Perhaps it happened earlier, but in the 20th Century, with the advent of filmmaking, stereotype and the public mind reached a new accommodation. For example, in my generation and I assume at least two later generations, it became almost impossible to imagine the upper crust of the British Empire without remembering the faces and demeanor of the Fox Brothers, Edward and James. I began thinking about this sort of thing in ernest when I wrote speeches for a wonderful admiral whom I much admired. He was a World War II hero and I once remarked his fame to him, to which he memorably replied, Think how much more successful I could have been if I had looked like an admiral, Oh you mean, the Hyman Rickover syndrome, I said! Exactly, he said. Rickover, father of the submarine navy, a brilliant man, didn’t look like a Hollywood admiral, and that was actually a handicap. I can hardly imagine how the Empire might have been ruled without the Fox brothers, just as I find it hard to imagine the Raj without Roger Moore. Can we really imagine the West if we have only Billy Bonneys lopsided visage in mind; don’t we need John Wayne and Gary Cooper? How much of this marriage of stereotype with popular imagery has impacted our politics? Do we elect people more for their looks than their thoughts? I did know Navy officers and sailors who looked marvelous and were great seafarers, but I also knew a lot of handsome dunces, bullies and cowards. And that was equally true of the newspaper industry. I remember once extraordinrily handsome Royal Navy officer I met on Shore Patrol duty. My officer in charge, a man I much admired, said one day to me, What do yo think of Commander Overton? Well, I figured officers stuck together, so I had better be careful. But I liked this officer so much that I took a chance and said, Lieutenant, you can’t imagine how stupid he is. Yes, I can, said my laconic lieutenant, walking off. In this little rumination, until now, I’ve skirted the issue of Anglocentrism, but of course it has played a huge role in our culture, and still does, even though it’s hardly warranted by our demographics.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 21:44:39 +0000
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