Have the rules of the game changed when it comes to how political figures present themselves physically and emotionally? The latest revelation about Édouard Philippe’s physical changes due to his illness—which the politician openly acknowledges— Pap Ndiaye’s voice trembling with emotion when he spoke of young Lucas’s suicide in the Senate, and Agnès Buzin’s tears as she left the Ministry of Health show us that revealing certain vulnerabilities now seems to be an accepted part of political communication.
Which weaknesses should be concealed, and which ones can be revealed? Underlying this question is the need to understand the reasons behind recent strategies for portraying vulnerability in politics—and, above all, to identify their limitations.
Communication experts generally advise politicians to conceal their weaknesses. This advice stems from a sociohistorical continuity in the collective imagination regarding the status of the body of those who embody power. In this regard, Ernet Kantorowicz’s remarkable work The King’s Two Bodies, published in 1957, helps us understand that the monarchical legacy makes the politician’s body an embodiment of the state—a body that has long been subject to a functional imperative: to remain beyond the concerns of mere mortals.
The failure of the body of politicians as representatives must be concealed in order to glorify an immortal body—that of the monarch, the sovereign. The body of the person in power is not the body of a citizen; it is a vessel for the staging of power, the state, and authority. It must be infallible in order to embody the expectations of citizens: power, determination, strength, and will.
The physical decline of an aging and ailing body is therefore not, a priori, compatible with the figure of power. The body, as the vessel of office, cannot bear the toll of political activity. Throughout her time in government, Angela Merkel embodied, through the robustness of her physical presence, a powerful and hardworking woman. Whether in the case of Georges Pompidou or François Mitterrand, the media were permitted to report on their illnesses according to a very precise and controlled schedule, so as not to disrupt the electoral calendar or, more broadly, political activity.
Recently, the rules of the game have changed, as it is now more difficult for politicians to hide their private lives. For the past decade or so, social media has served as a medium that embodies intimacy, where the staging of politicians’ private lives has become normalized—if not actively desired by the public— amid the growing celebrity culture surrounding political figures. Unable to shield their bodies from media scrutiny, this is the price they pay for visibility. The staging of politicians’ vulnerability has thus become acceptable, even commonplace, especially when it comes to women: the tears of Jacinda Ardern or those of Angela Merkel as they stepped down from office. But it doesn’t stop there. We are, of course, thinking here of Emmanuel Macron and his tweets during his first bout with COVID-19.
�� Macron Tests Positive for COVID-19: The President's Condition Is "Stable," but He Still Has Symptomshttps://t.co/I8lKZA7Yqn pic.twitter.com/XEh0TMe2Qc
— BFMTV (@BFMTV) December 21, 2020
However, here again, it is all a matter of cultural representations and conventions, as Georges Vigarello and Jean-Jacques Courtine have pointed out in their history of the body. What if this intimacy and transparency were, once again, simply another form of communication strategy? This self-revelation responds to a demand from certain citizens who are calling for more humanity and authenticity.
The new rule of the game, therefore, remains the mastery of staging, which is always part of a controlled and deliberate emotional communication strategy. The body, presented as suffering, altered, and unadorned, becomes a means of evoking emotion to garner support. A genuine form of “emotional labor” is at work through the body—a phenomenon that has become widespread across all strata of society and in all professional fields. Why such a strategy?
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The body has become the preferred medium for the emotional presentation of the self: using one’s body to convey emotions in order to make them seem more sincere than words.
For words have lost their value as a measure of truth and sincerity. Faced with the loss of credibility in political discourse, conveying an argument through the body has become a preferred strategy in a context of widespread false belief that the body, at least, does not lie. The somatic becomes political in the pursuit of emotional contagion.
The aim is to move the audience in the etymological sense of the term—that is, to “set in motion”—through the use of the body. It is through the effectof “echoization”—which corresponds to the imitation of bodies among themselves—that emotions are transmitted from one individual to another, from one body to another. And it is precisely this regime of fusion—physical, emotional, and conceptual—that politicians seek to harness.
The public display of certain emotions may simply be another form of concealment, as we saw inthe case of the Fillons: a show of moral integrity designed to hide their embezzlement.
When it comes to physical appearance, it’s all a matter of persuasion tactics, as Erving Goffman described long ago. Hiding some emotions while overemphasizing others is a communication-marketing technique that is no longer limited to commercial communication. It has invaded the political sphere. As an instrumental tool, the physical staging of vulnerability is therefore not so much an admission of weakness as it is a restrained, calibrated, and euphemized expression of what an affected human being is permitted to show.
Here, too, the stigmatized body remains an aestheticized body, and its vulnerability is exploited in this strategic quest to create an emotional connection with the audience. Any means are acceptable, but this raises a question: Is the politician’s body, staged in this way, merely the product of a commercial self-promotion strategy?
Or can it serve as a source of legitimacy—or even acceptance—for emotions that have until now been considered negative within society? In any case, it is up to the public to question and distance themselves from the dynamics of physical and emotional imitation into which they find themselves drawn by contagion, in order to engage in critical reflection. That would be the real change.
