From being bullied and an alcoholic father to being a hero for the army: Chuck Norris's checkered life beyond myth
Cherokee father and alcoholic, complicated childhood ... The actor is revered by the American military and by a multitude of fans on the internet who generate the so-called 'Chuck Norris facts'
- His personality is far from the harshness with which he acts in the movies: he does not work with foul scripts although he supports Trump in his ideas about weapons
- How did a third-rate action star come to acquire such mythological status?
Chuck Norris is famous among people who have not seen any of his movies. Even among people who weren't even born in 2001, when "Walker, Texas Ranger" went off the air. The actor and martial arts teacher retired in 2012 but has transcended the cinema (or, in his case, the video store) to establish himself as a postmodern icon of manhood on the internet.
Since 2005, the 'Chuck Norris facts' ('Chuck Norris facts') work almost like a dialect that anyone can understand even if they do not know the actor: "When the bogeyman comes home, look under the bed in case there is Chuck Norris "," Under Chuck Norris's beard there is no chin, there is a third fist "," Chuck Norris has two speeds: walking and killing "," Death once had a close experience to Chuck Norris ", "Chuck Norris doesn't wear a watch, he decides what time it is." How did a third-rate action star come to acquire such mythological status? Where does the joke end and the tribute begin? And what does he have to say about all this?
A father who melted money into alcohol
"Nothing has been easy for me, not even being born", assured the actor in his autobiography (although, according to the "facts" Norris was not born but fought his way in the womb). Many years before becoming the most exacerbated personification of masculinity, Norris grew up without the definitive masculine referent because when he was little his father disappeared for months to melt the family money into alcohol.
"I had no self-esteem because I longed for my father's attention."
Norris's origins could not be more Yankees: his father was a Cherokee soldier (his alcoholism worsened after returning traumatized from World War II) and his mother an Irish immigrant. As a child, Chuck was bullied at school and, while working to support his mother and siblings, he dreamed of getting strong to face those who insulted him.
"I didn't have any self-esteem," he recalls, "because I longed for my father's attention and affection. And I was always afraid to say the wrong thing so I chose not to talk too much." One night when Chuck was 16 years old, he stood up to his father for the first and last time: he threatened to beat him if he did not leave them alone once and for all, whereupon the father left and Chuck did not return. watch him until he had to arrange his funeral in 1972.
Your own training method
In 1958, just after finishing high school, Chuck married his girlfriend and enlisted in the army. During his stay in Korea, he decided to use his free time to learn martial arts instead of spending the afternoons drinking and playing cards with the other soldiers. "My psychological insecurities began to calm down, I became more communicative and assertive, and I also discovered that working towards a goal is more satisfying than achieving it," he explains.
At that time he learned to break bricks by hand (he broke it several times trying) and three years later he returned to the United States with a black belt in Tang Soo Do and a brown belt in judo to work as an instructor. One of his students, Steve McQueen, encouraged him to take up movies because Chuck Norris was one of the few Americans who could practice martial arts without the need for stuntmen. While he was still training (Norris has a black belt in seven different disciplines, including Taekwondo, Karate or Jiu-Jitsu) he developed his own martial art, Chun Kuk Do, which also teaches values such as "stay focused on your goals with a positive attitude that help your family, your country and yourself "
Chuck Norris played the villain who faced Bruce Lee in 'The Fury of the Dragon' (1972) in a now emblematic fight in the Colosseum in Rome. Up to 30 production companies rejected the script he had co-written with a friend, 'The Brave Dressed in Black' (1978), so Norris decided to produce it on his own and rented the cinemas with his own money to screen it: it cost a million dollars and raised 18. When Steve McQueen saw it, he recommended that it include "more hosts and less dialogue." The peak of Norris would come in the 80s, when Reagan's America glorified the rude, lonely heroes, sparing in words and capable of avenging the dignity of the nation by crushing hordes of foreigners (Arab terrorists, Asian gangsters, Latino drug traffickers).
The posters, the antecedent of the 'Chuck Norris facts'
That movie seemed to suggest that if the United States had released a handful of Chucks in Vietnam the outcome of that war would have been very different. 'Missing in action', 'Invasion USA' (in which the enemies were both Soviet military and Latin communist guerrillas), 'Code of silence' or 'Delta Force' considered that testosterone was a cinematographic subgenre, that explosions they were just another character (often with more personality than humans) and that the subtext was for ladybugs.
