Not so much. I’ve seen that facial expression a million times - it means discomfort in the face of something out of the person’s experience, while trying to be a good sport about it. Used to watch the bridge-and-tunnel crowd interact with city creeps in NYC and I saw that facial expression all the time, so much so that decades later I recognized it instantly.
How is that not what he just said?
Being a good sport, trying to diffuse the situation in the young man’s own words, during unexpected events beyond your experience sounds like courage to me.
The antics of Chief Crying Wolf would make a Gandhi-like stair impossible, but it is the same kind of passive-resistance in the face of an intractable enemy.