BY STEWART SLATER
“And you, Alex. When was the last time you cried?” “Quite recently actually, Victoria. I think you know I’ve been in India and when I was there, I met a holy man who told me there’s an infinite number of worlds. At first, I thought, ‘Whoa, dude. Mind blown.” But then I realised that, if there’s an infinite number of worlds, I haven’t even conquered this one yet and, not gonna lie to you Victoria, that really got me. I just couldn’t help myself. Blubbing like a baby, I was.”
Sadly, Alexander the Great did not live long enough to appear on Newsnight but had he done so, Victoria Derbyshire would not have described his answer to the “When was the last time you cried?” question as “powerful moment”, she would have referred him to Prevent. It is not just that, as we tell ourselves, we want men to be better at expressing their emotions, but that we want them to have the right emotions to express.
The segment was part of yet another “national conversation” about masculinity, the proximate cause this time being the Netflix drama Adolescence, a series so searing the Prime Minister described it as a “documentary” – then again, his ability to distinguish between fact and fiction has never been unimpeachable. A French social theorist might puff on his Gauloises and wonder that a fictional crime can spark a moral panic and insistence that “something must be done” (banning phones in this case, it’s always banning something) while an actual crime such as Southport can be treated as a one-off from which no conclusions can be drawn but we are not French nor, for that matter, are we social theorists.
If there is a tide in the affairs of men, the makers of Adolescence certainly managed to take it at the flood. Whether there is a “crisis of masculinity” or not, we never stop telling ourselves that there is. And whatever it may actually be (high rates of male suicide, educational underperformance by the white working class would be reasonable targets of concern), we never stop telling ourselves that it is a population of apprentice Andrew Tates. No less a figure than Sir Gareth Southgate was rolled out recently to argue that young men need better role models.
A modest man, Sir Gareth did not offer himself for the role but that has not stopped others elevating the patron saint of centrist dads to national exemplar. He played football! He has a beard! He wears waistcoats! He is in touch with his emotions! Who wouldn’t want their daughter to marry him? Think of the free footy tickets you would get…
But if we might accept Sir Gareth as a son-in-law (after a daughter’s first but probably not final wedding), we would not, I think, want him as a son. For he is a terrible role model.
As a de iure if not a de facto Scot, it is my not altogether unpleasant duty to remind English readers that he never actually won anything. Yes, he got his team to a couple of finals, but he lost both. His win percentage in tournaments against higher ranked teams was a mighty zero. General “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser” Patton would not have given him a knighthood, he would have had him “shovelling sh*t in Louisiana”.
Defeat can, of course, be glorious (Old Blood and Guts himself believed he had been a Carthaginian warrior in a past life), but Southgate offered, on and off the pitch, no flair or elan, still less any joie de vivre, just a cautious, grinding earnestness and desire to genuflect (sometimes literally) at any passing progressive pabulum. He is Theresa May in football boots.
Modern Ancient Historians no longer pay much attention to the ancient Historian Livy, having decided he was not so much a historian as a propagandist, his work an Our Island Story for Augustan Rome. He was less interested in recording facts than celebrating his nation’s greatness and providing heroes (generally ever greater generals killing ever greater numbers of foreigners) for its citizens. That was what his patron wanted, so that was what he supplied. For societies chose as role models those whom they would like their citizens to be. Augustus wanted warriors; we appear to want worriers.
Southgate is, of course, not the only role model on offer. Forty plus years ago, the school-children of America paid tribute to Captain Cook by voting to name a space shuttle Endeavour after his ship. Perhaps unexpectedly, he appears in the current series of The Great British Menu (celebrating “Great Britons” surprisingly enough) albeit introduced with pursed lips and “Of course, his legacy is complex…”. The other figures honoured are Suffragettes, activists, even Cilla Black (my own suggestion, “Peking Duck a la Palmerston with an opium foam” in tribute to the only man to launch two wars in defence of his nation’s drug dealers did not make it to the judging chamber, sadly) – these are the people we want our citizens to be, these are the achievements we want our citizens to ape.
If modern role models are all of a type, this will work for some. Nature produces as many accountants as entrepreneurs, steady-Eddies as well as Flash Harrys. But it will not work for all. For we are what we are just as much as what we are made and no amount of effort will make a loner a team player or a contrarian a conformist. We have spent sixty years acknowledging the whole spectrum of womanhood by telling girls there are countless ways to be “authentically” female, only to shrink the spectrum of “authentic” manhood to a single point– serious, sensitive and unquestioningly hewing to the norm. A drone. Those who feel out of touch with society, those who want to stand out more than to fit in, those who see more to life than a nine-to-five and an assisted death will not be brought onside by this approach, they will just have their separation confirmed, another well-intentioned policy bringing about that which it aimed to prevent.
Earlier societies understood this. Chivalry was an attempt both to celebrate and to tame the male propensity to violence. The Nelson of Trafalgar was the dutiful national martyr, the Nelson of Copenhagen who did not see the signal, the bad boy rebel. But the more we learn about ourselves, the less we appear to understand ourselves, ignoring what we are for what we hope we might force ourselves to be.
American libertarianism talks of “The Remnant”, a cohort who, if they have no cultural power, keep their ideas alive until society is ready to return to the old ways. Depending on your political leanings, this may call to mind Yoda in his exile on Dagobah, or the Sith for most of their history. So if you’re tired of Marcus Rashford, slip De Bello Gallico into your copy of Four-Four-Two. If you think there is more to history than Mary Seacole, raise a quiet glass to the Immortal Memory on Trafalgar Day. For, in two thousand years’ time, Alexander will still be Great and Gareth Southgate, well, who was he? These stories the good man shall teach his son.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.