About Face IV

 “For by his face straight, shall you know his heart.”

Shakespeare, Richard III

 “The face is the soul of the body.”

~ Wittgenstein

As I continue the exploration of Face, Beauty, and Soul, I thought I’d zero in on how much is really happening, phenomenally, in our one and only Face.

I don’t spend a LOT of time in front of the mirror,

(really, truly)

but when I am ill, I tend to be looking more (or maybe noticing more)

For?

Signs, symptoms, health, wellness…

The eyes are my barometer, measuring degrees of such.

Let’s re~visit James Hillman on the Force of the Face.

“Not because of cosmetics and surgery is the face an aesthetic phenomenon, but because it is biologically so.

Besides the muscles needed functionally to chew, kiss, sniff, blow, squint, blink, and twitch  away a fly, most of the forty-five facial muscles serve only emotional expression.”

Marilyn Monroe said:  “I can make my face do anything I want.”

That is Mastery.

Lauren Bacall

Hillman, continued:  “The face reveals character, the mirror does not lie.

My face announces my presence, reports my nature, and above all, by facing outward, bears a message for others.  Angels blow trumpets.  They call for awakening.  So does the face; it demands response.”

So, dear reader, I would posit this:  What message does your/my face bear for others?

What awakening is being called for in that face of yours/mine?

What response is being asked for, demanded?

Hamlet to Gertrude:  “You go not, till I set up a glass–

where you may see the inmost part of you.

Vox Anima, SDM

Art Credit:  Tumblr & Pinterest

About Face III

I was going to title this post:  From the Neck Up.

Dr. Frederic Brandt

Does the face say it all?

Would you trust your face to Dr. Brandt?

A New York Times article claims that many people do.

As many as 30 patients a day @ $7000 a pop.

You might recognize a few of his famous patients here.

…Returning to James Hillman on The Force of The Face…

and just in the nick of time.

(and no pun intended)

Hillman discusses the ravages and pain of cosmetic procedures,

and the loss of connection with one’s identity in the process.

He quotes Joyce Nash, Ph.D., who describes her face lift in detail:

“Most patients underestimate the amount of pain and physical trauma involved in cosmetic surgery.

They are also unprepared for the depression that may ensue.”

Trauma? Besides the acute postoperative distress, which passed in time,

there were long-term effects:

Nash had trouble wearing earrings,

because her earlobes were sutured to the surrounding skin.

Her glasses no longer held behind her ears.

Her jaw was permanently discolored,

and she had the sensation that a strap was cinched tight under her chin and over her skull.

“What I saw was disturbing.

 It didn’t look like me,

and it didn’t feel like me.

Something was lost.

A sense of sadness welled up…

The frown lines, the sleepy look, the sagging cheeks and neck were gone.”

Hillman continues…

Nash’s “improved appearance” treats the face as a new and improved product,

according not only with the younger age she feels,

but with standardized notions of appearance.

(sound familiar ladies?)

Her postoperative image adapts to convention imagery;

is that also the image of her character?

Has she abandoned her uniqueness, sold her soul?

It is the effects in the face, the transmission to it of the passions of character,

that Marilyn Monroe hoped to have the courage to face.

Anna Magnani, the great postwar Italian actress of passions,

supposedly told the makeup man doing her face for a scene:

“Don’t take out a single line.  I paid for each one.”

Vox Anima, SDM

Photo Credit NY Times – Mike Trebay

“The Man Behind the Face”

Other photos credited to Tumblr & Public Domain

About Face II

“I want to grow old without facelifts.

They take the life out of a face, the character.

I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I’ve made.”

Marilyn Monroe

And the discussion continues…

and the exploration of the subject of aging.

Long before 60, I have been interested in the subject of Beauty.

Real beauty;  that which is enduring, authentic, and more than skin deep.

This is a large subject–perhaps requiring more posts or…?

 

Recent study turned to “The Force of Character and the Lasting Life” by James Hillman.

Parenthetically, and historically, I will say Hillman’s work has not spoken easily to me.  And I do find it interesting that it is from a masculine perspective I find some grains of truth in exploring the archetype of aging, as it applies to conscious femininity.

However, his “Interlude on the Force of Face” has my attention.

I have excerpted some of his research below.

Roland Barthes makes a useful distinction between the chronos of biology and the chronos of passion, such as we see in Rembrandt’s late self-portraits where the ravages depicted are due less to the passing of time than to the effects of passion.

It is these effects, that Monroe hoped to have the courage to face.

She spoke not of the biological face, but the face “I’ve made”.

 

…the human face as an archetypal phenomenon bears one message: utter vulnerability.

Therefore, the face will be disguised, covered, decorated, surgically altered–

or on the contrary, deprived of all possibilities of hiding, as in the abject condition of prisoner, captive and victim.

This is why our faces are so impossibly difficult to accept:  We are staring into “vulnerability itself”.

Perhaps this is why, vanity and introversion aside,

I have been loathe,  and remain loathe to be photographed!

I cannot bear the primordial image embracing my whole character, as it remains incomplete, and is still taking shape!

“From mirror after mirror

No vanity’s displayed

I’m looking for the face I had

Before the world was made.”

Yeats

Hillman wrote that Jung did more than transcend Freud when he relativized the power of the analyst by opening analysis to the face.  Face-to-face.

And, in Marion Woodman’s evolution of the Body Soul, she found phenomenal evidence for the power of the face, and the witnessing Other.

“A face, in the end, is the place where the coherent mind becomes an image.”

James Elkins

…I intend to find the facial courage I will need, to see what the mirror can only fleeting give, on this journey of individuation…

Vox Anima, SDM

Art Credit:   Diane Epstein Photography