Confessions of a Four-year Old

Yesterday’s musings on neighbours inadvertently threw up an old flame from my puerile fantasy world. Combine that with a bang on the head and suddenly I’m remembering the other influential women from my days of emerging consciousness. A four-year old surely does not have much to go on when it comes to the rational discrimination of beauty, so I offer you these four angels as pure forms, who appealed to me in an unmitigated manner, haunting my early childhood dreams. My wife says it is pretty clear what my ‘type’ was, but I had thought from a relatively young age that I could pretty much find a redeeming beauty in any face. I wonder now if those redeeming features in some way evoke the memory of a small part of these four faces. Looking at them now, together, for the first time in years, I realise that the primal attraction is undimmed. Looking at them in their current form, wearing the years most respectably, I think my four-year old self knew what he was doing. Anyway, with apologies for this bizarre turn (surely a result of a rattled brain), may I present Felicity, Agnetha, Deborah, and Olivia. Please bear in mind that I want to hear nothing whatsoever about Freud. If that’s your cup of tea, fine, but drink it somewhere else.

Then:

And now:

American Manly

American Manly is an example to us all, and let us hope, in him, we may find the redemption of that troubled country. I shall resist the temptation to introduce any particular real-life exemplars of American Manly, for within its purview there is room to move, to breathe, even to square-off and box, and I wouldn’t want to prejudice anyone against the possibilities of this noble breed. Where it exists, American Manly is an aspirational figure, an embodiment of respect and, in his presence, a guarantor of a raised tone. He is the finest of all things, save perhaps for the English Gentleman (of course), and it is high time that the shady bushel that has been obscuring him of late is once and for all uprooted to reveal the gleaming light.

Allow me a moment of comic-book fantasy, if you will. In the good old days, Superman’s superhero status had a lot to do with Clark Kent. He was hard-working, diligent, and well-dressed, but modest and courteous to boot. Awkward, yes, but the awkwardness was the ultimate affectation: a modest disguise for the ultimate modesty. A secret identity ensured that the man would receive no glory, no unwanted attention. He could go about his business. His transformation into strength itself, a noble fighter of evil and doer of good, depended in part on the gentle sensibilities of the alter ego. Cometh the hour, and so forth. Superman’s character worked because it said something about American values. Politeness, diligence and the grace of civil life were matched by the controlled power, strength, and determination to fight for the protection of that civil life, when duty called. Superman, the ideal type of American Manly, was America’s finest citizen.

On the walls of the Memorial Church in Harvard Yard are the names of many of Harvard’s alumni who gave their lives in World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam, and the Gulf, replete with their School and graduating year. The memorials themselves are nothing of note. After all, there are lists of names of the fallen everywhere, cenotaphs in every British town. Once I was at the Last Post at the Menin Gate in Ypres, and the names fell around me like a deathly shroud. Yet in this church more than any other place one gains a sense of sacrifice; a notion of what was on the line; an appreciation of the substance behind the names. For here are marked the snubbed flames of American potential, who fought that others might have the chance to realise theirs. These were leaders in intellect, in enterprise, in spirit; they saw purpose in their way of life, and saw that it was worth the fight. Given the chance, they might well ask what we have made of their sacrifice.

You can see the descendents of American Manly across the country. They are intelligent, but are galled by the ‘smart’; they throw up their hands at the politicians and thereafter roll up their sleeves; they understand the importance of form, carriage, comportment, courtesy and modesty; they know the measure of a man by his handshake, and judge themselves by the cast-iron of their word. Nothing is more disappointing than disappointment in themselves. American Manly treasures his family and his heritage, and understands that the love of his country must be rooted in the things for which it has historically stood. And this means that he must be a reader, a learner, an asker of questions, and above all a listener. In times of disarray, American Manly marches to his own tune, assured that it is composed of the right stuff, and confident that it is better to take the lead than to follow fools.

Homo Americanus should take note, for American Manly is not a distinct species. He is there to follow, and with good measures each of perspiration and hard thinking, he is there to become.

Homo Americanus

Homo Americanus represents the silent, and invisible, majority. He has a notion of strife: he works hard for the money to feed his family and to fund his debt, but these are the limits of his horizons. Nine-to-fiving for the Man, this beige individual is probably intelligent enough to know that his existence is meaningless. To be a cog in the economy barely works as an identity when the machine is well-oiled. In rustier times, its vacuity is alarmingly apparent.

The self-aware variety is depressive and anxious, possibly angry (but restrained), and clings to the system, for he feels powerless to move within it, let alone effect change. The denial variety has a larger debt, for he fills his desolation with stuff. Cars, gadgets, bits and bobs – anything to inject some distraction into the day-to-day – that he can compare with the stuff belonging to others of his species (whom he calls ‘friends’). He drinks beer with these associates, grills, and goes to football and baseball. If he’s a bit higher up the tree, he’ll play golf, but only because one should.

A picture, for provocation's sake

Homo Americanus knows that something is wrong, but cannot exactly express what. He feels unrepresented by politicians, if not betrayed by them, and does not exactly know what America is fighting for (on various fronts). He is intrinsically patriotic, but is torn between an unquestioning allegiance and his nagging doubt. And still he works, and still he pays down his debt. Homo Americanus is inert. He is a quiet voice, getting on with things, such as they are. He despises American Macho, and anonymously posts comments on web forums about the obesity problem. He recognises, but does not know how to be, American Manly.

American Macho

I begin my wholly ill-considered project of laying-out a cultural typology of men, the fit and the misfits alike, with the least palatable of subjects. Those of you who have been following along may already have inferred that there is a kind of American masculinity that is not to my taste. A more noble image will follow, I assure you, but there is no getting away from the ugliness that is, for want of a better description, American Macho.

American Macho carries his abundant girth like a badge of honour, and is clad in overlong chinos, a baseball cap and running shoes (never used for their express purpose). He may have biceps of considerable proportions, because fitness can be reduced to the power of the arm. He shouts before thinking, but perhaps never thinks. He is the one bawling ‘You’re the man!’ at golf tournaments and letting off falsetto whoops at concerts, and he will be seen giving standing ovations for mediocrities, if not everything. He thanks God, publicly, when he wins a bowling tournament, or an eating contest, for this is God’s purview. American Macho is highly opinionated about all matters, but utterly uninformed; yet he will never concede a point. He has never travelled, and possibly does not have a passport; yet he claims to know how the world should best be run. He knows to the very fibre of his being that America is the best country on the planet, but he does not know why (for he knows no history, and has not been out of his own State). He will, nevertheless, fight you on this point. His politics are staunch, this way or that, but can be expressed only in the same terms as his love for his favourite baseball team. American Macho does not know how to cope with America’s new reality, and cannot see past his own back yard. American Macho blindly worships the flag, the greenback and the American way of life (which he defines as the freedom to be self-interested). American Macho is all these things, but he is also simply a jerk.

There, it is said. I suppose the image will please no one; it certainly does not please me. I propose no remedies for American Macho, for his antidote is American Manly, and we may trust that American Manly will prevail. But first we must describe the American man who sits between the two, and perhaps comprises the majority type. I shall return, therefore, with what will doubtless be an equally controversial description of Homo Americanus.