I've been catching up lately on The New Yorker essays by "Blink" and "Tipping Point" author Malcolm Gladwell and sent him this email a few days ago:
Dear Malcolm,
Over the last few weeks I've been watching the newly released seasons 1&2 of Moonlighting on DVD and remembering the well-publicized feuds between Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd whose character's 'Dave' and 'Maddie' were almost always at each other's throats.
Today I was reading your essay "The Naked Face" and came to this bit in section 5:
"'Ekman received his most memorable lesson in this truth [of involuntary communication] when he and Friesen first began working on expressions of anger and distress. 'It was weeks before one of us finally admitted feeling terrible after a session where we' d been making one of those faces all day,' Friesen says. 'Then the other realized that he'd been feeling poorly too, so we began to keep track.' They then went back and began monitoring their body during particular facial movements. 'Say you do A.U. [Action Unit - a numeric designation for facial muscle movement] one, raising the inner eyebrows, and six, raising the cheeks, and fifteen, the lowering of the corner of the lips,' Ekman said, and then did all three. 'What we discovered is that that expression alone is sufficient to create marked changes in the autonomic nervous system. When this first occurred, we were stunned. We weren't expecting this at all. And it happened to both of us. We felt terrible . What we were generating was sadness, anguish. And when I lower my brows, which is four, and raise the upper eyelid, which is five, and narrow the eyelids, which is seven, and press the lips together, which is twenty-four, I' m generating anger. My heartbeat will go up ten to twelve beats. My hands will get hot. As I do it, I can't disconnect from the system. It's very unpleasant, very unpleasant.'"
It's making me wonder if there isn't some sort of undeniable physiological reaction that occurs in actors when they play out the emotions their characters are feeling. If Bruce and Cybill were 'acting angry', could their bodies have been 'feeling angry' and they reacted to each other thusly? Might this also explain how actors who play lovers on screen so often become lovers in real life?
Respectfully,
-Kerry Bailey
Los Angeles, CA
and I got this response:
"i'd never thought about that. but i think its a really good point. i'm doing a collection of reader's comments, to post on my website, do you mind if i include yours? thanks, m."
I continue to nip at the coat-tails of greatness.
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