Comments on: Observed: Even Darth Vader Makes Faces

By: Joe Fletcher

Joe Fletcher — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 05:28:51 +0000

I agree with Kamiel… this type of full body expression is all over, but I’ve grown to learn from it in Lucha Libra wrestling (a style of Mexican professional wrestling famous for use of masks). In a conversation with several professional wrestlers years ago, I expressed that if I ever could do wrestling, I’d love to wear a mask because I didn’t think I could make the faces, but they explained so much of what wrestling was about was the body. You had all these wrestlers who wore full face masks, but you never once wondered “are they in pain?”… “are they a bad guy”… “are they happy”… your body conveys all of this. I just thought the commercial had great direction because the kid did such a great job The direction was the winner here.

By: Greg Giersch

Greg Giersch — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:39:58 +0000

Great point on how we can humanize technology in a more subtle manner. It doesn’t always take a face to convey emotions and tap into our universal memories.

By: Kamiel

Kamiel — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:09:41 +0000

David, you claim the impossible happened. Because Darth Vader doesn’t have a face he can’t express his emotions. However the absence of facial expressions doesn’t mean the human body is incapable of expressing emotions. This video proves we don’t need to look at an individuals face to detect emotions.

For instance look at how the kid let’s his arms and head drop (at 0:20). Looks exactly like disappointment to me.
And at 0:52 I don’t need to look at his face to see he’s very startled. The way he turn’s his body and holds his arms tells me enough.

I find your explanation rather silly. This has nothing to do with remembering something form childhood. Emotions are expressed using your whole body. By focusing on the face you missed all the other expressions the makers of the commercial used to convey the kids emotions.

This is however nothing new. For instance stage actors need to use their whole body all the time to express emotions. Because only the first couple of rows can see an actors face. It wouldn’t be as convincing otherwise.

By: Vicky Teinaki

Vicky Teinaki — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 12:53:34 +0000

This makes me think of Walt Disney’s famous flour sack illustrations http://techandpro.blogspot.com/2009/04/corn-sack.html in terms of showing emotion physically. Scott McCloud also talks about how we see faces in everything (especially cars) in Understanding Comics.