Hats as a shorthand for character
Posted By Steven Lewis on June 21, 2009
Ruben Guthrie (Toby Schmitz), a young creative director for an advertising agency in Brendan Cowell's play of the same name
It’s not an original observation that hats are imbued with so many associations that they can be shorthand for what we’d like to say about ourselves or, in the case of fiction or Hollywood stylists, what we’re saying about others. This must be a relatively new phenomenon, possible only in a time when hats are not universally worn. When everyone wore a hat, only a man’s class could be divined from his hat.
It was because of the picture of the young bloke in the top hat that I picked up the café postcard advertising Ruben Guthrie, Brendan Cowell’s play. What is the photographer/publicist/director telling us about the guy wearing it? He’s eccentric? Creative? Wacky? Charming? Off-beat? Mad as a proverbial? How much harder would it be to say that without the top hat?
I booked my ticket for the week after next because of the review, not the hat, but I am interested to see whether the hat even features in the play. More likely it’s just used in the promotional material as shorthand about Ruben Guthrie, whom the review says is a young creative director for an advertising agency and an alcoholic.
Booking the ticket gave me another chance to see hats as shorthand. This is the homepage of the Belvoir Street Theatre, where Ruben Guthrie is playing:
Count the hats: The Belvoir Street Theatre homepage
Two Ruben Guthrie shots with the top hat, despite there being many other promotional shots to choose from; Geoffrey Rush in his Exit the King crown; and a young woman in a trilby advertising Whore. (What does wearing a man’s hat say about a woman?) That’s four hats above the fold. Number of pictures without hats: 0. (There are two hatless pictures below the fold but that’s still four of the six homepage pictures featuring hats.)
Next time you’re looking at the rows of free postcards in a café, check out the number featuring someone in a hat and ask yourself what they or their stylist are trying to tell you with their hat.
About the author
[...] wrote in an earlier post (Hats as a shorthand for character) that I’d picked up the postcard advertising the show because of the picture of the young man [...]