Abstract
From Poirot’s moustache to Clint Eastwood’s cowboy stubble, facial hair can be a useful tool in a storyteller’s arsenal, an immediate visual shorthand for indicating wealth, status, culture or state of mind to an audience. The author investigates how we use facial hair in the portrayal of narrative stereotypes in performance, what our definition of these characters from their aesthetic says about us, and why some characters’ facial hair seems to pervade popular culture to such a degree it acquires a celebrity independent of the wearer. She also looks at the experience of those performers who grow facial hair for particular roles and have to live with the character ‘on their face’ as well as those who use the transformative power of false facial hair and how they feel it differs from other costume elements, as if it were a facsimile of their own body.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Mike Featherstone , “The Body in Consumer Culture,” in The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, ed. Mike Featherstone , Mike Hepworth, and Bryan S. Turner (London: Sage, 1991), 170–96 at 171.
- 2.
Aristotle , Physiognomonica, trans. W. D. Ross and J. A. Smith, The Works of Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913).
- 3.
Sharon Pearl, About Faces : Physiognomy in Nineteenth Century Britain (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2010), esp. 2–4.
- 4.
Mary Anne Mitchell, “The Development of the Mask as a Critical Tool for an Examination of Character and Performer Action” (PhD Diss., Texas Tech University, 1986).
- 5.
Aristophanes , Assembly Women , trans. George Theodoridis, 2009, accessed 11 October 2017, http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/WomenInParliament.htm.
- 6.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , The Sign of Four (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), 132.
- 7.
Adrian Stephen, The “Dreadnought” Hoax (London: Hogarth Press, 1936).
- 8.
Willy Clarkson , “The Art of the Disguise,” The Strand Illustrated, vol. 39, May 1910, 608–12 at 608, accessed 11 October 2017, https://archive.org/stream/TheStrandMagazineAnIllustratedMonthly/TheStrandMagazine1910aVol.XxxixJan-jun#page/n625/mode/1up.
- 9.
Interview with Oliver Assets , February 2017.
- 10.
Interview with Zoe Coombs Marr , November 2015.
- 11.
Jowy Romano, “The Man Behind the Moustache,” accessed 11 October 2017, http://subwayartblog.com/2011/05/05/the-man-behind-the-moustache/.
- 12.
Interview with Chris Nicholas , January 2017.
- 13.
Richard Herring, Hitler Moustache released on DVD 2010, PIAS comedy.
- 14.
Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964), 145.
- 15.
Lew Bloom ’s obituary, Reading Eagle, 13 December 1929.
- 16.
Sydney Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin : A Tramp’s Life, A & E Television, 1998.
- 17.
Charlie Chaplin: A Tramp’s Life, A & E Television, 1998.
- 18.
Chaplin, My Autobiography, 146.
- 19.
Stefan Kanfer , Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx (New York: Knopf, 2000).
- 20.
Agatha Christie , The Mysterious Affair at Styles (New York and London: John Lane, 1920), 34.
- 21.
David Suchet interview for “Being Poirot” 2013. Acorn Productions.
- 22.
Interview with Stuart McGugan , January 2017.
- 23.
Interview with Anthony Calf , September 2016.
- 24.
Interview with Tony Bannister , October 2016.
- 25.
William Smith ed., A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London: John Murray, 1875), 663.
- 26.
Ahmed Twaij, “‘I Hate this Beard. By God, I Hate It’: Iraqi Men Celebrate their Freedom by Shaving ,” The Guardian , 8 November 2016.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Casey, H. (2018). A Tiny Cloak of Privilege: Facial Hair and Story Telling. In: Evans, J., Withey, A. (eds) New Perspectives on the History of Facial Hair. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73497-2_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73497-2_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73496-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73497-2
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)