in status until Emerson again deified him. The new Adam's Garden of Eden was the wilderness of America, an asset Europe couldn't match. It was fraught with experiences and unlimited possibilities that Adam would seek, alone. The transcendentalists transformed the forest from a place of danger and the unexpected into a place of intimate knowledge, a friendly place. They warned against the evils of the city and of industrialism, but they never anticipated that one day, the very airwaves would be exploited to affect millions of people simultaneously, and they never expected their Adam to be a pitchman or a politician. When Whitman wrote the following poem:
By the turn of the 20th century, the American Adam had already been adapted for a mass audience in Cooper's novels and Bird's Nick of the Woods. Despite those stories' stylized romance and melodrama (borrowed, ironically, from England), they had a certain power that readers could identify with. That power was Adamic: the solitary individual losing his innocence and/or facing a hostile environment, usually the woods, came to be purely American. It combined with the stories and myths created while Americans had overrun the continent in the last century, to create a popular genre of fiction.
The rural genre gained popularity when Willa Cather used a variation of the theme, as did Kate Douglas Wiggins. As the cities grew, the Adamic theme was adapted into detective thrillers. But what really began the mass marketing of the American Adam were the Tom Swift novels by Edward L. Stratemeyer, which begun in 1910. These put the Adam in a new frontier (outer space), made more believable by the continuing technological innovation in America. Stratemeyer didn't actually write each of the hundreds of books in the series, but employed a stable of writers.
Fhen radio came along, around the turn of the century, it posed no real threat to literary tradition, and "men of letters" continued to argue with eachother and sway social consciousness. The Adamic theme continued to pervade serious literature, and continues to do so. The heroes of Fitzgerald, Steinbeck and Hemingway all reflect Adamic qualities. (Hemingway, in fact, worked on The Garden of Eden from 1946 to his death in 1961. Because of its controversial theme, it wasn't published until 1986. The novel's Adam and Eve, David and Catherine Bourne, both become involved with a younger woman while on vacation in Europe. The author described the theme as "the happiness of the Garden that a man must lose.")
But literary review soon came to reside only in the universities. Industrial development attracted millions of unskilled, uneducated immigrants that didn't aspire to higher education, and radio was much more appealing to them. While some of the classic literary works were adapted for radio, most simply didn't work well on the medium, an didn't interest audiences.
From the beginning, radio stations were owned by profit-oriented corporations, (like Sears Roebuck, with its WLS in Chicago -- "World's Largest Store".) Like Stratemeyer, radio programmers saw the profit potential of the Adamic hero, and aptly reproduced him for the medium, in larger-than-life form: the Superhero. Tom Mix, Captain Midnight, the Green Hornet, Buck Rogers, Dick Tracy, and especially the Lone Ranger, all posessed Adamic qualities. Like Whitman's Noiseless Patient Spider, all stood "surrounded, detatched, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them"2, and their energy came from within themselves. This, combined with the American Dream that flourished with industrial development, made the superheroes truly American. All of them also were employed by the companies that owned their stations or programs, and they eagerly touted the company's products. As for the plots of their programs, Horace Bushnell's view about the drama of life -- that it "involves a struggle with evil, a fall and a rescue" -- proved to be a perfect formula for radio drama.
The movies took over the Adamic role from radio, leaving behind only music and news. In the movies, Adam was even more tangible to audiences, and even larger than life. Many radio heroes ably made the jump onto the screen. The movies also proved better for adaptations of novels. Many of the original Adamists -- Hawthorne, Melville, even Whitman -- had their works adapted for the screen, although none lived to see the movie versions. Film versions of Cooper's novels reflected his sentimentality and romanticism, and were generally more popular: the films could be digested without having read the books. There emerged a decided division in the film industry, one that H.L. Mencken foresaw:
In the sixties, Robert Redford and Paul Newman emerged as Adamic Everymen, and a continuance of Westerns and war movies deified Kirk Douglas, Clint Eastwood and, once again, John Wayne. In the seventies, counterculture Adams played by Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and Peter Fonda took on established instituitons in ways that Thoreau just might have condoned. Eighties film Adams reflected the Cold-Warring and capitalism of the government, and were played by Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise and Charlie Sheen. While each of these examples varies in his portrayal and dosage of Adamism, each stands firmly on the foundation laid by Adam's shapers a century ago.
Television brought Adam right into America's homes. In addition to presenting the movie heroes in a more intimate setting, TV created its own Adams, always conforming to strict network standards. While they may possess only a few of the qualities presented by Thoreau and Melville, the TV Adams are carefully crafted to reflect certain values that network executives feel role models should project. The Lone Ranger is a classic example. More recently, the FBI agent played by Kyle McLachlin on Twin Peaks is a perfect Adam. The segmentation that Mencken warned of is even more pronounced on TV, and the "civilized minority" is still very much a minority. (They are still served: an adaptation of Ibsen's Enemy of the People happens to be on tonight on public TV.)
