The Silver Age of Facial Hair

Following Hesiod's concept that the silver age follows rather than precedes the golden age, our Golden Age may well have been the 19th century; but there's a Silver Age upon us now. In fact it has a lot to do with the Silver Screen, argues this piece in the New Republic.
You could consume more than half a century of American popular culture, from World War II to Korea to Vietnam to September 11, without encountering many bearded manly heroes; facial hair was generally reserved for wild enemies foreign and domestic, swarthy terrorists and libertine hippies. Even American westerns posited a surprising number of neatly trimmed frontier protagonists, reserving scruff for their foes. Italian-produced spaghetti westerns, which introduced Clint Eastwood’s perpetually unshaven man with no name, seem the exception that proves the rule, deploying beards as to emphasize that their protagonists are deeply flawed antiheroes, operating outside mainstream norms....

[W]hy is ours such a hairy century? What began this trend, and what fuels it? There is an easy answer, though it leads to harder questions: We can thank the Global War on Terror—or the Long War, the Bellum Americanum, whatever you choose to call it—and the reluctance of military leaders to impose discipline on the most professional of the units that participated in GWOT, special operations forces. Generals preferred to allow those units to operate based on “big boy rules”—a devolution of authority empowering them to operate like Apocalypse Now’s mad Col. Kurtz, “without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct.” The evidence of this is the proliferation of beards in the military, which now extends to civilian society. We worship the post-9/11 military operator. We are a nation drunk on “tacticool” culture.
I'll grant that there may be a connection between the popularity of beards and the cultural moment being enjoyed by operators in story and film. I reject just about everything else the article has to say, though, starting with its conception of 'big boy rules.'

Big boy rules is a real thing, but it doesn't mean that you're unrestrained. It's a simple concept: "Do what you think is right, being prepared to shoulder the consequences of your decision." If, like the authors, you wanted a tie to right wing American politics, you could point at the post-military career of LTC Allen West (who was and is clean shaven). He committed a war crime by staging a fake execution in order to intimidate a man into revealing details about the ambush that threatened to kill several of West's men. He then at once turned himself in, confessed himself, and took the consequences. His subsequent career is based not on respect for him being unburdened by morality, but by his moral decision to take the responsibility for bringing his men home alive even though it meant his career -- that, coupled with his complete refusal to try to dodge the responsibility for what he had done.

It is true that the American right saw the value in that, while the Left mostly saw the war crime; but the point is that it was metaphysically West's decision to make, he made it, and he owned the consequences. The law might argue that West had no right to make the decision; command and control might argue that it wasn't his to make. But ultimately, metaphysically, it was only he who was there in the position to decide.

A cinematic version of this occurs in the movie Flyboys, based on WWI-era Americans fighting in a volunteer flying squadron in France. Complaining about the murder of one of their own by a German ace, the men are told by their commanding French officer: "You want justice? You're the man with the gun." There may not be any justice forthcoming for what was done, but if there is, it's going to be on them to make it. Nobody else is going to step up and make things right. You have to decide what that's worth to you, and accept the consequences of whatever decision you make.

It is not that the man is unquestionable, nor that he is merciless. He submits to judgment after the fact; and perhaps his mercy was exercised on the wives and children of his men, rather than on the ones plotting to kill his people. The point is only that he had to make a decision, and he didn't hide from it, not in the moment and not after.

If you understand that, the rest of their essay unravels. Too, perhaps, you can come to see why this thing they are criticizing might prove to have some value after all.

5 comments:

raven said...

So all those bearded hippies in the 60's were "tacticool"? I never woulda guessed...

BTW- "War Crime" my ass. That West's action was called a war crime is a travesty, and an indication of how un-serious we are as a nation in pursuing victory. In WW2 that would be called getting the job done, and I have met people who did get the job done in exactly that way- by telling nazi officers they needed info, and they were going to have 10 minutes to think it over or their brains would adorning the wire. This particular GI needed a critical German mine field cleared asap and he was not joking.


There is no PC way to fight a war. The more PC the pencil necks try to make it, the more men and wars we will lose. We can blow someone to red mist, but not hurt their feelings. Insane.

Grim said...

I have also met quite a few people who have done things that way, as you say. Some of them have been great people, whose moral judgment may violate the laws thought up in comfort far from the battlefield, but whose concern saved lives and brought people home. It also saw to the elimination of some very wicked people (see the article headlined 'In Praise of Killing,' above).

Years ago, on one of my trips to Iraq, I had to sit through a legal briefing by a military lawyer who was tasked with explaining the rules of engagement to us. He used LTC West as his bad example. It was a mixed crowd of current service personnel and others like myself, many of whom were veterans returning to war as civilians. The current service personnel were duly polite in enduring the lecture, but there was quite a lot of heckling from the veterans who no longer had to fear nonjudicial punishment for speaking their minds. They loved LTC West because he brought home his guys, even though it meant that he gave up his career.

I think they felt that putting a terrorist through a psychological trauma -- but no physical harm whatsoever -- was more than fair given the similar trauma he was inflicting on the soldiers by planting bombs and arranging ambushes for them. It didn't seem unreasonable at all to them. But the point is, West didn't hide from it. He did what he decided he needed to do in order to protect his guys, and then he turned himself in and faced the music like a man.

Big boy rules. Make your choices, and take the consequences.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Decades ago, I thought along the same lines about conscientious objectors that could not qualify under the rules the military had. You think this particular war is immoral and you can't participate, because you care that much? Fine. Then be willing to go to jail for it. You don't think that's fair and you want to be let off from that? Then I guess you don't really care that much about the principle after all.

To be clear, there were people who did just that, and I admired their conviction.

douglas said...

It's funny how the people who think they're so in touch with the oppressed brown people around the world don't understand something like the importance of facial hair in the Middle East and South Asia, which is the main factor in the allowance of elite units to have facial hair.

Also, while I do agree it played a role in redefining the role of facial hair in masculinity, I think it started before that and is tied into what I see as a weak and subtle 'revolt' against the feminization of males of the last generation- the trends in facial hair, 'urban lumberjack' fashion, retro 19th c. fashion amongst the hipsters- all an misdirected effort to hold onto some semblance of masculinity in an age where actually acting like a man has become offensive.

Anonymous said...

I went through the Special Forces Officers course in the '80's (Special Operations Detachment Officer's Qualification Course). We always discussed the necessity of beards in cultures where men wear beards. In a culture like Afghanistan where a non bearded man is akin to a woman or an adolescent, the beard becomes necessary for team members to establish rapport with the locals. If you have some grey in the beard, even better. Grey = old and wise in those cultures.

Getting the brain trust to understand this was always difficult.