Actor Chuck Norris leaves lasting mark on J’can culture

Carolyn Cooper, professor emerita of literary and cultural studies, has noted the impact of the late Chuck Norris on Jamaican culture.

Norris, the action star, whose roles in Walker, Texas Ranger and other television shows and movies made him an iconic tough guy, died on Thursday in what his family described as a “sudden passing”. He was 86.

“While we would like to keep the circumstances private, please know that he was surrounded by his family and was at peace,” the family said in a statement posted to social media.

Cooper, who taught in the Department of Literatures in English at The University of the West Indies, Mona, observes that Norris’ local popularity mirrored Hollywood’s influence on Jamaican society.

“He was a star who celebrated the gun culture of the American film and television industry that has had such a huge influence on Jamaican popular music,” said Cooper, recalling Damian Marley’s Welcome to Jamrock and Merciless’ Mavis, both of which reference Norris.

The martial arts grandmaster played the long-standing role of Sergeant Cordell Walker in Walker, Texas Ranger, which premiered on CBS in 1993. The show aired on free-to-air television in Jamaica.

Such was his cultural popularity that even Jamaican dancehall artistes referenced his ‘bad man’ persona. In the 1995 hit Mavis, dancehall artiste Merciless sang about how a woman seeking affection and fulfilment would cover great distances in search of it and avoid violent men who behaved like the action star in films.

The lyrics were the opening lines to one of that year’s biggest songs.

“Gal a fly all de way from Paris

An a tell me how she fraid a Chuck Norris

She want no man dat tump an box an kick

Mavis want a man dat is romantic

Well well.”

In Jr Gong’s 2005 Welcome to Jamrock, he spoke of how some men were mere impostors, pretending to have street credibility.

“Some bwoy nuh know dis

Dem only come around like tourist

On the beach with a few club sodas

Bedtime stories, and pose like dem name Chuck Norris

And don’t know the real hardcore

‘Cause Sandals ah no ‘Back-To’”

“Hollywood,” Cooper shared, “is largely responsible for the way in which gun violence has become institutionalised in Jamaica.”

She drew on examples such as Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come, often described as a reggae spaghetti western.

“When you look at the westerns and even local movies like The Harder They Come, you see classic examples of the powerful reverberations of gun violence in our society,” said Cooper.

The death of Norris has triggered an outpouring of memorials from fellow Hollywood tough guys and fans.

“Chuck was an icon. I am grateful that I was able to work with him in multiple ways over the years, from promoting fitness to sharing the screen together. He was a badass, in real life and in Hollywood. His legend will be with us forever. My thoughts are with his family,” Arnold Schwarzenegger shared via X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

EARLY YEARS

Born Carlos Ray Norris in Ryan, Oklahoma, on March 10, 1940, Norris grew up poor. At age 12, he moved with his family to Torrance, California, and joined the US Air Force after high school in 1958. It was during a deployment to Korea that he started training in martial arts, including judo and Tang Soo Do.

He made his film debut as an uncredited bodyguard in the 1968 movie The Wrecking Crew, which included a fight with Dean Martin. He had also crossed paths with Bruce Lee in martial arts circles. Their friendship – sometimes, as sparring partners – led to an iconic faceoff in the 1972 movie Return of the Dragon, in which Lee fights and kills Norris’ character in Rome’s Colosseum.

He went on to act in more than 20 movies, such as Missing in Action, The Delta Force and Sidekicks.

He took on his most famed role, as a crime-fighting lawman in Walker, Texas Ranger, in the early ‘90s. The show ran for nine seasons, and in 2010, then-Governor Rick Perry awarded him the title of honorary Texas Ranger. The Texas Senate later named him an honorary Texan.

“It’s not violence for violence’s sake, with no moral structure,” Norris told the AP in 1996, speaking about the show. “You try to portray the proper meaning of what it’s about – fighting injustice with justice, good versus bad. … It’s entertaining for the whole family.”

Norris also made a surprise comedic appearance as a decisive judge in the final match of the 2004 movie Dodgeball. He took occasional acting roles in recent years, including 2012’s The Expendables 2 and the 2024 sci-fi action movie Agent Recon. He’s due to appear in Zombie Plane, an upcoming film starring Vanilla Ice.

Norris was outspoken about his Christian beliefs and his support for gun rights, and backed political candidates for years – he even went skydiving with former US President George W Bush for the former president’s 80th birthday. As for US President Donald Trump, Norris endorsed him in the 2016 general election and wrote guest columns praising him without explicitly endorsing him in the days before the 2020 and 2024 elections.

Norris is survived by five children: stunt performers Mike and Eric with his late ex-wife Dianne Holechek, twins Dakota and Danilee with his wife Gena Norris, and daughter Dina.

Norris celebrated his birthday just over a week before his death, posting a sparring video on Instagram.

“I don’t age. I level up,” he wrote.

nicola.cunningham@gleanerjm.com