For Polònia’s staff, a politician is what Jeffrey C. Alexander (2010b) defines as a celebrity-icon: material symbols structured by the interplay of surface and depth. “The surface of the celebrity- icon is an aesthetic structure whose sensuous qualities command attention and compels attachment”, he argues. He uses the example of Roland Barthes’ reflections on the face of Hollywood actress Greta Garbo to explain his argument. The beauty of Garbo-surface, says Alexander, is the “visible signifier [that] connects us to the invisible meaning of Garbo-depth, the sacred signified, the spiritual essence of the human being” (p.325). If the icon succeeds in drawing the observer into the depth of its iconic meaning, “the specifics of the object and its production fall away” because the object becomes a symbol, “not a specific referent for some specific thing but a signifier that points to all ‘such things’” (2008, p.6). Jeffrey C. Alexander (2010b) also wonders if perhaps “we should not so quickly separate ourselves from ancient peoples”. He asks if it might be possible to understand icons “as a sign of the primitiveness of the modern or the modernity of the primitive?” (p.324) He says that icons, either persons or objects, can be regarded as totems connecting societies with deeper meanings. Again, with the example of Greta Garbo’s face, he maintains that behind its surface, there is the structure of its depth. “The beauty of Garbo-surface, the visible signifier, connects us to the invisible meaning of Garbo-depth, the sacred signified, the spiritual essence of the human being” (p.324). Polònia’s actors and actresses seem to agree with Alexander in the assumption that there is something in the depth of the politicians waiting to be unpacked by a sensuous experience.
‘What does the politician look like?’ is the key question to unveil the depth of the politician. It is a strategy that actors use when crafting their characters. The answers tend to consist of fictional characters, other politicians or people from their own everyday lives. They call them ‘similarities’ and are part and parcel of the crafting process because they can provide the very ‘personality’ of the fictional character. Those similarities are triggered by the sensations experienced by the impersonator when establishing the aforementioned connection with the politician. If the actor or actress succeeds in striking the right chord, that is to say, in finding the similarity that best- resonates with the audience, then the politician is no longer the referent to be imitated. If this occurs, a good impersonation imitates the ‘similarity’, not the politician. The character looks like the politician in terms of costume and makeup, but its personality is set free and the audience still finds them ‘the same’. This means that there is something in the depth of the politician that tells more about them than their surface.
Actors and actresses unpack the deeper meanings of politicians by looking at the similarities they recall. Francesc Novell has impersonated the SPM, Mariano Rajoy, since 2008. He describes this politician as a “very static guy. I mean, he is from Galicia, and it is always said that if you see a Galician in a staircase you cannot tell if he is going up or down. Because they are so reserved, they never take a stand, so you never know. This is Mariano Rajoy”. This lack of expressivity helped Francesc Novell to connect Mariano Rajoy with a popular character in Spain: Don Tancredo:
Long ago, before the bullfight, there were shows in the Plaza de Toros. Everything was very humiliating: dwarfs, clowns, quite demeaning. Then, there was one character that came inside a barrel rolling over the sand, Don Tancredo was his name. Rajoy reminds me Don Tancredo, a guy who is there, but he does not defend himself, he does not know how to defend himself. He does not even have skills to defend himself. It was very funny, with the bull ramming the barrel to turn it upside down with Don Tancredo inside. It was very absurd, but that was funny.
Agnès Busquets said that the deputy SPM, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría reminds her of: The typical girl in the school who was always sitting in the front row, that girl that studied a lot, but she also knew how to achieve something else. She is not just nerdy, a swot, I mean if it was convenient for her, she knew how to get what she needed, even negotiating with the thuggish boy in the class. She is, as a proper swot, very ambitious. She dreams big and aims high for tomorrow, but she knows that today she has to ride out this diminishing role of washing Rajoy’s dishes.
For Lara Díez, CUP spokesperson, Anna Gabriel, looks like the:
Middle sister in a family, someone who has her place and sometimes she is more on observation, in silence, she is particularly observant. And I would say that she has a point of humour and laugh by only as a self-indulgence to be at ease, but she always has a checkpoint in the gaze, something of holding out and not to chill out too much.
For Mireia Portas, the former Spanish Minister of Defence (2008-2001), Carme Chacón, had a hint of a childish lover:
In one season she was very close to Zapatero [former SPM, 2004-2011], so we did a sort of childish crush. A very naïve thing that came out of when she talked to Zapatero, she was like José [Mireia makes a girly voice]. This is what I receive from her, some puerility, a platonic love, a juvenile thing.
Sergi Cervera imitates the president of Ciudadanos España, Albert Rivera. Sergi found three referents in Rivera. Two of them are other politicians and the third is a movie character. Political referents relate to this Rivera’s public career, while the film character has to do with his personality:
He looks like Kennedy and Adolfo Suárez. Kennedy was the generational renewal. In a United States just out of World War II, where presidents were old, white people, Kennedy appears as the bright young man, handsome, upper class, with resources. That's the Kennedy side. Adolfo Suárez appears because he was a centrist figure from Francoism, representing calm, reform, and youth. Suárez was a gentleman, a handsome, young, classic man, who managed to sit down former enemies around the same table. And the other thing is that Adolfo Suárez was signed by the King because he was thought to be an impressionable person, but Adolfo Suárez came out of that cliché and made his own career.
