The Smiley Society
November 19, 2011
First Mate Piggy of the USS Swinetrek.
ALAN writes:
You asked in a recent post: “When did it become unacceptable to have one’s picture taken without an enormous grin?”
Excellent question.
Tentative answer: About the time when TV stations began to feature “happy talk” in their news reports. I distinctly remember my reaction to that at the time (more than 35 years ago). It was, I thought, the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen: Grown men and women whose job was to report the news were now making cutesy-poo “happy talk.” It was, I said to myself, a sure sign that American culture was descending into infantilism.
A similar mindset lies behind the two.
In how many portraits do we see George Washington or Thomas Jefferson smiling? Would they sit around at day’s end and watch “happy talk” news on TV?
Have you noticed how people are smiling on hundreds of magazine covers every month and on the jackets of new books? Everywhere we look, people now wear vapid smiles – in books, magazines, posters, advertisements, and online. Even Catholic priests and nuns – who seldom thought it proper to assume broad smiles for photographs in years long past – now surrender to that trend in an attempt to show that they are just regular folks (which of course they are not).
Such things do not signify a strong nation; they signify a soft, feminized culture. There is something profoundly witless or juvenile about such people.
For how many photographs do the Amish people agree to smile? But then the Amish have no difficulty seeing the decadence and softness of modern cool Americans and enough moral fiber to try to resist those things.
Compare class photographs from 75-100 years ago with those today. Observe the contrast between the restraint and sobriety evident in those old photographs and the adolescent-witted demeanor so prevalent now.
Neil Postman got it right in his excellent book Amusing Ourselves to Death (to which you have wisely referred in a number of posts).
We live today in a nationwide culture of wall-to-wall, around-the-clock entertainment, catering to adolescents and to people who are grown but not grown-up. (A tip of my hat here to Diana West.) This is one consequence of what Charlotte Iserbyt called (properly and accurately) “the deliberate dumbing down of America.”
In any culture there is a place for amusement and entertainment. But not always and everywhere.
What is missing throughout much of American culture today are: Sobriety, discipline, formality, dignity, hierarchy, principles, and manners – and most notably the will to enforce those things.
— Comments —
Kevin D. Rummler, D.D. S., writes:
I believe people didn’t smile in previous ages mostly because many of their teeth were misaligned, rotten, missing, broken, or full of visible metal.
A possible explanation for more smiles in the past 35 years is this: the sciences of orthodontics, cosmetic dentistry, endodontics (root canals), and periodontics (saving the gums) have made tremendous advances and significant contributions toward saving and beautifying teeth in that time period. Additionally, fluoride was discovered back then to be an effective enamel hardener, and therefore sensibly added to toothpaste and drinking water.
Dentists 35 years ago and before were masters of denture fabrication and filling teeth with silver and gold. In fact, it was considered an inevitable part of aging that one would lose all the teeth.
Yes, dentists in America are unsung heros. They don’t seek praise or recognition, but they are the ones highly responsible for the salvation of teeth and the allowance of the privilege of smiling. They also eradicate the great suffering and frowns of the mouth experienced by so very many of our forefathers.
Laura writes:
Dentists are unsung heroes, as I’ve written before, and I think there is some truth to what you say about the risk of smiling in the past and why people smiled less often for portraits. George Washington had bad teeth, if I recall correctly, and his especially tight-lipped appearance in his portraits is probably partly due to that.
However, I don’t think dentistry fully explains today’s wall-to-wall grins. It’s the indiscreet, excessive, empty smile that is pervasive. Figures in the past could have grinned broadly for pictures without showing their teeth. I once saw a priest smile during an entire funeral, as if he were officiating at a game show. Obama sometimes wears an enormous goofy grin (with no teeth showing) that shows a complete lack of gravitas. (Unfortunately, when he does try to appear serious, he wears an overly-stern expression, like a child imitating someone in authority.)
There’s something pushy about the smiles of authority figures today. Regardless of why people smile more often today, the pervasive smile creates an atmosphere of forced cheer.
Marian Horvat writes here about the beauty of the “affable and sincere smile,” which is an entirely different thing:
The smile is the complement and the perfume of our relations; it awakens sympathy, completes a gesture, enfolds the features in captivating grace; it is a reflection of a man’s internal peace. The smile softens a refusal, attenuates the harshness of a remark, eases the severity of a contradiction. To smile is not only just the physical action of an upward movement of the mouth. To smile is to effuse the physiognomy with a amiable and temperate happiness that illuminates and transfigures, giving the gaze a certain composed shine of goodness and goodwill.
The smile, mirror of our interior state, is as varied as the sentiments that animate us. It is pretentious when it expresses a sentiment of pride. It is ironical in audacious and combative spirits. It is admiring in one who finds himself in the presence of beauty, good and truth. It is confused in bewildered and befuddled souls. It is amorous in compassionate and tender souls.
The smile is the flower of affability that has an affect on all our actions toward our neighbor: the greeting and farewell, the reproof and an approval, and so on. If charity is a rose, the smile is its perfume.
The smile is the weapon that wins the amity of our neighbor.
Nov. 22
Hannon writes:
