Masks and power

Sennett writes: “Machiavelli’s great essay The Prince argues that a ruler must be an actor in order to survive.” If the prince were to communicate his political intentions openly, his subjects would not obey him. According to Machiavelli, in order to gain the freedom to act rationally in the political theater, the prince must act unpredictably in front of the curtain and distract the audience from his politics with sudden changes of direction. Sometimes he should act angry and instill fear in his subjects, at other times he should caress them like a loving father. “What will the Prince do or say next? The people”, “swept away by disturbances”, “can’t predict”. “The Prince keeps his subjects riveted by a persona which, because it is shape-shifting, never becomes stale.” According to Sennett, the Prince benefits from the ability to play several roles at the same time. Simultaneously, however, “something new has appeared in this role-playing adult: the Prince doesn’t wholly surrender to his performance. It is a mask.”⁹²

Sennett, and this should not be concealed here, explicitly distinguishes Trump’s behavior from that of the Machiavellian prince: “demagogues like Donald Trump are not best described as Machiavellian; the Prince swaps masks at will, whereas Trump believes his own fantasies and is deeply invested in a single role.”⁹³ Based on the argument developed so far, it could be argued against this statement by Sennett that a stable “role” maintained over time would be a uniform “‘being’ behind the doing” assumed “behind” or “under” the different masks, to use Nietzsche’s words once again. In Trump’s case, on the other hand, there is much to suggest that his assumed mask is identical to the role portrayed in each case—even if only until he puts on a different mask and role, and so on. In Haberman’s words: “He works things out in real time in front of all of us.”

Seen in this light, there are two different ways of reading mugshots and presidential portraits. Following Sennett, the presidential portrait resembles the mugshot in order to refer to the same Trumpian role of “metallic”, “maximum impact” in contexts conceivably far removed from one another—defendant in the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, US President in the White House—, signaling: Trump is Trump, and Trump remains Trump. Regardless of the circumstances, you can rely on him to maintain his role, personality or character, you could also say that he remains true to his role (although the word ‘true’ itself raises doubts as to whether this thesis is correct).⁹⁴ Alternatively, the mugshot and the presidential portrait are so similar that one can recognize one and the same mask, but not whether it refers to a suspected criminal or to the American president or to both at the same time. In this case, the two portraits, which are so similar, do not indicate uniformity and stability ‘behind’ the face shown, but stand for nothing but ambivalence, one could also say: for Trump’s Janus-facedness.

Notes

1. ⁹²Sennett, The Performer, p. 29f. In terms of mask theory, Sennett is in line with Csapo, Riding the Phallus for Dionysus, p. 255. However, Sennett does not say which passages in “The Prince” he is relying on. In any case, ‘mask’ and ‘playing’ are Machiavelli interpretations that also depend on the translation. The original reads: “Essendo adunque un principe necessitato sapere bene usare la bestia, debbe di quella pigliare la volpe ed il lione; perchè il lione non si difende dai lacci, la volpe non si difende da’ lupi. Bisogna adunque essere volpe a conoscere i lacci, e lione a sbigottire i lupi. Coloro che stanno semplicemente in sul lione non se ne intendono.” Niccolò Machiavelli: Il Principe, ed. by L. Arthur Burd, Oxford 1891, p. 302f.
2. ⁹³Sennett, The Performer, p. 30.
3. ⁹⁴“‘She fucking hates him,’ said one Mar-a-Lago patio confidant of Trump and his family” about Melania Trump; Wolff, All of Nothing, p. 274.—“Machiavelli’s interest in the theater [...] was deep. He was the author of plays such as Mandragola, which anatomized how to get away with infidelity in domestic life. We can only infer that he might have thought deceiving a husband or wife deploys the same skills as those which can gull the public.” Sennett, The Performer, p. 30.