Ocula (Oct 2019)
Chiome a confronto. Analisi semiotica delle acconciature di Donald Trump e Kim Jong-un
Abstract
In the relationship between two political leaders such as Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, both the hairstyles strike attention for their originality. In this article I have tried to perform a semiotic analysis of the two hairdos, considered as texts constructed and enunciated as elements of self-presentation in public. In the case of the North Korean leader, I highlighted the fact that the reading of his image entails problems of trans-culturality. The hairstyle is an element of the dress, according to the definition of Barthes and the sociology of clothing. In my analysis I adopted the concepts of interpretive semiotics in the following steps: expressive level; paradigmatic dimension; interpretant level in the three phases of Peirce's theory. I have adopted an approach to dress as a predominantly phatic discourse according to the positions of Malinowski/Jakobson/Goffman. I propose the theory of exposed deception to explain the agreements of mutual recognition of masking such as hair dye and make-up in general. Trump's hairstyle is explained as the adoption of an idiolect of self-presentation, while Kim's is a case of dynastic language. He is interpreted in very different ways in North Korea and the West. Trump's hair suggests a kind of 'autism in self-presentation', while in Kim's case the separation extends to his culture as a whole. In conclusion, the combined consequences of these characteristics of the two personalities lead to the hypothesis that the dialogue they have undertaken may remain less a true substantial confrontation than a mere display of contact.
