Jacks, Jacks Everywhere!
I briefly take a detour today from talking about vintage clothing, fashion etiquette. and modern doodads to speak of a male cultural phenomenan that has been heavy on my mind. (We’ll blabber away about clothing again later.)
It happened again last night.
I was watching a rerun of Eureka on the SciFi channel, and scriptwriters let me down once again.
Somewhere there is a natural law of writers, for some reason, that if you have a lead character that is male and finds themselves in an unusual or distrubing situation, his name has to be Jack. Or if he finds himself in a normal situation, but doesn’t like to play by the rules…he’s Jack too. And several minutes into this series, the writers again used the same device.
And the phenomena or deep gully of unimaginativeness doesn’t trace its roots to JFK being in the back of the collective mind. The Jack Law was written long before then. The earliest Jack we know of appears in the character of Ensign Jack in the 1912 flick “Saved from the Titanic”, and then Jack is eponymously portrayed by Jack Abbott in the 1927 film, Convoy.
The man who has played the most Jacks - Jack O’Lane, Jack Manning, Jack Martin, Jack McCabe and Jack Marley cannot claim the Tony Danza syndrome** (**see footnote) like Mr. Abbott…his name was Art! Art Acord, a contemporary of Mr Abbott, played the many Jacks throughout the 1920s. He also had a claim to fame as a steer roper in real life. And if you are a steer roper or have portrayed a character like “Two Guns O’Brien” such as Mr. Acord had, you definitely are destined to play a Jack.
Maybe I am being too harsh. Perhaps “Jack” signifies some sort of modern take on a classic archetype. It would just be too heavy handed to give characters such monikers as Beowulf, Cedalian or Antigone. Or maybe I am looking to far into it. “Jack” is an anti-hero. And the writer sits and thinks…hmmm…what is a name for an easy going guy that everybody can relate to? Or maybe they don’t think. It just pops into their head. Because I would imagine that they would socialize with other screenwriters and forget that half of their family, and just random folks on the street, are named Steve or Mike.
Nowadays, Jacks are few and far between outside of the entertainment and literary world. It just doesn’t make the list of most popular baby names or nicknames these days. ***I stand corrected, in the UK Jack is indeed still a popular name for babies again beginning in 1995. Jack didn’t make the chart 1994 and earlier. Could it be all those movies going across the pond? And look at Jack historically in the US. **** I, in fact, only know one Jack in my extended network of “friends of friends” and extended relatives of people who married into my family. In otherwords, if I called him, he would have an idea of who i was. But I will confirm the Steve and Mike thing. I also know a fair amount of Jeffs and a few Brians. But Brian will never creep in to be a name of a male action lead anytime soon. By the time Brian happens, kids of today will be writing and everyone’s name will be Brendan, Mason, Ty, Connor, and Aidan. However, if they studied such classics as Sky High Corral and Romancing the Stone, instead of such fare as Gone with the Wind, their alteregos would be named Jack too.
If that LP record they shot into space with “Sounds From Earth” is ever found by someone - if there are someones to find it - they will probably look back at our ancient culture and come at the conclusion that 70% of Earth Males regardless of creed or ethnicity were called “Jack”.
So to all the folks writing the Hollywood classics of tomorrow, there is still time. You can make a change and go against the tide. Surprise us! (Please.)
Footnotes:
(*** = The Tony Danza Syndrome. Either Mr. Danza can’t get into character if he plays a Joe or a Paul, the writers don’t think an audience will recognize him, or they are playing a joke on him. A minor case of this is known as the Jackie Chan Disease)
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