The Art of Seduction (27 page)

flowered into gods and

coolly and slightly ironically. What was going on behind those eyes, that
goddesses. And even as
smile? People wanted to know more about him. The magazines teased its
certain major gods of the
readers with information—photographs of Kennedy with his wife and
ancient pantheons meta-

children, or playing football on the White House lawn, interviews creating
morphose themselves into

hero -gods of salvation, th e
a sense of him as a devoted family man, yet one who mingled as an equal
star-goddesses humanize
with glamorous stars. The images all melted together—the space race, the
themselves and become new
Peace Corps, Kennedy facing up to the Soviets during the Cuban missile
mediators between the

fantastic world of dreams
crisis just as he had faced up to Truman.
and man's daily life on

After Kennedy was assassinated, Jackie said in an interview that before
earth.
. . . •
The heroes of

he went to bed, he would often play the soundtracks to Broadway musicals,
the movies . . . are, in an

obviously attenuated way,

and his favorite of these was
Camelot,
with its lines, "Don't let it be forgot /

mythological heroes in this

that once there was a spot / For one brief shining moment / That was
sense of becoming divine.

known as Camelot." There would be great presidents again, Jackie said, but
The star is the actor or
never "another Camelot." The name "Camelot" seemed to stick, making
actress who absorbs some of

the heroic
—
i.e., divinized

Kennedy's thousand days in office resonate as myth.

and mythic
—
substance of

the hero or heroine of the
Kennedy's seduction of the American public was conscious and calculated.
movies, and who in turn

enriches this substance by

It was also more Hollywood than Washington, which was not surprising:
The Star
•
125

Kennedy's father, Joseph, had once been a movie producer, and Kennedy
his or her own contrib-
himself had spent time in Hollywood, hobnobbing with actors and trying
ution. When we speak of
the myth of the star, we

to figure out what made them stars. He was particularly fascinated with
mean first of all the process
Gary Cooper, Montgomery Clift, and Cary Grant; he often called Grant
of divinization which the
for advice.

movie actor undergoes, a

process that makes him the

Hollywood had found ways to unite the entire country around cer-
idol of crowds.
tain themes, or myths—often the great American myth of the West. The —EDGAR MORIN,
THE STARS,
great stars embodied mythic types: John Wayne the patriarch, Clift TRANSLATED BY RICHARD

the Promethean rebel, Jimmy Stewart the noble hero, Marilyn Monroe the HOWARD

siren. These were not mere mortals but gods and goddesses to be dreamed and fantasized about. All of Kennedy's actions were framed in the conventions of Hollywood. He did not argue with his opponents, he confronted
Age: 22, Sex: female,
them dramatically. He posed, and in visually fascinating ways—whether
Nationality: British,
with his wife, with his children, or alone onstage. He copied the facial
Profession: medical student

"
[
Deanna Durbin
]
became

expressions, the presence, of a Dean or a Cooper. He did not discuss
my first and only screen
policy details but waxed eloquent about grand mythic themes, the kind
idol. I wanted to be as
that could unite a divided nation. And all this was calculated for television,
much like her as possible,
for Kennedy mostly existed as a televised image. That image haunted
both in my manners and
clothes. Whenever I was to

our dreams. Well before his assassination, Kennedy attracted fantasies of
get a new dress, I would
America's lost innocence with his call for a renaissance of the pioneer spirit,
find from my collection a
a New Frontier.

particularly nice picture of

Deanna and ask for a dress

Of all the character types, the Mythic Star is perhaps the most powerful
like she was wearing. I did
of all. People are divided by all kinds of consciously recognized categories—
my hair as much like hers
race, gender, class, religion, politics. It is impossible, then, to gain power on
as 1 could manage. If I
found myself in any

a grand scale, or to win an election, by drawing on conscious awareness; an
annoying or aggravating
appeal to any one group will only alienate another. Unconsciously, how-
situation . . . I found
ever, there is much we share. All of us are mortal, all of us know fear, all of
myself wondering what
Deanna would do and

us have been stamped with the imprint of parent figures; and nothing con-
modified my own reactions
jures up this shared experience more than myth. The patterns of myth,
accordingly.
. . .
" • Age:
born out of warring feelings of helplessness on the one hand and thirst for
26, Sex: female, Nation-
immortality on the other, are deeply engraved in us all.

ality: British "I only fell in

love once with a movie

Mythic Stars are figures of myth come to life. To appropriate their
actor. It was Conrad Veidt.
power, you must first study their physical presence—how they adopt a dis-
His magnetism and his
tinctive style, are cool and visually arresting. Then you must assume the
personality got me. His
voice and gestures fascin-

pose of a mythic figure: the rebel, the wise patriarch, the adventurer. (The
ated me. I hated him,
pose of a Star who has struck one of these mythic poses might do the trick.)
feared him, loved him.
Make these connections vague; they should never be obvious to the con
When he died it seemed to
me that a vital part of my

scious mind. Your words and actions should invite interpretation beyond
imagination died too, and
their surface appearance; you should seem to be dealing not with specific,
my world of dreams was
nitty-gritty issues and details but with matters of life and death, love and
bare. "
hate, authority and chaos. Your opponent, similarly, should be framed

—J. P
.
MAYER,
BRITISH

not merely as an enemy for reasons of ideology or competition but as a vil
CINEMAS AND THEIR

AUDIENCES

lain, a demon. People are hopelessly susceptible to myth, so make yourself the hero of a great drama. And keep your distance—let people identify with you without being able to touch you. They can only watch and

dream.

