Trois notes on charm

mediation, magic, and misapplication

Hello friends,

There are times in life when you come across a person so charming it is like they wrote the book on it.

Several weeks ago, I was sunbathing on the chaise lounge next to such a woman—not French, Hungarian, but in full possession of that idealized European-intellectual charm, Yale-ified into simultaneous American ease. I felt like I’d known her for years; within an hour we were making plans to take our sons to the Museum of Natural History together.

But so far this is merely a rare encounter, not an unprecedented one. What was extra extraordinary about Julia Sonnevend is that she literally had written the book on charm. Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics. She handed me a signed copy—a gesture that, having written the book on . . . narcissism, I could only imperfectly reciprocate.

Joshua Rothman wrote an excellent review of the book last September, which I both recommend and feel no desire to emulate. Rather, I’d like to address trois specific points of charming (narcissistic?) canonical diachronicity.

I. Charm as internal mediation

Julia distinguishes charm from charisma in their proximity vs. distance. The emphasis here is hers:

Charm is personal magnetism that rests on proximity to political “tribes” and manifests primarily through visual and textual communication on a variety of media platforms. To succeed in the current media environment, political leaders must appear as accessible, authentic, and relatable in their quest for power. Charm can also manifest in direct personal communication at parades, demonstrations, and political rallies.

This is distinctly different from how charisma has been traditionally understood. Charisma relies on distance to political citizens and is mostly expressed through exceptional rhetorical performances in a limited set of media.

As such, we can superimpose charm and charisma directly onto the Girardian concepts of internal vs. external mediation. The pointed shift towards charm and “charm offenses” Julia observes in politicians and connects to the rise of social media are deeply reminiscent of the literary shift Girard observed from Cervantes to Proust (external to internal):

In the novels of Cervantes and Flaubert, the mediator remained beyond the universe of the hero; he is now within the same universe.

Romantic works are, therefore, grouped into two fundamental categories—but within these categories there can be an infinite number of secondary distinctions. We shall speak of external mediation when the distance is sufficient to eliminate any contact between the two spheres of possibilities of which the mediator and the subject occupy the respective centers. We shall speak of internal mediation when the same distance is sufficiently reduced to allow these two spheres to penetrate each other more or less profoundly.

Obviously it is not physical space that measures the gap between mediator and the desiring subject. Although geographical separation might be one factor, the distance between mediator and subject is primarily spiritual. Don Quixote and Sancho are always close to each other physically but the social and intellectual distance which separate them remains insuperable.

Meanwhile, though physically set apart from his constituency up on Observatory Hill, the current Vice President of the United States—notably less like a fictional character than his boss—is also just another “reply guy” on X.

Not to say the trend towards political charm is partisan. Julia illustrates similar techniques employed to liberal as well as illiberal ends. And while I certainly can’t say I was as put off by Jacinda Ardern’s charm as I am by Viktor Orbán’s, there is nonetheless something unnerving to me about the collective phenomenon.

II. Charm as artist-magic

My ambivalence, per Julia, tracks:

Charm is two-faced: it embodies both the positive features of seduction and the negative features of deception. Charm comes from the Latin “carmen” (song, verse, incantation); even in its etymology it refers to mediation and to the power to seduce, and sometimes mislead, through sound, text, and appearance. In politics and everyday life, seduction and deception walk hand in hand, highlighting two sides of the same coin. There is a constant tension around charming interactions, as people are drawn to the seductive magic of charm, but at the same time express deep suspicion of it, fearing deception or charm’s proximity to the uncontrollability of magic.

Here I want to connect this force politicians are increasingly coopting explicitly to fame’s inflection point and the artist’s magic image.

Western literature is indebted to epic poetry; that is, to the oral tradition, to song. “Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus” the Iliad begins (Lattimore); in another translation, “Anger be now your song” (Fitzgerald). His Odyssey? “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story / of that man skilled in all ways of contending . . .”

Homer’s heroes—his subjects—lean charismatic; they are moved to greatness by things like anger and contention. But Homer himself is all charm. Charm is seductively, deceptively, unavoidably requisite to storytelling. It undergirds the advantageous mechanics of narrative and those rags-to-riches, autodidact-type “artist-anecdotes”—

in service not of some general, indiscriminate desire for status, power, fame, and fortune, but a very specific one: to pass the threshold that I’m going to call fame’s inflection point. This being the point at which the value of a person’s art in the absolute broadest sense—everything they make, say, do, capture, etc.—no longer primarily derives its power from what, but who. Not from the artifact, but the artist.

Politicians no longer want to be heroes. They want to be artists—to be authors, even when they’re not authoritarians.

III. Charm’s pernicious misapplication

Which brings me back to what’s unnerving about political charm, independent of where it falls on the spectrum. The negativity Julia notes is a function not of charm itself, but specifically its political application. Deception is not a flaw in art;—deception is art’s greatest achievement. Here’s Plutarch, in a passage from “On the Fame of the Athenians” I’ve shared before but bears repeating:

But tragedy blossomed forth and won great acclaim, becoming a wondrous entertainment for the ears and eyes of the men of that age, and, by the mythological character of its plots, and the vicissitudes which its characters undergo, it effected a deception wherein, as Gorgias remarks, “he who deceives is more honest than he who does not deceive, and he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived.” For he who deceives is more honest, because he has done what he promised to do; and he who is deceived is wiser, because the mind which is not insensible to fine perceptions is easily enthralled by the delights of language.

There isn’t a shred of discordant ick between artistic deception and artistic fame!

So why is there politically? The unnervingness of political charm is the result of yet another material-metaphysical clash, at once the same and the inverse mistake of Marxism:

Marxist policies (as well as more “realist” progressive ones) can ameliorate problems of “needs”—but cannot do the same for “wants.” Ironically, they even have the potential to exacerbate our metaphysical pain, because it is precisely sameness that drives the metaphysical desire to self-differentiate.

Charm, meanwhile, can mitigate metaphysical pain, but—recalling prestige—you can’t eat it. Charm’s immediacy and tribal connection offer entrance to a metaphysical inner sanctum independent of solving any material needs. And politicians should be focused on their constituents material needs! This expectation is explicit in the separation of church and state, and our acceptance of political charm as a replacement for interrogative distributive justice is part of why this distinction is disastrously collapsing! The immediate danger of political charm’s deception belies another far greater.

My very favorite part of Julia’s book was the final chapter on Angela Merkel’s “authenticity without charm.” This is what we should want in our politicians.

While Instagram is particularly known for its visuality and emotional appeal, Merkel seemed to carve out a nonspectacular persona there, over time effectively ignoring the platform’s social and cultural norms. Merkel’s Instagram profile—much in line with her general public presentation—stood out in consistency and ordinariness, while regularly dropping any intimate qualities. Instead of adapting her visuals to social media’s logic, Merkel shaped social media to effectively host her spectacle-free and expertise-focused persona.

Give me more Angela Merkels at every level of government!

And fewer Angela Merkelesque “artists”! We are the proper sources of the seduction and deception and charm people crave. (For all her delightfulness,

Marlowe Granados

cannot possibly be expected to carry this torch alone.)

The absence of charm in art and the reliance on it in politics both amount to the corruption of a beautiful thing. For those of us who are not billionaires, it is boring, egalitarian politicians who best enable charming tête-à-têtes by opulent pools.

ANJ

PS, Austen Math will return soon with Northanger Abbey.