You Look… ?

When I first saw this picture when it showed up on one of my social media feeds a day or two after the start of RNC, July 15, 2024, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. But it sure got me thinking, and thinking, and thinking. The first thing that popped into my head was that pithy saying we have all heard at some time or another: “A picture is worth a thousand words,” positing that “complex and sometimes multiple ideas can be conveyed by a single image, which conveys its meaning or essence more effectively that a mere verbal description.” However, I have a feeling that when the “dust” settles on this country after November 5^th, there will have been much more than a thousand words written on this picture and what it represents, with many more to follow. And yes, the “ideas” that this picture evokes are certainly “multiple” and “complex.”

The second thing that popped into my head, almost immediately after the first one, was a song title: “Every Picture Tells a Story,” from Rod Stewart’s third (1971) studio album of the same name. Why? Because this woman’s face, along with her “fashion” accessories, certainly have a story to tell, but to whom she is telling this story and what exactly it is, remains to be seen. And for those of us looking at the photo, well, everyone is going to have their own interpretation of what they see and what they feel it is saying to them. But it wasn’t just the title of the song that entered into my head, although it is certainly apropos; it was the lyrics as well. The very first stanza has this to say: “Spent some time feeling inferior / Standing in front of my mirror / Combed my hair in a thousand ways / But I came out looking the same.” What do you suppose was going through this woman’s mind when she looked in the mirror before heading out the door to attend the convention? Later on in the song, stanza nine to be exact, Stewart sings: “Wait a minute / I firmly believed that I didn’t need anyone but me / I sincerely thought I was so complete / Look how wrong you can be.” For myself, this last stanza speaks volumes about this photo. To me, the look on her face is one of resignation, a submission, if you will, that is saying: “I am doing what needs to be done to save my country…I think.” To me this photo is screaming doubt with a capital D.

I am not an expert on physiognomy (face reading), the “practice of assessing a person’s character or personality from their outer appearance – especially the face,” but it is very difficult to look at this picture and not have one’s mind trying to figure out what they are looking at. It is a practice that falls, not surprisingly, under the contemporary definition of pseudoscience, because of the unsupportable claims one makes from their viewing, like the ones I made above. Despite this fact, it is nonetheless a widespread practice, with newfound interest in the subject because of artificial intelligence. No, I will not be going down that rabbit hole. Given that this practice dates back to the ancient Greeks, the word coming from two Greek words: ‘physis’ meaning “nature” and ‘gnomon’ meaning “judge” or “interpreter,” there exists a list of what are called “universal facial expressions,” which are as follows: 1. Anger; 2. Contempt; 3. Disgust; 4. Fear; 5. Happiness; 6. Sadness; 7. Surprise. In 2020, subsequent research into facial expressions resulted in a second, expanded list, with some of the same as above, some new ones, and some that were re-branded: 1. Amusement; 2. Anger; 3. Awe; 4. Concentration; 5. Confusion; 6. Contempt; 7. Contentment; 8. Desire; 9. Disappointment; 10. Doubt; 11. Elation; 12. Interest; 13. Pain; 14. Sadness, 15. Surprise; 16. Triumph. So many to pick from when looking at this photo!

I feel it is only fair to give you a shot at practicing your own physiognomy skills. Take your time, soak in the face in front of you. What do you see?

While my initial photo at the top gives you context – the hat, the ear covering, the earrings – this photo is simply a face of a woman sitting in front of what appears to look like a microphone, so the only context you are given is that she is perhaps about to speak or answer a question. The woman in the photo is Linda Kasabian. Not ringing a bell? She was a member of the notorious Manson Family, but did not enter the house that fateful night in August of 1969, and ended up as the prosecution’s main witness, escaping prosecution herself. My question to you is this: Do you see anything in this woman’s face that would lead you to believe that she was a member of this cult, or any cult, for that matter? The reason for this physiognomy “test” is that I have heard, on numerous occasions over the airwaves, people making connections to Trump’s followers as part of his “cult.” My usual reaction, after reading or hearing this, is to chalk it up to what I like to call the “now-we-got-your-attention-posts” (otherwise known as click bait), designed to titillate, captivate, aggravate, motivate, infuriate, frustrate, intimidate, or perhaps a combination of “ates.” However, the more I looked at the photo of this woman wearing a MAGA hat with the numbers 45-47 on the side, and her ear in a white bandage – a “tribute” to Trump’s gunshot wound – and the cactus earrings with the stars and stripes motif, the more I began to wonder if the word “cult,” and the associations that go with it, are perhaps truer than any of us would care to believe.

I do not have one single shred of evidence of any kind to substantiate this, other than a queasy feeling in my stomach after reading about Manson (The Manson Family), Jones (The People’s Temple), Koresh (The Branch Davidians), Newton (The Sullivanians), and Applewhite (Heaven’s Gate) … okay, queasy may not quite describe it! We all know what happened with these cults, and I am not for a minute suggesting that MAGA and Trump worshipers are headed for a similar fate, however the one thing (there are maybe others) that all these groups have in common is the charisma of their leader, for better or worse. When I watched and listened to the leader of the “Magamites” (hey, it needed a name) during the recent debate tell the viewing public on national television that immigrants in Ohio are eating people’s cats and dogs, or that there are some states that allow abortions after birth, the idea of a cult became a whole lot clearer for me. How can anyone hear the above and say: “Yup, this is my guy?” There may or may not be an answer to this question, no more than there is for murdering, or drinking poison Kool-Aid, or whatever else groups of people have done en masse because their charismatic leader told them to… You know, like mount an insurrection of the Capitol.

On a side note, but related to my initial photo, “ears” appear to be a theme for this year’s election. In the immediate fallout since the debate aired – the left saying that Harris crushed it, the right saying it was three against one – the close-up photo below (that is making its rounds on social media) of Harris at the podium with an arrow pointing to her left ear, and the earring she’s wearing, telling us that it was an “audio earring,” completes the ear theme. Is there any evidence pointing to this as being true? Who needs evidence when everyone on your “side” just believes everything that is said, which essentially amounts to 74 million people (Trump’s popular vote figure for 2020), saying: “Cheater!” So, yes we should celebrate Harris’s clear “victory” the other night, but we should also keep in mind that there a whole whack of people out there who see it differently.

Los Angeles 2024