So I've been getting a bit obsessed about the
Hitler moustache and thinking about how it seems unfair that the moustache has become the ultimate victim of Hitler's reign of terror. I don't think anyone could dispute that.
Because now what was presumably once quite a popular style or at least a facial possibility is now wiped from the face of the earth and the faces of all but the most
morally suspect of men (and I'm not sure Robert Mugabe even counts as his covers the philtrum only, thus making an already comical adornment even more ridiculous) Wikipedia lists all the famous people who have chosen to sport what it sensitively refers to as
the toothbrush moustache. I haven't heard of many of them and the ones I have heard of pretty much all predate Hitler. It seems very unfair that the moustache is getting all the blame for Hitler's atrocities. It's not like people are criticised for having hair like Hitler, or at least, you could walk down the street with your locks in that style and no one would give you a hard time. Yet sport a Hitler moustache and everyone would suspect you of being a Nazi or a racist. But surely it wasn't the moustache that was responsible. And neither was it mandatory for all Nazis to wear one. Surely 60 years on the moustache can make a resurgance. Isn't it a case of us shifting responsibility? Why would someone sporting a Hitler moustache immediately be assumed to be emulating Hitler, rather than Charlie Chaplin or Oliver Hardy.
So I am considering growing a Hitler moustache and keeping it for a while and see how people react. Except that I think by doing so I might seriously affect my day to day life. I live in a multi-ethnic community - how will my neighbours feel about it? Might I be attacked by aggrieved anti-Nazis? Just for having a moustache? Who's the real Nazi there?
I have to do stand up gigs - what kind of message would it send out to the audience? I'd have to spend five minutes at the start of every gig explaining what I was doing and how this was about reclaiming the Hitler moustache and taking it back from Hitler and not about supporting Hitler or any of his decisions, other than the one to see what he'd look like if he just had a moustache that covered the middle bit of the space between his mouth and his nose.
What if I was asked to be on a show like "Never Mind The Buzzcocks" again. How would they feel if one of the panelists had a Hitler moustache? Would they choose to comment on it, or ignore it? Wouldn't it skew the whole perception of me as a person and a comedian? Yet it's just a bit of hair. Why should it have to ruin my life.
I can't do it yet, that's for certain. I am about to embark on a
national tour, doing a show about being at school. People would be sitting in the audience wondering about the moustache - I wouldn't be able to explain about it without ruining the dramatic opening. Such is the power of this fashion statement.
Though there's a part of me that thinks this would be funny and interesting to attempt, there is also a big part of me that thinks it would be awful, that is scared of altering my face in this way, that wonders if by growing a Hitler moustache I would somehow start to act like Hitler. But it wasn't the moustache that made him act that way. How has the moustache acquired this mystical power and this ability to instill fear and hatred? Even when I know the moustache is not to blame.
I might try a mini one for the podcast tomorrow and see how it affects things, but I don't think I am ready to go out into the street with it just yet. But it just takes one brave man to reclaim this moustache for the world. He might be killed in the process, but if it means my (friend's) children can live in a world where the Hitler moustache does not immediately make us think of Hitler then it will be worth it. And that man could be me.
I think people would think I was mentally ill if I walked down the street with a Hitler moustache, but I also wonder if it might make me mentally ill. Or whether I am mentally ill to be comtemplating it.
It's interesting that Hitler might have only come up with the moustache
as a result of his previous one getting in the way of a gasmask, especially as he was ultimately gassed in the first world war anyway. If he hadn't trimmed it would his previous style of moustache be the one that is equated with evil now. Or is the Hitler moustache simply objectively evil.
It's interesting that Chaplin chose to have a similar moustache so that it
would add age to him without hiding his expression. But maybe it was just a fashionable thing back in the early 20th Century to have this jaunty face fuzz. And so why should that all be ruined by Hitler? He ruined enough without ruining moustaches too.
Having said all that looking at those pictures of Hitler, with his fine and bushy moustache - I just don't think I could hope to grow anything anywhere near as impressive as that. Perhaps you have to be really evil to generate facial hair in that quantity. It would explain Stalin (and why is the Stalin moustache not embued with the same sinister undertones), though not Mugabe, who looks like a bum-fluff faced teenager.
Even if I don't grow a moustache I think the basic questions behind this entry might make for the beginnings of an interesting stand up show. I have already started imagining the poster.
But the jury is still out on this one.
Oh and the "Oh Dear I'm 40" DVD is back in stock at
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