One interesting arena of TV Adamism is in cartoons. Children are taught by the blond-haired, muscle-bound He-Man, for example, "that America must be defended from a world filled with violent and irrational enemies. Then there are the stereotypes, the enemies with foreign accents and non-Caucasian features, the greedy warmongers who, without provocation, attack the compassionate and moral American good guys."4 Anyone non-white in America has generally received the same media treatment at one time or another, from Cooper's unrealistic Indians to the "blaxploitation" films of the seventies, to the profusion of Hispanic-Americans drug barons in eighties films and television.
Several of the themes formulated by the original Adamists are present in the media. For example, the struggle between the scientific and religious Adamists persists on TV Of course, science has come a long way since Holmes voiced his support for it. And countless media Adams have embraced modern science as it continually evolves.
Conversely, few media Adams have included religious elements in their characters, but the religious lobby, increasingly alienated and consequently more militant, succeeded in installing a few of their own Adams on TV. Most notable is Michael Landon as an angel in the show Highway to Heaven. He combined classic Adamic characteristcs -- isolation in a generally hostile environment, compassion, humility, optomism, inflexibility, and a genuine love of America -- with faith in God. Like Jonathan Edwards, he saw all men as generally good, but seemed to derive pleasure in watching (and helping) innocents fall, then be reborn.
Edwards' views were also demonstrated in two recent incidents involving self-styled Adams: Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. In defense of the sins they committed, they presented justification that echoed Edwards, who said that "although [a wife] commits adultery... with the slaves and scoundrels sometimes... she did not do this so often as she did the duties of wife", hence she was inherently good, and only lapsed into the realm of "flesh" temporarily.5
The argument in Holmes' Elsie Venner also rages on today, ignited by the real-life death penalty issue. Like that of Elsie Venner, the source of Robert Alton Harris' murderous actions is in dispute, and TV, instead of a novel, is the arena of debate. Even the religious community is split: on one side are charges of sin and calls for death, and on the other, echoes of Holmes' Dr. Kittredge, who said to "treat bad men exactly as if they are insane. They are in-sane, out of health morally."6
The early calls for a new language to go with the New World have been answered by the media. From the early days of the country, the phrase "New World" connoted rebirth, freshness, newness. The media spawned advertising, which gave the word "new" a whole new meaning, yet still touches deep into the American psyche, and Americans are still enthralled with newness. Similarly, "improved" was heralded by the auto and consumer products industries in the first few decades of this century, and has come to be equated with progress. As for the new language, thanks to the media, many items have come to be known by their given monikers: Coke, Kleenex, Trojans, etc. But what language are the media Adams speaking? Many times, it is patriotic ("Truth, Justice and the American Way"), monetary ("Greed, for lack of a better word, is good"), or militaristic ("Go ahead--make my day"). Alas, most of the media Adams are molded in the prevailing political attitudes of the day.
This brings up another type of Adam -- the politician. Ever since a jowled, five-o'clock-shadowed Richard Nixon lost a televised debate and subsequent election to a young, handsome, TV-wise John F. Kennedy, politicians have molded themselves into embodiments of Adamic ideals in order to win the votes of the TV audience. And the grand master of self-styled Adamism was President Ronald Reagan. Most TV viewers being high- school-educated, blue collar, semi-religious pragmatists, they readily accepted as president an actor whose various roles were cowboy, "Gipper", "Ronbo", a Teflon-coated toughie, and a happy-go-lucky, jelly-bean-eating good guy. Like the Adamists, he often saw the wilderness as a place of evil ("80 percent of the nation's air pollution is caused by trees"), and he provided an "Evil Empire" with a twisted ideology for Americans to loathe. He even evoked God when necessary, while building up an un-Godly arsenal.
The point is that Adamism, skillfully portayed, appeals to Americans, because it reaches out to the Adam in all of us. One traditional Adamic trait that TV politicians have not adopted is the Party of Hope's rejection of "organic powers" (family, society, church). In this area, Puritan tradition remains, mostly for the prevention of civil disobedience. The church and state, although legally separated, have a symbiotic relationship: each preaches submission to the other.
One trait distinctly absent in many media Adams is innocence. In the case of the superheroes, there is usually some event in their past that is responsible for the loss of innocence; by the time they get to the screen, they have already been reborn. Others have a mysterious past or none at all. Humphrey Bogart's characters in Casablanca, The African Queen and The Maltese Falcon all have a single event in their pasts that brought them to maturity, and all three are consummate Adams -- detatched, proud, inflexible yet vulnerable and romantic.
Some Adams lose their innocence on-screen: Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy, Tom Cruise in Top Gun. And rites of passage are fairly common: James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, Charlie Sheen in Platoon. One common trait among most Adams is that once they leave home, they rarely if ever go back again, instead constantly seeking out new experiences. Like Cooper's Adam, they are not necessarily good or bad, just detatched and somewhat generalized.
