Pick a Side

[Canid]

I am all for intelligent debate, it is often educational, interesting and worth reading, BUT it also tends to get very repetetive, thus with ease of reading in mind, I ask that any topics you think warrant further discussion should be re-opened in the cabaret room with a link to this thread, rather than extended herein.

~Thank-you~

 

Reserved for an introduction

 

 

* Normally used to indicate a footnote, here this represents an uncertain fact. I either read/heard it, or something very simillar to it somewhere, but what the precise statement was I may not recall... and there's always the chance that I've got some aspect of it wrong. I don't like to give misfacts. 'Ye have been warned.'

Edited November 17, 2005 by Canid

[Canid]

The Human Face

 

Humans, along with sheep and numerous other social animals are largely dependant on sight to recognize each other. We in fact have the most complex and variable set of facial muscles of any animal*. We each have a database of faces stored in our memories of hundreds of individuals; some we recall in connection to a single meeting or event, others yield more complex emotional reactions.

 

The science behind this highly developed social skill was discussed in a mediocre documentary made a few years ago called "The Human Face". It was done in four parts and hosted by John Cleese, and it had its moments. Our brains process each face we see through two regions: one to identify the features of the face and the other to tell us what to think of it - to give us an emotional reaction. We were presented with a single case that made one of these steps quite clear. A man had received an injury to the head. Not fatal and apparently not disabling. When his family came to see him, he recognized what they looked like. He knew his mother looked like his mother, his sister like his sister and his daughter like his daughter, but he did not think it was them. The connection between those two parts of his brain had been cut, he recognized the faces, but felt nothing. If you don't feel love for your mother, if that emotional history is not called up by the sight of her, how could it possibly be her? He thought they were impostors. Each and every one of them. It didn't make sense, he didn't know why or how but he could not believe it was the same people without the accompanying emotions.

 

In the final part of "The Human Face" John Cleese walked around a town where he felt at home. He went into the local grocer's and the man knew him as a long time acquaintance. He ended the program* with a short discussion and complaint about the "familiarity" with which the public meets and treats its celebrities.

It is a common enough complaint. If over half the population of a country think they know you, it is hard to leave your house without facing an unnatural and in some ways disturbing social situation.

He presented it as having no cause, other than a cultural mania.

Looking at the matter with fresh documentary driven insight, that struck me as wrong.

A little bit unfair too, but mostly just wrong.

 

I hate celebrity magazines. Most of the time if people start talking about so-and-so's latest romantic development I groan and express my disgust with my wonderfully versatile and dynamic face. I find star-mania extremely distasteful and moreover uninteresting.

I will admit though, that if I saw Bruce Willis walking down the street I would, involuntarily become exited. Although in fact I know less about his character than I do the social life of ants (where my knowledge is moderate) the same feelings would be stirred upon sight as would if I had just bumped into a friend I hadn't seen in a long time.

Why?

 

The answer has quite a bit to do with how we remember people, and with our own social evolution.

Only very recently have humans lived in such massive numbers that it is impossible to know everyone in your community. We evolved where simply being familiar with a face meant that you knew that person, that they were, unless previous experience proved otherwise, trustworthy. Knowing the face meant knowing and having to coexist with that person daily.

But that doesn't cover the whole question, why does seeing a movie star induce such a strong emotional reaction in most people - more than could be accounted for by familiarity, or a "tribal leader" mentality...

 

We remember faces through two main facilities according to "The Human Face": physical features and emotional association. We become familiar with the faces of "stars" through movies and music... and both mediums are designed to take us on an emotional ride.

Dark music, sad music, lilting happy sounds and provocative issues, romances, comedies, tragedies "studies" of human nature, wars, disasters, political and religious stories. The fun of experiencing them is not just an intellectual treat but the fact that they make us happy or sad or afraid, or empathise with the character's feelings of love or excitement or sorrow... and we associate the entire experience with the individual actors.

If you come face to face with the face you were watching while you experienced this multitude of emotions, there is an involuntary surfacing of those fictional "experiences".

 

The extent to which people hound the stars is idiotic, obsessive and wrong. But to pass by them and in the privacy of your mind react as you would to a stranger is next to impossible.

Edited November 18, 2005 by Canid