A column about clothes and movies by Christina Newland
#12: The Signet Ring
Threads
Illustration by Laurène Boglio
n Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari’s 2015 movie Chevalier,
six well-off men decide to play a game on a luxury yacht, brutally
comparing each other’s taste, clothing, wealth and sexual prowess, all
for empty larks. The prize for this (at one point, literal) dick-measuring
contest is a gold signet ring, which one of the men will receive for his
triumph as an all-around alpha male. It may be that Tsangari, a female
director drolly inspecting the dynamics between groups of men, has
displayed the meaning of the signet ring better than any other filmmaker:
toxic masculinity in an accessory.
In case you aren’t familiar, the signet ring (from the Latin ‘signum’,
for ‘sign’) is a man’s gold or silver ring, flat at the front with an inscription
which was historically a family coat of arms or seal. In medieval times, the
rings were used by the nobility to stamp documents, and they were known
as a ‘gentleman’s ring ’ for good reason: for most of history, only the elite
and the privileged wore them.
Beyond period dramas, the signet ring is frequently worn by men on
screen as a subtle indication that they belong to an important and secretive
club. Freemasons, a notoriously male-only organisation, often wear signet
rings – as with Nick Nolte’s villainous character in Oliver Stone’s thriller
U-Turn (1997), or well-connected authority figures like Robert Duvall’s
police chief in James Grey’s We Own the Night (2007). Policemen onscreen
have a knack for turning up in Freemason rings, representing a sort of
double fraternity and all the protection that it may provide. This secretive
fraternity is indicated by the use of signet rings in spy cinema, from James
Bond to the Kingsman franchise. In Bond, both 007 and his nemeses can be
found wearing them. There are few examples of screen masculinity so full
of aspirational – and often cringe-worthy – machismo.
In A View to a Kill (1985), a hidden camera is stowed away in Bond’s
ring. When this jewellery is literally weaponised or bestowed with power,
it’s simply an extension of what we already know: these are tokens that
can solve problems for us, remove obstacles and allow us into inner
sanctums. Perhaps the most notorious signet ring in the Bond series is
worn throughout several films (including From Russia with Love and
Thunderball) by super villain Blofeld. The ring signifies his membership
in the top-secret terrorist organisation SPECTRE – an acroynm for,
wonderfully, The Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism,
Revenge and Extortion.Given the signet ring ’s links to the shadowy and sinister, maybe it’s not
surprising that ‘made’ men in the Cosa Nostra have long been rumoured
to wear them on their pinkies as a sign of their status in the mob. Edward
G Robinson sports one in Little Caesar, as do two of Al Pacino’s most
famous incarnations: Tony Montana and Michael Corleone. As a means
for mafiosos and assorted gangsters to identify one another and verify their
membership in an elite group, it works wonders. In Martin Scorsese’s The
Irishman, you can find a close cousin to the signet ring – the sovereign ring,
which is made of a large gold coin. Hitman Frank Sheeran is honoured to
be given a sovereign ring by his boss Russell Bufalino; he is told that there
are only three of these rings. This is a gaudy physical representation of the
pact between Frank and his mobster associates; a male loyalty that runs
deeper than any social or moral code, and certainly far more sacred than
any of their allegiances to women.
Incidentally, Robert De Niro can also be found wearing a signet ring
in Alan Parker’s hothouse supernatural neo-noir Angel Heart (1987).
His role is as Satan incarnate, only a few rungs down the moral ladder from
his character in The Irishman. In this case, the insignia on his signet ring
is a pentagram. On the flipside, The Two Popes (2019) reveals the signet
ring as a unique accessory for each individual papal leader. If this seems
contradictory, the truth is that the signet ring – designed blank to be
inscribed with whatever symbol the wearer chooses – seems to be a cipher
that nonetheless represents a cabal of dangerous male power.
What does power look like? Savile Row tailoring? A gold pinky ring?
So rarely does it stereotypically look anything but male; we have difficulty
imagining it as something ungendered. In real life, the men who famously
wore signet rings includes: Prince Charles, Franklin D Roosevelt, Winston
Churchill, Steve McQueen. Macho leading men and wartime heads of state,
in other words. Short of a crown and sceptre, the signet ring is a hangover
from the days of yore that can be worn with marginally less pomp and
circumstance. From the Catholic church to the English gentry to the Mafia,
the signet ring signifies that someone is not to be messed with.
I just wish that I could find a photo of Donald Trump wearing
a signet ring. Trump is a perfect, awful distillation of all the things
the ring tends to represent: the old boys’ club, money, political power
and downright criminality. Someone should buy him one for his next
screen appearanceI
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