One reason for the disdain for innocence in the modern Adam is related to R.W.B. Lewis' hypothesis that hope has been replaced by hopelessness. Lewis writes of Adam in the era of containment, and says that like containment, modern literature expresses that exposure to experience can be fatal. Containment and the Nuclear Age have been responsible for America's own loss of innocence. Movies before and after 1945 sharply illustrate this: the gay, patriotic comedies and musicals of the 20's and 30's were replaced with political thrillers, black comedies and science fiction films depicting creative endings for the earth. The recent environmental hysteria has compounded the hopelessness. As hopelessness increases, many more subversive groups are emerging that embrace the environmental and civil disobedient philosophies of Thoreau, Emerson and Whitman.
Edward Tyrell Channing said in 1819 that because they were so innocent and optomistic, the new Americans lacked "romantic associations", that is, a "tragic sensibility" , a sense of moral darkness. When viewing a dungeon, for example, they would fail to see a spiritual imprisonment, a "terrible power, dark purposes, and inextricable toils of the contriver."7
Strong support can be found for this statement, and the media's Adamism is notorious for this offense. TV, the movies, and politicians all are guilty. Television is always incredibly rosy, especially in prime-time, lowest-common-denominator, "for-the-masses" sitcoms. TV news suffers from the same fate; even weather forecasts tend to be hopelessly optomistic, all because good news sells. Movies up to about 1970 were more happy than dark, and any TV politician who knows better doesn't expose the seamy underside of things, they leave it to the press, who then gets the bad rap from the public.
The reason for all this smiling is twofold. First, Americans generally don't like to see the dark side; in their entertainment, their news and politicians, they often seek to escape, and that means refuge from the hardships of daily life that the politicians cause but don't speak of. Second, America is still relatively young. But its innocent optimism is fading fast. It already has a colorful, eventful history, and despite media suppression, Americans have learned many dark lessons already. And while there is lately good news overseas, domestically, things are getting worse. For this reason, politicians in particular, are more likely to divert public attention elsewhere, and the public is more likely to see through them.
The American Adam is still thriving in American culture. In fact, the image has become so popular it is now exported to other countries. His settings are inexaustable -- we have seen him in the woods, on the praries, in the cities, on the oceans, under the oceans, in space. Each of these settings is constantly being altered by him, thereby creating new places for Adam to explore. We have seen him go from being alone and innocent, to being alone in a hostile or evil environment, to being in search of his own identity. Many recent adventures of Adam have converned this last phase. Hawthorne had an idea that beneath the soul's surface is a dark place, but deeper yet is a place of "perfect beauty", and only the lost are likely to find it on their inward journey; and finding it could damage the soul itself. This follows the theme of the fortunate fall, which in turn follows the broad theme that life itself is a struggle with evil, a fall and a rise. That theme, about the human condidtion, has been the plot of countless films and TV programs.
Adam is an entity unto himself; he is often isolated from society's evils; he is always seeking new experiences, and always a step ahead of the rest. Since coming to the electronic media, he is patriotic, handsome, and usually white. He also seems to be getting younger: contrast Bogart's Sam Spade with Peter Fonda in Easy Rider with Charlie Sheen in Platoon. The media fervently uphold D.H. Lawrence's view of America: "She starts old, old wrinkled and writhing in an old skin. And there is a gradual sloughing off of the old skin, towards a new youth. It is the myth of America."8
But these are only the most visible Adams; there are now Adams for everyone, courtesy of shrewd target marketing. The evolution of Adam in literature is certainly not dead, but many writers have found that screenplays and teleplays often reach many more people. And most of the film and TV audience likes simple, happy plots. The sponsors like plots that make the audience and the government happy, plots that increase profits. As the hopelessness in America grows, so will the "chilling skepticism" of it that Lewis describes; and so will the diversions created by the media. Adam will always be around, even if he is kept alive by corporate dollars and greedy politicians.
1. Whitman, Walt. "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer". The Heath Introduction to Poetry, 3rd ed., pp. 267-268. Lexington, Mass: D.C. Heath & Co., 1988.
2. Whitman, Walt. "A Noiseless Patient Spider". The Heath Introduction to Poetry, 3rd ed., pp. 275-276. Lexington, Mass: D.C. Heath & Co., 1988.
3. DeFleur, M.L. and Dennis, E.E. Understanding Mass Communication, 3rd ed., p. 219. Boston: Houghton Miflin Co., 1988.
4. O'Connor, John J. "Cartoons Teach Children, But is the Lesson Good?" New York Times, Feb. 20, 1990, p. B1.
5. Lewis, R.W.B. The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century, p. 65. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955.
6. Ibid., pp. 36-37.
7. Ibid., p. 83.
8. Ibid., p. 101