In personal terms, Albert Rivera:
Fits with James Bond. Cocky, cold, alpha male, refined, he would take a cup with two fingers for not to heat it. As Bond, he is a man of action, he rides a motorcycle, loves extreme sports and risk. They both skip the protocol if they have to. Then I see a James Bond: gentleman, refined, and with a plan to kill them all.
It can be the case that different actors find different similarities in the same politician, which relate to the authorial nature of the character mentioned in the first section. The case of the former president of Catalonia, Artur Mas, can illustrate this. Mas was impersonated by different actors on the two field trips. In 2015, the actor was Bruno Oro, who worked with the character from 2006, but he was no longer working on Polònia by 2016 and the character was taken over by David Marcé. Interviewed in 2015, Bruno Oro observed that when he prepared his impersonation of Artur Mas, he tried to catch his:
Bravado, because he is quite conceited, I mean, vain. I remember that I used one typical actors’ exercise: an improvisation with animals. What animal would this character be? And I thought Artur Mas would be a rooster. Actually, in the early years, my interpretation was more histrionic; I used to do it like galluno [rooster- like]. And that is what he inspired: he is a gallant man, manly, successful with women, and with authority.
David Marcé also related Mas with an animal, but instead of a rooster, with a fox: He is a clever man, I know that at the end everything went wrong for him, but I still see him as a foxy man. The thing is that for a long time he managed to slope off, he
gave the impression of always getting away with it in, somehow he always managed to escape with the chicken. So I do him with that foxy gaze that he provokes in me. For David Marcé, this difference is explained by the political situation in which he took over the character: “Bruno with Artur Mas when he had a messianic thing, something like: ‘people of Catalonia, follow me! I’ll lead you to the promised land!’ While I took the character when he has to sacrifice himself for the independence, so I do him with an element of martyr”. David Marcé was referring to January 2016, when Artur Mas was forced to step down as president of Catalonia as a condition of forming a coalition government with CUP.
Once the similarity has been identified, actors try to imitate the ‘similarity’ instead of the politician. Somehow, at this point the politician disappears and the character ends up being endowed with the ‘personality’ of the similarity. Antoni Albá pointed out that:
If we do the character as the real one, it is not fun. I have to transpose it to another level if I want to cause an effect in the audience. For example, to make my character of Pope Ratzinger, of course I observed his gestures, how he presented himself and so on, but, I imitated Louis de Funès, a French comedian who pulled those funny faces, always slapping his partner. I behaved like Louis de Funès, obviously Ratzinger was not like that.
Francesc Novell also makes this transposition with his character of Mariano Rajoy. Novell explained that his Rajoy consists of Groucho Marx and Paco Martínez Soria. Groucho was an alter ego-character created by the US American actor and comedian Julius Marx, appearing in 26 films from 1921 to 1968. Paco Martínez Soria was a Spanish theatre and film actor whose professional career lasted from 1934 to 1981.
Paco was very famous in the 50s. In all of his films, his character was the grandfather of the village, a villager who lives in a very little town of 200 inhabitants. When he goes to the capital, Madrid, he was like 'ooh, look at the big the houses! So many cars! That was very successful because many people identified themselves with him. […] Once I thought to myself: this Rajoy is the sum of these two guys. He is the parochial Paco with Groucho’s follies. And when I came to this conclusion, I left everything, I just kept the voice. Then I thought ‘I have to make a mess of it’. And he got out of hand, you know, with those funny faces and gestures. Since then the character grew up, leaving behind the strict imitation (Francesc Novell).
In the cases of Ratzinger and Rajoy, the character kept the external appearance of the real-life politician, but in the case of former minister of Education, Culture and Education, José Wert (2011-2015), the character looked like something completely different. “I remember that we
discussed with the scriptwriters and we agreed that it was better to make him like Dr Evil, the bad guy in Austin Powers”, said David Olivares, the actor who impersonated Wert:
There was some physical similarity because they are bald, but that was not the main reason. The thing is Wert was an evil guy for Catalan culture, he was against teaching Catalan in Catalonia’s schools, and so on. So, I saw him like an evil guy and it was such a success.