126
•
The Art of Seduction

The savage worships idols

Jack's life had more to do with myth, magic, legend, saga,

of wood and stone; the

and story than with political theory or political science.

civilized man, idols of flesh

—JACQUELINE KENNEDY, A WEEK AFTER JOHN KENNEDY'S DEATH

and blood.

— G E O R G E BERNARD SHAW

Keys to the Character

When the eye's rays

encounter some clear, well-

polished object
—
be it
Seduction is a form of persuasion that seeks to bypass consciousness, stirring the unconscious mind instead. The reason for this is simple: we are
burnished steel or glass or
so surrounded by stimuli that compete for our attention, bombarding us
water, a brilliant stone, or
with obvious messages, and by people who are overtly political and manipu
any other polished and
gleaming substance
lative, that we are rarely charmed or deceived by them. We have grown
having luster, glitter, and
increasingly cynical. Try to persuade a person by appealing to their con
sparkle . . . those rays of
sciousness, by saying outright what you want, by showing all your cards, and
the eye are reflected back,
what hope do you have? You are just one more irritation to be tuned out.
and the observer then

beholds himself and

To avoid this fate you must learn the art of insinuation, of reaching the
obtains an ocular vision of

unconscious. The most eloquent expression of the unconscious is the
his own person. This is
dream, which is intricately connected to myth; waking from a dream, we
what you see when you

look into a mirror; in that
are often haunted by its images and ambiguous messages. Dreams obsess us
situation you are as it were
because they mix the real and the unreal. They are filled with real charac
looking at yourself through
ters, and often deal with real situations, yet they are delightfully irrational,
the eyes of another.

pushing realities to the extremes of delirium. If everything in a dream were

—IBN HAZM,
THE RING OF

THE D O V E : A TREATISE ON THE

realistic, it would have no power over us; if everything were unreal, we
ART AND PRACTICE OF ARAB

would feel less involved in its pleasures and fears. Its fusion of the two is
LOVE,
TRANSLATED BY A . J .

what makes it haunting. This is what Freud called the "uncanny": someARBERRY

thing that seems simultaneously strange and familiar.

We sometimes experience the uncanny in waking life—in a déjà vu, a

miraculous coincidence, a weird event that recalls a childhood experience.
The only important

constellation of collective
People can have a similar effect. The gestures, the words, the very being of
seduction produced by
men like Kennedy or Andy Warhol, for example, evoke both the real and
modern times
[
is
]
that of
the unreal: we may not realize it (and how could we, really), but they are
film stars or cinema
like dream figures to us. They have qualities that anchor them in reality—

idols. . . . They were our

only myth in an age
sincerity, playfulness, sensuality—but at the same time their aloofness, their
incapable of generating
superiority, their almost surreal quality makes them seem like something
great myths or figures of
out of a movie.

seduction comparable to

those of mythology or art.
•

These types have a haunting, obsessive effect on people. Whether in
The cinema's power lives in
public or in private, they seduce us, making us want to possess them both
its myth. Its stones, its
physically and psychologically. But how can we possess a person from a
psychological portraits,

its imagination or realism,
dream, or a movie star or political star, or even one of those real-life fasci
the meaningful impressions
nators, like a Warhol, who may cross our path? Unable to have them, we
it leaves
—t
hese are all
become obsessed with them—they haunt our thoughts, our dreams, our
secondary. Only the myth
fantasies. We imitate them unconsciously. The psychologist Sandor Fer
is powerful, and at the
heart of the
enczi calls this "introjection": another person becomes part of our ego, we
cinematographic myth lies
internalize their character. That is the insidious seductive power of a Star, a
seduction
—
that of the
power you can appropriate by making yourself into a cipher, a mix of the
renowned seductive figure,

a man or woman (but
real and the unreal. Most people are hopelessly banal; that is, far too real.
The Star
•
127

What you need to do is etherealize yourself. Your words and actions seem
above all a woman) linked
to come from your unconscious—have a certain looseness to them. You
to the ravishing but
specious power of the

hold yourself back, occasionally revealing a trait that makes people wonder
cinematographic image
whether they really know you.

itself.
. . . •
The star is by

The Star is a creation of modern cinema. That is no surprise: film re-
no means an ideal or
sublime being: she is

creates the dream world. We watch a movie in the dark, in a semisomno-
artificial. . . . Her presence
lent state. The images are real enough, and to varying degrees depict
serves to submerge all
realistic situations, but they are projections, flickering lights, images—we
sensibility and expression
know they are not real. It as if we were watching someone else's dream. It
beneath a ritual fascination
with the void, beneath

was the cinema, not the theater, that created the Star.

ecstasy of her gaze and the

On a theater stage, actors are far away, lost in the crowd, too real in
nullity of her smile. This is
their bodily presence. What enabled film to manufacture the Star was the
how she achieves mythical
status and becomes subject

close-up, which suddenly separates actors from their contexts, filling your
to collective rites of
mind with their image. The close-up seems to reveal something not
sacrificial adulation.
•
The
so much about the character they are playing but about themselves. We
ascension of the cinema
idols, the masses'

glimpse something of Greta Garbo herself when we look so closely into
divinities, was and remains
her face. Never forget this while fashioning yourself as a Star. First, you
a central story of modern
must have such a large presence that you can fill your target's mind the way
times.
. . .
There is no
point in dismissing it as