The special guest is not available
Given the limited supply of celebrities and recognized leaders, even counting has-beens and formerly powerful people, for possible guests of honor, keynote speakers, and ribbon cutters, the equation is tilted against those who need to invite them. Requests are made and accepted when the due date is still many months away. Thus, a commitment to attend is given with little thought of possible weather disturbances or laziness.
How often does the host of a long-planned conference announce that the special guest featured in the brochure is not available and instead has sent his improperly attired substitute to read his keynote address for him?
Action stars, when required to jump off cliffs and struggle with an adversary on top of a moving train, employ doubles to do their stunts. The use of stand-ins is intended to protect the lead actor who has the less physical job of looking suave and delivering lines to seduce the ladies — I prefer to be shaken, not stirred. In Kurosawa’s 1980 film, Kagemusha: the
Shadow Warrior, a petty thief because of his physical likeness to a samurai warlord serves as his double for staged rituals. Eventually the double takes the warlord’s place when the former’s death in battle needed to be kept secret to rally the troops. The thief is trained by the lord’s courtiers to stand in for the warlord by imitating his mannerisms and speaking as little as possible. Only when the warlord’s forces are able to regroup and gain strength is the stand-in “allowed to die” and yield to the leader’s successor.
The proxy (from the Latin word, procuratio — taking care for another) or the similarly derived “proctor” (a person who acts in place of another — like someone supervising an exam for an absent professor) makes an appearance on behalf of someone more important. Organizers of events are too polite to show overt displeasure at the absence of their original guest. They extend a forced courtesy to the substitute — can I bring you the place of honor where you will not know anyone in the table? Proxies are expected to fill the no-show gap, even if inadequately.
In delivering an assigned speech, the proxy prefaces it with an acceptable reason for the intended speaker’s absence. (He had to go on a trip to Bora.) The sub speaks confidently in the first person as if he were himself the absent one. He inserts his own warm-up jokes at the start. (I see all of you expected to see somebody else addressing you. Do I at least look a bit like him?) Those in the audience who feel duped may not be in a forgiving mood. So, the faster the stand-in gets off the podium, the better for all.
Unfortunately proxies enjoy their brief stint in the limelight, even with the knowledge that the applause is intended for somebody else.
The spokesperson is a different kind of proxy. The opinions he expresses are supposed to reflect those of the individual or company he represents. There is no effort to dissemble and pretend that he is expressing his own thoughts. When asked to comment on an issue he has not discussed with his principal, he tries to dodge. (Until all the facts are in, we cannot comment on that issue.)
However, with the novel and redefined role of the spokesman as an explainer of what was not said, the similarity is closer to the proxy role of the stuntman who takes the fall and the risks of broken reputations.
Still, substitutes of any kind are too often viewed with contempt.
Why not simply skip an affair one cannot attend? Sending a substitute only calls attention to the obvious absence. It becomes clear that the event is not worth the invitee’s time. The substitute himself cannot be too thrilled to end up as consolation prize, a gate crasher who has to eat dinner behind somebody else’s place card, a living reminder of being dishonored by an absence and managing a herculean effort to disguise displeasure.
Taking another person’s place is often an unpleasant chore. But as in the casting of movies, if the performance of the lastminute substitute exceeds expectations, he may be better remembered than the absentee… and eventually take his place for good.
FENCE SITTER A. R. SAMSON The roles of the spokesman and the stuntman are similar since they both take the fall.