The images of Emmanuel Macron’s recent boxing session have caused a lot of ink to flow in France… but not only that. Abroad, the photos of his training sparked comments from a doubtful, even mocking, press.
“They show him with bulging biceps as he hits the bag with clenched teeth and bulging veins, traces across the Channel the Daily Telegraphwhich even featured one of these images on its front page, “a nod to Mr. Macron’s shift from dove to hawk status regarding his position on the war in Ukraine, urging the ‘NATO not to exclude the deployment of troops on the ground’.
In the midst of a European debate on the extent of support to be given to kyiv, the timing chosen to broadcast these photos is not insignificant. “The ‘Rocky’ Macron shows his biceps at the height of his hawkish rhetoric”, headlines the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. “Beyond the jokes about this display of testosterone, the fact is that the Elysee is publishing these images at a time when the French president is the harshest voice among the European powers against Russia,” adds the Barcelona newspaper. Which makes one wonder if the recipient of this presidential communication might not be in the Kremlin. “Is this a message to Vladimir Putin, used to posing while practicing extreme sports and using the codes of virility?”, asks the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
This change in style is in any case raising eyebrows across the Rhine. “The staging of violence ready to strike that he introduces with this new presidential portrait puts aside a decades-old democratic image policy, which emphasized the ‘impassivity’ of the president, his wisdom, his ‘coolness’ and his lucidity, scathes the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Macron’s distorted face does not resemble that of a senior diplomat, but rather that of a soldier, a warrior or a firefighter.”