His ideology was as subtle as the bullets Norris handed out: the foreign as a hostile threat (the scenarios were always exotic, from the jungle to a desert or an Asian restaurant), individualism as the best option to protect the community, and bazooka as only solution for any conflict. The Chuck Norris cinema was a kind of parade celebrating America's victory in the Cold War.
"When someone tries to kill me, I get very nervous" read the poster of 'Blow for blow'. "He is more than a man. He is the only machine capable of destroying them," said the 'Code of Silence'. "An invisible army invades North America. Nobody thought it could happen here, America was not prepared ... but he was," promised the one from 'Invasion USA'. (The detail that the Spanish promotional campaign used "here" to refer to the United States gives a good example of how that country established its cultural monopoly throughout the world during the 1980s).
Those slogans were a clear antecedent to the "Chuck Norris facts", except that they were not phrased with any irony. "It is no accident that Norris rose to fame in the 1990s. He was the humble alternative amid the explosion of the sly triumphalism of Reaganist action heroes: constitutionally positive, relentlessly confident. His characters were free from all moral ambiguity or internal conflict." , analyzed the critic Sean Macaulay. The subgenre had such a life of its own and such international popularity that Canon, the producer of all that B-series action, would go to film festivals with just the posters and movie synopses. If the European distributors liked them, then they shot the movies.
On one occasion, a woman approached Chuck Norris in a restaurant and informed him that he had saved their marriage many times: "Every time we argue my husband goes to his studio and plays one of your movies, his favorite is 'Delta Force', that's how he channels his aggressiveness. " Norris replied "I'm glad to be of assistance".
His move to the small screen
By the time Chuck Norris retired from television with 'Walker, Texas Ranger' it was an old glory. And there is no greater proof of this than 'Top Dog: Sergeant Dog', a family comedy in which Norris played a policeman whose partner was a dog: that film subgenre is a mass grave from which no action star recovers. . He also used to appear on telecoms advertising home fitness equipment.
In 'Walker, Texas Ranger' Norris did the same old thing (characters that he describes as "guys who don't look for trouble, but finish them") only in a rural setting and with an explicit moral lesson in each episode. Norris defends that violence must always be in defense, not in attack, and for this he is inspired by American founding myths like John Wayne. The actor acknowledges that the cowboys he saw in the movies as a child played the role of the father he never had.
The first two seasons of the series had a low-key audience, but the third was ranked among the top ten most-watched shows in America even though it aired in a traditionally cursed slot (on Saturday nights). The series I was competing against fell apart, so the secret to the success of 'Walker, Texas Ranger' was, literally, outlasting its rivals. A perfect metaphor for Chuck Norris philosophy. It was broadcast in Spain by Telecinco with such good results that the 'Saturday of action' space almost always programmed Norris films. In 1999 VÃa Digital promoted its special boxing broadcasts with the slogan "Five hours of kicks, punches and punches ... without Chuck Norris appearing."
Masculinity and Americanism, combo
Both masculinity and Americanism are concepts on the one hand immovable and on the other in need of constant reaffirmation. And since the 1940s, they feed back each other. Chuck Norris is a perfect ambassador for both. A guy who in the 80s marketed a line of stretch jeans for martial arts (could there be anything more American than that?).
A cowboy who instead of whips and horses uses machine guns and motorcycles. But the values are the same as always: he is a hyperbolic male, halfway between honor and self-parody, and not in vain the type of cinema that Chuck Norris made was known in Spain as "Americanadas". But he takes himself very seriously, has no sense of irony and does not seem interested in satire. So when he became an internet idol, he reacted with gallant sympathy at first but then ended up filing lawsuits.
