I Know, Wig, I Feel That Already
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I Know, Wig, I Feel That Already
I know Katy Perry is a Republican but what she said on American Idol is really relevant right now, for wig reasons.
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The first season of Andor has ended (brilliantly, if I may add) and Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård) did not put his wig back on.
Luthen’s wig—hairpiece, lace front weave, extensions, whatever you want to call it, is part of the façade he maintains as an eccentric antiquities dealer and collector on Coruscant. The length of his hair softens him somehow, making him more amiable to having discreet, coded conversations with Mon Mothma about where the hell her money is going.
When his wig comes off, you know he’s serious. He means even more business. If the wig was on when he delivered his Sacrifice monologue, I don’t think it would’ve had the same impact. He’s menacing with cropped hair. He’s a leader you can take seriously. He’s seen things, held secrets, and made tough decisions that those luscious, artificial locks simply couldn’t hold.
There is something about a middle-aged actor in a platinum-blonde/grey wig that causes brainworms to burrow in my own grey matter. I think it’s a look, but not for the reasons you think. I find hair design to be an art form I deeply respect and will never be able to take on for myself, so as an outsider I find these choices really interesting for the characters that get the Luthen treatment. I think it’s a look because there’s something about it that’s sort of funny and doesn’t quite work but that combination together makes it 120% WORK even more!
Luthen’s wig stands on the shoulders of wig giants, across the slay and flop spectrum. When I saw Stellan Skarsgård first step out with length on Andor, he reminded me of those that paved the way for him. Like Ethan Hawke as Arthur Harrow in Moon Knight.
I miss Moon Knight the way I miss hearing about new seasons of Long Island Medium or Toddlers and Tiaras. It was the spectacle of it all, even if it wasn’t much of a spectacle once you sat down to watch it (I’m not going to slag off Moon Knight, I’ve done enough of that on here already). Ethan Hawke’s Harrow was modeled after David Koresh, but styled to capture Marvel’s ongoing sanitization of some of Hollywood’s finest (fine as in sexy).
First of all, I don’t know if this was a wig or if it was Ethan Hawke’s actual hair. Hawkeheads will tune in for Harrow regardless of what he looks like, and I actually dig this look for the character, but the way Hawke’s hair is styled here doesn’t bode well with the muted, structured but somehow shapeless ensemble he’s often dressed in. It’s meant to look somewhere in between well-kept, aged with dignity, and surrendered to the elements, to his dedication to his cause—this cult leader is not one to take trips to the barber, nor would he have the time.
Like everything else in the franchise, Harrow lacks colour. He lacks any vibrancy Hawke’s performance clearly should have supported. He lacks the visual signature that made the likes of Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok sing even under their constraints. And when Harrow’s hair is slicked back to fit his bespectacled therapist look in Marc’s version of the Afterlife, he looks more like Harry Styles in the Best Song Ever video, more like a caricature considering the context of where the character exists.
Hawke and the whole cast did what they could. And being the fantastic actors that they are, they made it work. Moon Knight was relatively entertaining, even thought I can’t remember all that much about it aside from Ethan Hawke’s hair. It works, but there’s something about it I can’t quite lay my finger on. Where aesthetically, choices for the character could have contributed even more to his storytelling, those choices didn’t quite land. I guess that’s what I was trying to get at.
Jason Alexander’s wig for his guest spot on Criminal Minds, something I am certain I’ve brought up on this newsletter before, is one for the books. It’s George Costanza going for a dip in Mother Lake and coming out with a full head of hair instead of—as he famously has—”shrinkage.”
Alexander guest starred in the Season 4 episode Masterpiece, where he played a serial killer so ‘brilliant’ he thought he could outsmart the Behavioural Analysis Unit whilst he was in their custody. He mostly faced off against Joe Mantegna’s David Rossi and my future estranged husband Matthew Gray Gubler’s Spencer Reid. His character acosts them after one of Reid’s lectures, challenging him to an intellectual hypothetical about ‘the perfect murder’ before revealing that he has infact committed said ‘perfect murder’.
That particular role required a lot of gravitas, a lot of intensity and restraint that builds as the episode of this well-loved CBS crime soap unfolded. There’s a lot of ego in Jason Alexander’s take of a serial killer, and he plays it well. He’s the only person that could play it that well with that wig, the all-beige ensemble, octagonal glasses (which admittedly, are pretty fire) and Colonel Sanders goatee. It’s almost camp. And that campness stands out of Criminal Minds’ cookie cutter procedural aesthetic.
I’ve grown very weary of the word ‘aesthetic’. I have found trying to unpack it, or read and listen to what other people are doing to unpack it very interesting. I think I’ve spoken about this before at some point or other, about how the ‘aestheticization’ of literally everything have become a touchstone for extremely online individuals to carve out a niche for themselves. To carve out an identity. Sure, people can discover their identities however they like, but there’s something sinister about a TikTok tutorial on how to achieve a ‘clean girl aesthetic’ or ‘siren eyes’. A lot of the conversation surrounding those trends are centered around the male gaze, another term I’ve been seeing thrown around willy nilly much like the female gaze. I think what’s been really bugging me is how this is all very clearly a ploy to sell us more shit (no, duh, what isn’t these days, anyway) and these shortcuts to a pre-packaged individuality is no individuality at all. It all feels very Syndrome in the last act of The Incredibles—if everyone’s super, no one is.
What this has to do with Jason Alexander’s platinum wig on Criminal Minds? I think this specific look is a testament to how the 2000s procedural drama landscape was just starting to push itself to evolve a little, before landing on the same looks and trends for the next decade. Procedurals are meant to be cheaper to produce, almost paint-by-numbers. All the serial killers on these shows are white guys that all look the same. But not this one. He’s not just any white guy, this serial killer. Not Jason Alexander’s. He is the Masterpiece. He’s one of the more memorable guest stars because of this look. The only other Criminal Minds guest stars I remember were heavy hitters, much like Alexander, the likes of Luke Perry (playing a cult leader), Aubrey Plaza (playing an assassin), and a goth Aaron Paul. And that’s only because I had already known who these people were when I watched their episodes!
They probably put Alexander in this look so people weren’t thinking GEORGE COSTANZA for the entire episode, even though they probably were anyway. I was taken aback, for sure! I didn’t clock it was him until twenty minutes into the episode! Spiritually, Julia Louis-Dreyfus carries on this grand tradition by playing a CIA director with a purple streak in her hair in those silly little Marvel movies. It’s just hair, Jerry!
Jason Alexander also directed an episode of Criminal Minds later that season. Everytime I think about him being on that show, I think about Matthew Gray Gubler: The Unauthorized Documentary. Specifically this bit they both commit to:
As a bonus, I have always been obsessed with Mark Rylance’s wig from Don’t Look Up, a film with very little merit outside of Mark Rylance’s wig and maybe Timothée Chalamet.
Between the hairpiece and Rylance’s veneers, I was thoroughly entertained watching one of the UK’s most celebrated actors play a demented tech billionaire. God only knows we don’t have enough of those.
I think I’m so obsessed with these wigs because the actors they’ve put them on don’t really need them to perform, but they do perform the fuck out of them. And, for lack of a better word, they’re also very slay.
That’s all for this week. I had more but I’ll save those for next week and perhaps the week after. Happy holidays, gang.
All my love,
Ari.