IT WOULD be difficult to find a public figure today wearing an expression of convincing severity and authority such as Winston Churchill wore in this 1941 photo. It’s true, those were serious times. But these are serious times too and he wore a similar expression long before the war.

We are surrounded by vapid smiles (see this official photo of Obama) – smiles on newscasters, politicians, journalists, priests, intellectuals. An age of radical democracy is one in which power is diffused and virility demonized. Noxious sentimentality masks the emptiness once occupied by men.

                                                — Comments —

Roger G. writes:

We know that Yousuf Karsh got that photo by snatching away Churchill’s cigar and immediately taking the picture. Someone once said something to the effect that what looked like the grim determination of freedom’s leader at bay was really the petulance of a baby deprived of its pacifier.

Anyway, I hope we’re not going to make Churchill out as a hero. He’s what Gingrich would be if Gingrich had 1000 times his present capacity for evil.

Sage McLaughlin writes:

Fascinating posts you have on the ubiquity of goofy smiling. I’ve read that the reason photographs and portraits from the early age of photography and before it is that such pictures required a person to stand motionless for quite a long time. A person cannot hold a false smile for more than a few seconds. Still, this doesn’t really answer the question of why a forced smile would be necessary at all, and obviously the ubiquity you’re talking about is much more recent than the development of high-speed photography.

I have little of substance to add, but it was interesting to me personally because I’ve always hated smiling for photographs, and in my experience most men do. Growing up, I was constantly told that I didn’t smile enough for photos, and I was always annoyed that I had to justify not smiling. Also, group pictures such as sports teams and altar boys (what we called “Knights of the Altar”) seemed to me like inappropriate times to grin as though something were funny, even when I was very young. That grown men today can be hectored to say “Cheeeeeese” along with their children does seem to signify the replacement of male authority with something frivolous.

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