Charm offensiveness
The tyrant truly loves himself—and we love authenticity
Viktor Orbán changes his grandchildren’s diapers. Audiences flock to China’s rural basketball games—even as the locals scratch their heads over who “Village NBA” actually serves. And Richard III puts on a red baseball cap and dances on stage. The crowd goes wild.
This week at Public Seminar, contributors Antoinette Burton, Julia Sonnevend, Claire Potter, and Gil Hizi discuss how politicians cultivate “likability”—and why we crave authenticity, even in obviously artificial environments.
When Politicians Make Nice
Claire Potter and Julia Sonnevend
Sonnevend: Charm offensives are brief public relations campaigns in which countries try to shift their international image through a charming political leader. They are particularly popular with authoritarian regimes that need a quick image makeover.
We simply pay more attention to personalities than to institutions, values, or even facts. If you think about the international context, we are often talking about countries Americans know very little about. And when there is a relatable political character, or a character who we really dislike, it is easier to put the country in a box.
Charming political leaders function as cognitive shortcuts, a simplified, condensed form of their countries.
“Village NBA” in China
Gil Hizi
It remains somewhat of a mystery how Taipan, a village of slightly over 1,000 residents, became, almost overnight, the mecca of village basketball in China. It is located in an area primarily inhabited by the Miao ethnic minority, with the larger Miao-Dong Autonomous Region in the southern province of Guizhou. Although Taipan had a small basketball court dating back to the 1930s, where local games were part of the activities to celebrate summer harvest, this does not explain the current hype. (A basketball court is a common sight in Chinese villages.) People I spoke with in Taipan and Kaili ascribed the boom to the village’s handy location (relatively close to Kaili, the biggest city in the area, and not as mountainous as other villages), the unexpected popularity of videos of local basketball games on social media platforms, the efficient work of the village committee, and its fruitful relationship with the local county government. One teacher in Kaili even pointed to the fact that, relative to the area dominated by the Miao minority, Taipan has many Han residents (the dominant ethnic group in China), thus allowing more state control and penetration of personnel outside this region.
Shakespeare’s Ultimate Crip Text
Antoinette Burton
Richard’s love for us is dependent on our love for him. The love of the people. Mob love. The critics’ focus on the person playing the king distracts us from the work of his henchmen (here, the Duke of Buckingham, played to the hilt in London by Helen Schlesinger), who whip up Richard’s courtiers into an adoring crowd.
At the Globe, that roaring, madding crowd included us, the audience—regardless of where our tickets placed us. In a matter of minutes, all of us were clapping and stamping our feet, drawn into what became enthusiastic mob support for Richard and his ambitions. I’ve never been to a presidential rally, but I became uncannily aware of what it might feel like to be in the midst of such physically intense and contagious fandom.