THE GRIN OF
FEAR (2004)
When California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger took the
stage at last month’s Republican convention, he chided
American pessimists for being "economic girly-men." This
wasn’t a riff on one of Arnold’s own movie lines. The
"girly-men" quote originated with Saturday Night Live’s
Hans and Frans, balloon-armed Austrian weightlifters with a
penchant for stupid sayings. Even if Arnie’s speechwriters
intended it more as a soundbite than a policy statement,
it’s a measure of how retro the US has become when
feminization is equated, even comically, with opposition to
the US economy’s militarization.
But maybe Arnie is right for the wrong reasons. There seems
to be something strange going on with male behaviour in
political circles. You may recall a photo of Prime Minister
Paul Martin taken at a gathering of world leaders soon
after the federal election. Martin has his hands curled up,
palms forward, his head thrown back with an expression of
giddy transport. Bush stands behind him wearing a vacant
look. It resembles a shampoo ad, with Martin lathering
himself into ecstasy, and Shrub about to break the mood as
a Hitchcockian shower-time stalker. Some friends commented
on this Psycho shot, noting the former shipping magnate
looked positively "girly," in the stereotypical
slumber-party, giggle-fit sense.
Another leader who projects serial giddiness on camera is
Tony Blair. I’ve seen clips of the British Prime Minister
in the presence of Bush where it looks like he’s stuck a
coathanger in his piehole. That grin assumes frightening,
Joker-like proportions, with the corners of his mouth
threatening to meet up on the back of his head and unzip
the very flesh on Phony Tony’s skull.
From where I sit, the Commonwealth’s toothsome twosome are
sending the semiotic signals of submissiveness; the grin of
fear that acknowledges one’s social station. (In several
photo-ops, Martin couldn’t have looked more the underdog
had he rolled over and presented his tummy for a
presidential tickle.) This kind of status-conscious
behaviour is reminiscent of the "doormat" – an archetype
not limited to under-the-thumb females as the Gilded Age
makes a return engagement.
In relations between superpower leaders and lesser beings,
the going-girly grin says several quick things in
succession: "Hey, I’m your friend. Look, I’m bending over
backwards to please you. Please be gentle. And for God’s
sake, don’t bring out that Dick Cheney guy to go medieval
on my nation’s assets."
The grinning pretty much goes in one direction, and not the
other. Donald Trump doesn’t smile much on The Apprentice,
but the human fodder on his show all wear tight, Stockholm
syndrome grins – at least at the beginning. By show’s end,
the trainwreck of egos is a thing to behold. In one
episode, the Donald had goaded the players into an all-out
verbal knifefight in the boardroom. After all the betrayals
and near-hysterical sucking-up – with "you’re fired" served
up with Lucerferian relish -- the men and women staggered
out bleeding from every emotional orifice, their faces
flatlined. "It doesn’t get any better than that, said the
developer with the Art Deco hairdo. "I agree," replied the
prim blonde aide sitting next to him.
As Freud’s "thin veneer of civilization" gets a severe
sanding down, expect to see more behaviour that’s less MBA
than DNA. Homo sap is halfway between the apes and the
angels, goofed on endocrinal juices that are straight from
the savanna. The secretions translate into fight or flight,
and all the ambivalent shades between, including nervous
grinning.
This sort of signalling crosses FCC standards and gender
lines, and even species barriers. "Like the rich,
chimpanzees know the value of putting on the right face,
writes Richard Coniff in his entertaining book, A Natural
History of the Rich. The author recounts a tale from an
anthropologist who watched the spectacle of a dominant male
chimp being challenged from behind by a rival. "Before
turning to meet his challenger, Luit paused, like a CEO
about to enter a roomful of dissident stockholders, and
actually reached up with this fingers to press his lips
together and wipe away his nervous grin. Then he turned
around to face down his rival with the serene image of
unshakable power."
No ape ever got anywhere behaving like Phony Tony, after
all.
Geoff Olson
