Angles and Archetypes: From Burt to Brando to Rourke to Jensen Ackles to Martha Graham to Hieroglyphs to Paul Le Mat

“Cock your hat – angles are attitudes.” — Frank Sinatra

When Burt Reynolds died I wrote this whole thing about how he “worked his angles.” Like Tyra Banks tells you to do. Like all the great personae of yore knew how to do.

I’m obsessed with actors – men especially – who work their angles in this way. Burt. Marlon Brando. The Wild One is a TREATISE on how to work your angles.

John Wayne at times works his angles, hands on hips, indomitable, head lowered then rising, head crooked back to look over his shoulder … all connoting power, alertness, he understood what his body meant, and how he used it consciously. Mickey Rourke, at his best, was so angle-y he was almost twisted up into a pretzel.

Even with the angles, though, he has an almost liquid-y quality, smooth, nothing tense – his angles are fluid … one of the reasons he became such an important star when he first arrived. Nobody else moved like that. He called up so many references to so many other actors, connecting him to a powerful past, while also suggesting a promising future. James Dean was all angles, his body was both 100% stressed-out and 100% relaxed, at the same time. Not an easy feat to pull off unless you MEAN that shit. Jensen Ackles completely understands how to use angles in his physical work on Supernatural. Every moment has that little something … extra. He understands the continuum of icons he – and the character he plays – is in. He utilizes that knowledge in the shapes his body makes.

I have a whole theory about actors who “work their angles” in this way, and do so without seeming like they’re overtly preening or posing. Their angles are FULL, not empty. This has to do with understanding archetypes. Not every actor does. It’s not strictly realistic what these actors are doing, it’s … extra, it’s … epic to some degree. They’re expressing the reality of the character’s moment to moment life, but they are also looping in their work to something larger, a tradition, a knowledge, a continuum. Consciously or unconsciously? Well, in acting that question hardly matters. What matters is that it happens.

Here’s another theory: because they are all beautiful – and knew it on some level – they understand what their beauty means and what it can convey. They are conscious and unconscious simultaneously. They are humble and arrogant, simultaneously. But most of all: they are self-aware. They know what they look like and they move their bodies through space with purpose, with awareness of their effect on us.

This has nothing to do with beautiful faces shot lovingly in closeup. This has to do with the body, and the boldness of these actors’ understanding of SHAPES.

And by shapes I mean ANGLES.

And by angles I mean ARCHETYPES.

Martha Graham understood this! In her innovative choreography, she removed the fluid circles of ballet and introduced sharp angles. I can’t remember who said this, but someone back in the day watched Graham dance and observed, “She looks like she’s about to give birth to a cube.”

He wasn’t wrong.

It is not a coincidence that Graham’s angle-filled choreography was all about ARCHETYPES. (Bette Davis studied with Graham. No surprise: now there’s a woman who knew how to “work her angles”.)

It’s also not a surprise that Madonna studied with Graham. Madonna uses angles in her work constantly … what’s Voguing but working your angles?

Voguing came out of the Harlem ballroom scene in New York, flourishing years before Madonna came along and popularized it. Voguing exaggerates: the angles shift so quickly they turn fluid. What was set in stone becomes up for grabs. It’s fascinating to consider this connection with Graham, as well as its clear connection with archetypes. The queer community understood “presentation” of self, “performance” of self and identity, and – to boil it down – that’s what Voguing celebrated. With voguing (the song, in particular), Madonna consciously looped herself into an iconic tradition, paying tribute to the divas of the past, who worked their angles like nobody’s business.

How contemporary does Gloria Swanson look there? It could have been taken yesterday. I am not sure how it WORKS but I just know it’s so: sharp angles don’t exactly exist naturally in nature. Nature is fluid, chaotic, a constant proliferation with no rhyme or reason. And so angles somehow communicate the eternal. Maybe BECAUSE angles don’t exist in nature, outside of tremendous mountain ranges (but even they wear down over time), by twisting your body into sharp angles, you are saying: “I am outside of time.” The figures in Egyptian hieroglyphics … all angles, angles, elbows, necks, headdresses jutting back on an angle, even the fact that they’re standing upright, defying gravity, becomes an angle, their body an angle against the ground they walk on. The angle suggesting immortality, energy against deterioration.

I am not an art historian, but this loops into archetypes, the eternal symbolic figures representative of something else, something huge, something CONCEPTUAL rather than actual.

And, not for nothin’, but Voguing sometimes looks like Egyptian hieroglyphs in motion.

Archetypes tap into a collective memory. They are familiar, even if we can’t put our finger on it. Actors who work on this level are, unsurprisingly, often our biggest stars, our indelible icons. They’re outside of their own time. They are universal. Their work is great, and often grounded in reality, but it’s not kitchen-sink-mumble-mumble reality. It’s connected to something much much larger than themselves. Angles are an essential part of a story-teller’s toolbox.

The reason this all came to me – and I think about it a lot anyway, is in considering Paul Le Mat’s performance in American Graffiti.

Even when he’s behind the wheel he’s working his angles.

At certain points it’s almost exaggerated …

but he knows exactly what he’s doing. With all this, it’s still a naturalistic deeply felt performance. The character is already a throwback, on his way to being a dinosaur, and he’s the only one in the film who seems to know it. The awareness of this is in his face but it’s also in his ANGLES. Important to remember: In, say, Jonathan Demme’s Citizens Band, Le Mat is NOT all angles because it’s not that kind of part. This one is. He’s doing it ON PURPOSE.

With these sharp angles, with every corner of his body, Paul Le Mat moves the character out of the realm of the real and into the iconic. Recognizable to all. You don’t even need to know the storyline: you look at the shape his body makes against the sunrise and you get it ALL.

That shot – and him – taps into memories, dreams, reflections. His body there is a hieroglyph, it’s “graffiti,” in and of itself. It helps us perceive him, perceive his context. He helps us see beyond the moment into the eternal.

THAT’S how you “work your angles.”