How Jane Fonda became the most hated actor in America
Jane Fonda — martyr, betrayer, champion, trailblazer. As someone who has probably been called every name under the sun, good and bad, Fonda has become one of the most polarising figures in all of Hollywood history. The reason? She speaks out against things she disagrees with. Unfortunately for the average patriotic American, however, this makes her less of a hero and more of a traitor to the nation’s beloved values.
From 1955 to 1975, Fonda’s position in the Land of the Free was more than clear. This was a country at the crux of one of its biggest wars in history, the Vietnam War, with many doubting the fragile reasons the government used for waging a conflict against the East-Asian nation. However, Fonda emerged as a vocal political activist during this time. Engaging in rallies and actively advocating against the war, Fonda’s tenure as an activist reached its pinnacle when, in 1972, during a visit to Hanoi, she was photographed sitting on top of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun.
Opposing the “apple pie libertine”, as Bookforum put it in 2018, Fonda’s glossy image created by her role in Barbarella contrasted heavily with her real-life activism, and those who fell for her simplistic, beautiful ideals came to passionately detest who she really was. Here was a young woman who was so interested in political developments that she had to use her platform for good — obviously, this wouldn’t sit right with Hollywood’s prevailing male gaze.
Fonda was shedding her sex-kitten persona, departing from her husband, and adopting the shaggy mullet hairstyle reminiscent of her well-known 1970 mug shot while abandoning makeup in favour of a much less trivial existence. Emerging as a figurehead in the anti-war cause, Fonda traversed the nation, vehemently advocating for the return of soldiers fighting abroad. This transformation earned her even more impassioned hatred of men, yearning for the former Fonda, the embodiment of femininity often idealised in wartime, an icon they proudly hung on their walls as a symbol of their cause.
Following the release of the notorious 1972 photograph, a considerable amount of Americans supporting the troops abroad were incensed, perceiving Fonda’s actions as aligning herself with the Vietnamese. Dubbed ‘Hanoi Jane’ in the media, her choice to sit on the gun resulted in virtual exclusion from many Hollywood circles. As you can imagine, at the time, few were willing to collaborate with someone who seemed so inherently unpatriotic and vehemently anti-American.
Explaining her actions decades later in a blog entry titled The Truth About My Trip to Hanoi, Fonda explained: “It happened on my last day in Hanoi. I was exhausted and an emotional wreck after the 2-week visit…someone (I don’t remember who) led me towards the gun, and I sat down…I hardly even thought about where I was sitting. The cameras flashed…It is possible that it was a set up, that the Vietnamese had it all planned. I will never know.”
She continued: “But if they did I can’t blame them. The buck stops here. If I was used, I allowed it to happen…a two-minute lapse of sanity that will haunt me forever…But the photo exists, delivering its message regardless of what I was doing or feeling. I carry this heavy in my heart…It was never my intention to cause harm.”
The thing is, at the time, voicing opposition against the war was not considered particularly radical: the widespread consensus was that Vietnam had become a disastrous situation across the political spectrum. Furthermore, while courageous, Jane’s visit to Hanoi wasn’t necessarily unique: figures like Joan Baez, Susan Sontag, and David Dellinger also made similar journeys and expressed their opinions openly.
However, Fonda’s return to New York and the publication of the photograph in the New York Post triggered an unparalleled wave of fury and vitriol. The disdain primarily stemmed, again, from the same male commentators who predominantly focused on Fonda’s appearance, indicating that her true transgression wasn’t just opposing the war but her departure from the Barbarella image. She was labelled as traitorous and criticised for her speech speed, lack of smiles, and absence of humour.
And so, as women are often forced to do, she issued her apology and continued to express remorse for her lack of sensitivity towards the troops on television, during public appearances, in interviews, and even in her book. Her apologies have become somewhat of a ritual, recurring every few years. However, if Fonda’s image were to resurface today, it’s difficult to say where its place may be — even when she redirected her celebrity status to other pursuits, it seemed she couldn’t quite get it right.
Today, however, the proliferation of technology and social media usage has propelled political martyrdom to new heights. The male masses, at the time, had a monopoly on celebrity discourse, particularly in the biggest, most domineering outlets. Now, however, voices are considerably more diverse, and Fonda’s once-perceived societal difficulty has become dispersed with a figure whose efforts are placed exactly where they should be.
