A Case for the Return of Mystery
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Her beauty was symmetrical and severe. The camera loved her. But what made Greta Garbo a legend was her elusiveness. She rarely granted interviews, refused to attend her movies’ premieres, and famously declared that she wanted to be alone. Her nickname: the Swedish Sphinx.
The Garbo enigma seemed to work as an intoxicant on the public. Since little about human nature ever seems to change, such cultivated mystery likely still has the power to generate desire—yet it’s somehow undervalued today. Ubiquity, not mystique, is the name of the current game. The result is overexposure in the extreme.
Perhaps it’s time for mystery to make a comeback. Not persona “curation” or coyness in social media feeds, but the renewed adoption of the idea that one doesn’t owe an audience—real or imagined—access or explanations.
Of course, in the current political climate, keeping to oneself can be trip-wired as well. Yet electing to be private doesn’t amount to complaisance or complicity. On that note, let’s take inspiration from Garbo’s rival, Marlene Dietrich. While Dietrich reveled in the spotlight, she protectively guarded her private life. But at the onset of World War II Dietrich came forward as an outspoken opponent of the Nazis, renounced her German citizenship, became an American, and spent much of the war entertaining Allied troops across Europe. When it mattered, she left no doubt about where she stood.
Just as mystery doesn’t need to be equivalent to silence, nor does it need to be as lonely an enterprise as Garbo’s. What’s more, being an enigma arguably provides certain protections, especially during the holidays, when we all need as much social buffering as possible. It can bring relief from the social media mandate to broadcast one’s stance on every subject, not to mention the photos of vacations, of cleavage, of brunch in all its hollandaise-y glory.
After all, we should save at least some material for our eventual biographers.
This story appears in the December 2022/January 2023 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
You Might Also Like