Neither David Olivares nor any other participant remember if Wert was ever imitated in regular clothing, they said that he was always a Dr Evil look-alike, and on top of that they eventually created a mini-Wert, just like Mini-Me, Dr Evil’s partner in the the sequels Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Austin Powers in Goldmember
Despite the fact that they were imitating the ‘similarity’, actors said that the audience did recognise the real-life politicians. Francesc Novell mentioned the case of Oriol Pujol, son of Jordi Pujol, former president of Catalonia (1980-2003). Both father and son were accused of influence peddling, bribery, money laundering and public corruption in 2014. Before these allegations erupted, Oriol Pujol appeared as a duo on Polònia with Artur Mas, impersonated by Bruno Oro8:
Physically, I could have looked like Pujol, maybe in voice, but in personality nothing, zero. We did a gag with Artur Mas, and then another one and another one, and a pair of clowns was created: the serious one, Artur Mas, and the funny one with the red nose, Oriol Pujol. That was a hit. Did they look like the real ones? Nothing, zero, but people said: ‘Oh god, they are identical!’ People within Pujol’s party used to tell me: ‘I die of laughter because it is the same!' And I said to them, 'but it's not the same. This guy is a jerk, I mean, Oriol might be many things but stupid'. Well, the audience bought the character and when a character is bought, it can be dressed like an astronaut or a ballerina and the audience will recognise him anyway.
David Olivares had a similar experience with his character of former Catalan Home Secretary, Felip Puig (2010-2012): “My Puig was nothing like the real-life one, because when I did my Puig, I did my Puig. He could have said, I don’t speak like this, I don’t walk like that, and I would say, ‘I am not imitating you’”. The most characteristic prop of Felip Puig’s impersonation was a baseball bat symbolising the law enforcement associated with a Home Secretary. “And once I received a picture of Felip Puig, the real one, in a convention, with a baseball bat in his hands, and then I
realised, these guys watch the show and they recognise themselves in our characters”, said David Olivares. “It can be the case that your character is more similar to the original, than the original one”, said Francesc Casanovas to explain why some people recognise the politicians in their impersonations, despite the differences:
This might happen because in your observation you have struck a responsive chord with your instinct. I like the metaphor of the sculptor that has nothing to do because the sculpture is already inside the rock and he just has to cut off the excess. In a way this is what we do, and some people ask me ‘how do you know this politician does this?’ Well, I don’t know, I just follow my instinct, what I feel, and I stroke that chord.
The last stage of the crafting process is when the character takes over the body of the actor or actress. The amalgam of the sensations triggered in the actors’ bodies when connecting with the politician and the references and images prompted by these sensations end up condensed into a fictional character that possesses the interpreter.
When I have a character I can go shopping acting like her. When you can do that, the character is done and you disappear. I mean, when I see my Soraya or my Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, I do things that as myself, as Agnès, I would never dare to do. But you have the mask on and the characters goes on her own and you can improvise (Agnès Busquets).
Busquets describes the sensations of being possessed by the character as “listening to a little voice inside yourself”. Francesc Casanovas provides a similar description. For him, this possession has to do with “the moment when the character breaths inside yourself”. In his experience, Francesc Casanovas has felt taken over by characters such as the journalist Pilar Rahola, the mayor of Valencia, Rita Barbera, or the member of Spanish Parliament, Joan Tardà: “Eventually, you feel the character is part of you, you can notice it within yourself. It sounds like a mystical thing, and I do believe in that, it is like a mystical possession which allows you to better do your job. It is like a mask that you have put on so many times that it perfectly fits you”. Interviewees, however, pointed out that this possession cannot be experienced with all the characters. Actor Ivan Labanda felt this connection with Miquel Iceta, president of PSC, but not with Oriol Junqueras, president of ERC and former vice-president of Catalonia (2016-2017):
Junqueras is so voluptuous that I need so much stuff to look like him that it limits my interpretation, but with Iceta I go at ease and our version of Iceta allows you to do more silly things. And also you have to take into account that we are always
short of time to create or character, so you have to connect really quickly with something. With Iceta I can do that quicker.
Mireia Portas said that she:
Has been doing the character of Reina Sofía for so long that I could say that it has a life on her own. But you need time to create this connection and when you are there, the character can be done effortlessly. I could be doing Reina Sofía all day long, doing improvisations and creating on the go because it is something alive with its own energy.
This section showed what actors and actress can find when they manage to break into the sensuous surface projected by politicians. Polònia’s impersonators believe that politicians try to project a fabricated, pretentious mask to control their public image. At this point, they concur with the Machiavellian approach outlined in the introduction to this chapter. However, they do not mind if the materiality of the politician’s mask is fabricated or not. This is not an issue unless it may provide more elements for them to craft the character. This is different from the Machiavellian understanding about the politician as a persona, that is to say, a mask strategically fabricated to conceal a politician’s mortal condition. This perspective gives relevance to the production process of the shallow mask, which is assumed to be empty of any meaning. On the contrary, the ontological assumptions guiding the work of these impersonators is that politician’s materiality is bound up in deeper meanings that can be unveiled by a sensuous experience. This assumption can be better analysed in the light of Jeffrey Alexander’s concept of icons in which “visible signifier connects us to the invisible meaning” (2010b p.325). Once they have broken into the mask, impersonators do manage to identify a number of ‘similarities’. This suggests that this sensation-based approach is indeed fruitful. They also said that they can impersonate those ‘similarities’ rather than the real-life politicians and the audience can still