In 2005, computational biology student Ian Spector (then 17 years old) designed a web page where any user could post a "fact" related to Chuck Norris' superhuman abilities. The rest of the users voted for their favorites and the best valued ones appeared at the top of the list. The phenomenon spread with such fervor that everyone wanted to know Norris's opinion on it: he took it as a compliment and confessed that his favorite was "They tried to include the face of Chuck Norris in Mount Rushmore, but there is no granite as hard as his beard. " But he also clarified that his prowess was nothing compared to that of God and Jesus Christ. "Chuck Norris once went to Mars, that's why there are no signs of life there", "Chuck Norris sleeps with the light on because the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris", "Chuck Norris can hear sign language", "Chuck Norris counted to infinity. Twice "," Chuck Norris is the reason why Wally is hiding "," The only reason the color pink exists is because Chuck Norris is color blind. " Even local adaptations proliferated, such as the Spanish meme "Chuck Norris downloads music at RamoncÃn's house."
But two years later Spector published a book with the 400 best facts and Norris sued the publisher because he believed that not only was he infringing the trademark of his name, profiting at his expense and invading his privacy, but also linked the actor with activities racist, lewd and illegal. "Chuck Norris traveled to the Virgin Islands. Now they are called simply 'The Islands'", "Chuck Norris does not flirt. He just says 'now'" or "Chuck Norris tears cure cancer. The trouble is that he never cries" The actor was not so amused, who pointed out in his lawsuit that readers could mistakenly take the "facts" as authentic. Months later, however, Norris withdrew the lawsuit, realizing that it was a humorous tribute and that Spector was nothing more than a kid and an admirer (Norris came to meet with him in person to thank him for his initiative). had no ill intention.
Because what Chuck Norris does have is a deep sense of decency.
It is curious that, far from feeding his vanity by exploiting this popular resurrection, he has barely amortized his new public image: since 2005 he has only appeared in one movie. ('The Expendables 2' (2012) included a nod to the "facts" when Stallone told him "I heard that you were once bitten by a King Cobra" and Norris replied "that's right, but after five days of agonizing pain ... the cobra died "). The phenomenon of "facts" was so famous that the producers of 'The Expendables 2' agreed to reduce the violence and language of the film to be suitable for minors, since Norris never participates in films with obscene vocabulary.
He has also written a book ("Black Belt in Patriotism") and starred in his own mobile video game. But beyond these almost anecdotal projects, Norris has dedicated himself to enjoying a peaceful life with his second wife (the model Gena O'Kelley, with whom he has been married since 1998) and visiting their 13 children, born from his two marriages. and from various sporadic relationships. He only appears in public to visit American troops, for whom Norris is a literal hero: his face decorates the jeeps of soldiers and his "facts" flood the walls of the latrines of American bases.
Chuck Norris is today an idol for internet folklore. In the 2012 Armenian elections, several citizens wrote their names on the ballot. When he visited Israel, the media headlined "peace seems imminent." In 2017, Fiat signed him for the launch campaign of its new car, which, being small and less powerful, needed "a figure to toughen it up and connect with younger generations," according to the company announced. Norris was 77 years old. In the run-up to Euro 2012, Marca newspaper described Swedish midfielder Pontus Wenbloom (who José Mourinho said could injure four players at once ") as" tougher than Chuck Norris, he doesn't take hostages. " readers understood the reference.
That's the complexity of Chuck Norris's public image. His admirers idolize him with irony, sarcastically and complicity, but also with affection. They satirize the masculinity he personifies, but at the same time treasure it (not without a certain nostalgia), celebrate it and revel in its excesses: those who laugh at Norris are also admirers of manhood. Chuck Norris is therefore the closest the heterosexual male audience has ever come to enjoying a Camp product: straight men consume Chuck Norris with an attitude similar to that gay men consume drag queens, which even in his most disastrous performances are poetic and fascinating as if they played a melody that only some are capable of hearing.
Norris's conservative political activism (he supported Trump, defends the right to own guns, and opposed gay marriage in the United States) does not seem to harm his almost unintentional charisma, in part because Norris' figure exists in a paradox in which he he jellys him as the toughest guy on the planet and at the same time he is considered a harmless man. When he warned that re-electing Obama would plunge the nation into 1000 years of darkness, it was not a metaphor, because Norris defends the theory of creationism.
From time to time the false news of his death appears on the internet, the last time a couple of months ago, when he turned 80 and a rumor emerged that he had died from Coronavirus. But immediately the denials came out, clarifying that even if Norris were dead, he would recover without problems in a few hours. Also, everyone knows that the Coronavirus should be confined for 14 days so as not to be exposed to Chuck Norris.
