From television I learned a basic lesson that extends beyond the studio into every corner of daily life. The face is the perfect register of the human condition.
Novice television directors need to learn early on that the art of video is largely built on the close up, sometimes called the “reaction shot.” The traditions of film-making still include the idea that the long-distant shot, or “coverage” of a scene, can be useful for defining locations or clarifying who is within earshot of a key figure. But the video image that matters most is the tight close up of someone who is giving or receiving important information. Frequently the director’s choice is to focus on the actor who is simply reacting to another’s lines. As many performers have noted, some of their best work occurs when they are allowed to let their character’s face represent their feelings.
I learned about the importance of the television close-up the hard way as a less-than-gifted student director in a television production class. Directing my own scene from the control room, I asked a camera operator in the studio to pull way back for a very wide shot. I think he was eventually pinned against the back wall trying to accommodate my request. And it was at that point my instructor leaned forward to deliver in a whisper what I’m sure he would have preferred to shout in the quiet control room: “Woodward, you are not David Lean shooting Lawrence of Arabia. This is television. It’s an intimate medium. Forget the wide shots.” In truth, the 35-foot wide studio was never going to yield up anything like the distant speck of Peter O’Toole crossing an empty desert. And that was not what I really wanted. But I learned a basic lesson that extends beyond television into every corner of daily life: The face is the perfect register of the human condition.
The angle of the head, the averted or astonished eyes, the position of the brow, the muscles of the face and the position of the mouth: they are all there to give up our secrets because they so easily reveal our feelings. Children begin to require the capability of reading faces even before their first birthday. We learn early on that they eyes are sometimes a more accurate indicator of a person’s true state of mind than what they say. Watch actor Tom Hanks as Walt Disney during his first meeting with the starchy P.L. Travers in Saving Mr. Banks (2014). The story of his twenty year effort to get the rights to make a feature film built around her character, Mary Poppins. At first he uses all of his down-home Missouri charm to flatter Travers, shaking off her icy hostility. But then she takes a step too far, tossing off the observation that she doesn’t want Poppins in “one of your silly animated films.” At that point Hanks suddenly goes quiet, but the camera is in close to register the kind of hurt a anyone might feel if they have just been told that their life’s work has been a waste of time.
British actor Michael Caine’s classic masterclass on performing for the camera is helpful in understanding how important reactions are in bringing a character to life. His advice to actors to connect with an audience by allowing only one eye–not both–to look at the camera is especially interesting. It’s available here, on U-tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBzReBMU2s8
The larger lesson is quite simple. The loss of access to another’s face when we are talking to them is an enormous handicap. I can’t confirm the accuracy of the old saying that ‘the eyes are a window into the soul.’ But it is surely the case that the complex musculature of the face is rich in meaning and nuance. It’s absence in the kind of text-only content that is increasingly the norm in digital platforms puts us at a significant disadvantage in understanding others.
Given the interconnected lives that most of us lead, a preference for the personal “I” can show an embarrassing lapse of awareness about the material and social worlds that sustain us.
For some years Rod Hart at the University of Texas has been using software to “read” large quantities of presidential speeches to discover characteristic patterns of phrasing. One category simply codes how many times the speaker is self-referential, using “I” verses “we,” “you,” or “us.” The overuse of “I” has always been a reasonably reliable indicator of how self-focused and self-absorbed a person is. By inference, we can wonder if such a person needs their communication partner to be anything more than a passive foil. Richard Nixon scored high as a self-referential speaker, as did Gerald Ford. Nixon was so self-focused that he would sometimes talk about himself in the third person, as in his comment to the California press that they “won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
Psychotherapists are especially tuned to hearing this kind of retreat into the self, often interpreting a string of self-referential statements as evidence that an individual is locked into their a very narrow and personal frame of reference. This is especially evident if a person has a partner but never uses the more inclusive “we,” or if the singular form is used as perhaps an unconscious way to distance the individual from family or friends. There are exceptions, but we expect such an individual to be less able to sympathize, identify with others, or listen with useful accuracy.
Some cultural wags have observed that societies such as ours, with its overriding emphasis are on the individual are by definition narcissistic. Contrasting Chinese or Japanese norms tend to favor first consideration for the collective good. So it’s a common complaint that in America personal needs often trump concerns for what would help a group or community. At its worst, this can lead to what the great economist John Kenneth Galbraith famously called “private wealth and public squalor.”
It strikes me that our focus on individuals and their happiness is both the glory and curse of American life. A local college advertises for students with the misplaced slogan, “It’s all about you.” A bank ad a few years ago proudly showed an obviously wealthy executive suitably ensconced in a high-floor office filled with mahogany and glass. The caption that went with this pitch for a setting up a “wealth management” account was the breathtakingly myopic, “You did it all yourself.”
Really? What were the ad’s copywriters smoking when they wrote this?
Only persons totally in love with themselves could be so blind to the many forms of support—parents, mentors, schools, service sector workers keeping our national infrastructure more or less in tact—who played their part in helping the rest of us enact out versions of the American Dream.
As we choose our words we need to ask whether we’ve earned the right to be exclusively self-referential. That privilege is surely evident if we are talking about our feelings and opinions. We are the only ones that can own them. But given the interconnected lives that most of us lead, a preference for the personal “I” can show an embarrassing lapse of awareness about the material and social worlds that sustain us.
