BY STEWART SLATER
As one who has (credibly or not) been accused of being a “writer”, the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” sits ill with me, implying, as it does that you should put down this article and log on to an image-sharing site instead. Every so often, however, I must admit, a photo is taken which instantly captures a truth which articles such as this must meander their way towards over several paragraphs.
The recent Italian Grand Prix was graced by the presence of the now retired flying (any native of that country who makes it to F1 must be described as “flying”, I don’t make the rules) Finn Kimi Raikkonen and by Brad Pitt. An enterprising paparazzo (like Michael Portillo, I take every opportunity to display my familiarity with foreign languages…) contrived to take a picture of the two together, thereby capturing in a single image the change in masculine ideals over the past decades.
For Raikkonen, during his career, was seen as the last old school grand prix driver, harking back to an era when driving fast cars in circles was an (occasionally unwelcome) interruption to the serious business of fast living with fast women. Not for him the po-faced earnestness of the modern sportsman. If he wanted to enter a powerboat race while dressed as a gorilla, or a snowmobile race using the name of his idol, James Hunt, well he would and no contractual obligations or sponsorship considerations were going to stop him.
Other drivers might be “gutted” at being forced to drop out of the Monaco GP, he went back to his yacht and drowned his sorrows so successfully that he fell off it.
Prodigiously talented (it was only, according to the boss of a rival team, his lifetime dedication to the grape and the grain which allowed other drivers to be on the same lap as him), he lived life on his own terms, turning up, driving the wheels (sometimes literally) off his car and getting back on his plane. If you liked that (and millions did, he was always wildly popular), that was fine. If you didn’t, that was fine too. Kimi was going to give you what Kimi wanted and wasn’t overly fussed if you wanted more.
If Hunt was seen as Raikkonen’s role model (he once drove in a Monaco GP in a replica of the Englishman’s helmet), he was not the only one. The self-contained man, happy with his own approval and not needing that of others was a recognisable archetype of masculinity. Think Steve McQueen. Think the Rat Pack. It was not that they thought only of themselves (McQueen had a rider in his contracts obliging producers to provide a range of sundries which he then distributed to the residents of the boys’ home in which he had spent part of his youth and which he regularly visited until his death; Sinatra called the mother of a friend every Sunday evening after he learned she lived alone) but that they did not care overly what others thought of them.
Pitt was at the race because, like McQueen before him, he is making a movie about motor racing. But there the similarity ends, for he represents a more modern, needier variety of manhood.
Bursting on to the scene as the eye-candy in Thelma and Louise, Pitt, like his peers George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio, gives every impression of taking extremely good care of his looks. And his regimen appears to work. He is, in one of those facts which never ceases to delight, 5 months older than Nigel Farage. But those who prize their looks, prize the approval of others more than their own. They need others to find them attractive. Walk past a watch shop and you will see Leo gazing soulfully into the camera, no eyebrow even a millimetre out of place next to Steve McQueen snapped unawares in his stained, oily racing overalls. Which of them is trying to get you to like him?
But it is not just their relentlessly moisturised faces which betray the effort that goes into being a Hollywood A-lister. They all have the type of physiques which can only be acquired through uncountable hours in the gym. Paul Newman was, in his day, a hunk, but he looks positively malnourished compared to Matt Damon or the Hemsworths. Jimmy Stewart was strong enough to pilot a bomber during the war, but when his shirt comes off in Rear Window, he looks, to modern eyes, dangerously emaciated. Modern stars go to great lengths to fit in with modern standards of beauty, lengths which the likes of Humphrey Bogart (whose exercise routine never, to the best of my knowledge, exceeded frequently lifting a couple of ounces of bourbon to his lips) felt unnecessary.
Not content with looking the way they think the audience wishes them to look, the modern star is keen to be seen to think what they think the audience wants them to think, never turning down the opportunity to hop on their private planes to attend a conference on climate change or another concern on the narrow list of similarly high-status causes. Celebrities mouthing off about political causes is nothing new of course, but it is notable how keen the previous generation was to espouse sometimes deeply unfashionable issues – Bogart campaigned against McCarthyism, while Sinatra worked for desegregation in the ’40’s and ‘50’s. In contrast to today’s stars, being right mattered more than remaining popular because being popular was, ultimately, not that important.
But if you only think what you think others want you to think, you are no individual. And coolness is all about individuality.
If you spend hours primping and preening, you are no longer natural. And coolness is all about being natural. If your physique comes from hours in the gym, it is the product of effort. And coolness is effortless. If you want to be loved and admired by those who do not know you, you are needy. And coolness is never needy. It just is. It can never be manufactured or produced or packaged or bought. And the moment you try is the moment you fail.
“The art,” the poet Ovid opined, “lies in concealing the art”. And Clooney, DiCaprio et al never quite pull this off (neither did he, in one of my more controversial Classics opinions). The gilded lifestyle of planes, yachts and villas never quite distracts from the effort and desire paddling furiously beneath the surface. A needy teenager might have remade Ocean’s Eleven in an attempt to catch the Rat Pack’s reflected glory but a genuinely cool actor would not. A genuinely self-aware actor would not have cast Bruce Willis in Ocean’s Twelve, his palpable lack of interest in being part of the gang unintentionally revealing the deep lack of cool in his more desperate castmates. And so, if a twinge of jealousy hits when you see footage from a premiere or a film festival or even an advert for a coffee machine, replace it with a touch of pity for those who, by chasing what they want, are condemned never to achieve it for there is nothing less cool than wanting to be cool.
For the earlier generation were substantial figures. Bogart was an avid sailor and chess player (sufficiently knowledgeable to become a Tournament Director for the U.S. Chess Federation). McQueen had his cars, Eastwood his jazz. To Kimi, F1 was a “hobby”. If it all ended, they had other things to do. Pitt, Clooney et al. may have businesses, but they give no impression of having interests, nothing that could replace the drug of fame. Bogart and his type were cool because they could easily walk away, modern stars are not because they have to keep playing the game.
With the sad demise of Anthony Bourdain, Raikkonnen now stands alone like a rock in an ocean of moisturiser and hair dye. The last public figure to give no hint of needing to be a public figure. A man happy to do his own thing and let the chips fall where they might. The last of a long line of men content to be who they are. The last Cool Man.
These are my views. They may not be yours. But if you have a cardboard cut-out of Brad Pitt in your bedroom or spend your evening throwing your underwear at George Clooney in re-runs of E.R., don’t bother writing to the Editor to complain. Like Kimi but regrettably no other public figure these days, I don’t really care…
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.