03.18.08 5:00 AM CDT
• TV & DVDs
• Jamie Malanowski
Being the world’s most reliable consumer of historical dramas, I obligingly clicked on HBO for the first two episodes of its seven part series on John Adams, which was titled, with no-frills certitude, John Adams. The show was as dutiful, as earnest and as joyless (and ultimately less moving) as a big bowl of All-Bran. And I think I know why.
Eight years ago, when the Mel Gibson blockbuster The Patriot came out, I wrote an article wondering why there weren’t more movies about the Revolutionary War. One person I asked to comment was the historian David McCullough, who was still a year away from publishing his masterful biography of John Adams, which he titled, with no-frills certitude, "John Adams." He said, "A lot of us have trouble at first perceiving those people as real, because of their clothing, and the wigs, and their mannered way of speaking, they are like characters in a costume pageant.’’
After watching almost three hours of last night’s late eighteenth century pageant, I am convinced McCullough was onto something. But it’s not so much the clothing or the way of speaking. It’s the wigs.
Adams’ puritan pewter-colored wig, Washington’s powdery white wig, Rutledge’s ornate frosting wig—they were big distractions. Adams was talking about liberty, and I was thinking, `Doesn’t he have any idea how he looks?’ Adams was going on about the futility of petitioning the king, and I kept thinking, `Look at Jefferson--look how flattering that simple ponytail is. And Franklin—that aging hippie look works!’’ When Adams recruited Jefferson and Franklin to write the declaration of independence, I thought, would it have killed them to have included a Manifesto of Style?
You know, wigs weren’t some fly-by-night, Nehru jacket fad. Wigs were the fashion throughout Europe and the Americas for almost 200 years. Elizabeth I kicked off the fashion among women in the late 16th century, and the King Louis XIII of France pioneered wig-wearing among men in the 1620s. Apparently Louis felt badly about going prematurely going bald, and had a wig made for himself. The ass-kissing toadies at court soon followed. When Charles II of Britain was in hiding in France during the reign of Cromwell, he took up the style and brought it back to England, and for decades, the wigs got longer and more elaborate. Hard as it to accept, the whole of the Enlightenment was thought up under wigs. The style was on its last legs when the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia, but it really didn’t die out until Napoleon kind of kicked off a new era of natural coiffures. (Oh, think of Oliver Perry’s feathery bangs! Andrew Jackson’s mane! Davy Crockett’s pelt! And then came the beards. The 19th century really was the century of hair.)
It’s all fine that the Adams and his pals shook off the shackles that bound them to the despotic motherland. But had they really wanted to do something revolutionary, they should have declared that among man’s unalienable rights was the right to show to the world his own God-given head of hair.
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Comments on this entry:
Wigs notwithstanding, I have found "John Adams" to be, so far, crackling good. It's been anything but joyless and dutiful, but a fascinating glimpse into the messy, intrigue-filled beginnings of America. And I rolled my eyes when I heard about Paul Giamatti's casting as the lead character; I take that back in spades.
When I gawk at Elizabeth Berridge as Mrs. Mozart in Amadeus, I wonder in particular why women's wigs were white of all possible colors. Why not blond, brown, black, or red?
However, I'll admit to having seen sexy gray hair on one woman—a coworker at a job I had years ago.