Interface

human rights

Disfigured Faces, “Accursed Ugliness”, and Hollywood

by

disfigured

Disfigured Faces, “Accursed Ugliness”, and Hollywood

The Author

Patrick Adamson

disfigured

The fourth and final blog in our Halloween series, written by Paddy Adamson, brings together the key themes of Hollywood and disfigured faces. As a researcher in film, and a member of Face Equality International’s Lived Experience Group, Paddy brings a unique perspective to the topic. Don’t miss the rest of the series, starting with Fay Bound Alberti’s introduction, Sara Wasson’s blog on Les yeux sans visage and Lauren Stephenson’s analysis of The Eye. Let us know what you think!

Disfigured Faces, “Accursed Ugliness”, and Hollywood

One of the best-known scenes in all of silent cinema unfolds about halfway through Rupert Julian’s The Phantom of the Opera (1925). Young soprano Christine Daaé (Mary Philbin) has been carried down into a suite prepared for her in the cellars under the Paris Opera House by the Phantom (Lon Chaney), a mysterious masked composer who haunts the venue. He promises her a great career, providing she can devote herself to following his orders.

But curiosity about what lies beneath her mentor’s disguise gets the better of her. Stealing up behind him as he plays “Don Juan Triumphant” at his organ, peering over his shoulder as he faces the camera, she snatches the Phantom’s mask away, revealing directly to the audience a cadaverous face of sunken cheeks, protruding teeth, and flared, elongated nostrils. When he turns to look at her, intrigue gives way to screams; the film cuts between the Phantom’s true face and the terror and disgust it inspires in hers.

Said to have led to screaming and even fainting among moviegoers of the day, the Phantom’s unmasking is a shocking spectacle of physical difference and an iconic moment in horror film history – the unveiling of a face that has continued to fascinate in the near-century since. Created by Chaney himself, an actor famed for his extreme transformations, the villain’s look was kept secret until release. Today, his elaborate make-up can be imitated for the price of a high-end Halloween mask.

“Feast your eyes”

Yet, for all that the Phantom’s command as he forcibly turns the cowering Christine’s face toward his – “Feast your eyes – – glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!” – could equally be directed at the film’s audience. There is more to the scene than the thrill of seeing Chaney’s make-up artistry paraded on screen. It provides a revelation vital to the story. Confirmed by the disclosure of his deformed face is the Phantom’s monstrous true nature. The corrupted body of this gruesome physical spectacle befits the corrupted soul of this dangerously deranged outcast from Devil’s Island, his disfigurement the outward expression of the ugliness within.

Film still from The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

For me, as a disfigured viewer, this is the most striking aspect of this iconic moment. Not only is it testament to the longevity and pervasiveness of an all too familiar tendency, unavoidable at this time of year – the imitation of appearance-altering conditions in the name of a “spooky” costume – but it is an uncomfortable reminder of what it means, in the codified world of Hollywood cinema at least, to be facially different.

Physical Appearance as Cinematic Shorthand

Filmmakers have long exploited the meaning-making potential of distinctive physical characteristics, using non-normative appearances as an expedient shorthand for character. The most notorious example of this physiognomic logic is the prevalence of facial scarring among movie villains. Examples range from the monstrous of horror cinema – the burn-scarred Freddy Kreuger foremost among them – to the crime lords and Sith Lords of the latest James Bond and Star Wars blockbusters. Visible evidence of a past gone awry, stated or otherwise, their scars offer a convenient rationale for the malevolent course they now follow.

At the same time, there can be little doubt that the appeal of figures from the Phantom to Kreuger owes also to a fascination with such bodies and the uncomfortable feelings they are supposed to excite. They are the frightful icons behind many a Halloween costume, after all, evidence of a pleasure found in the display or performance of physical difference that can be traced back through the history of film and the freak show. Chaney made something of a career of it, earning the nickname “The Man of a Thousand Faces” for the lengths he went to: strapping his lower legs to his thighs to play a double amputee in The Penalty (1920); labouring under a skin-tight rubber suit and seventy-pound hump as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923); and apparently combining his famed make-up skills with painful wire hooks to create his iconic Phantom.

LOn Chaney

The Man Who Laughs

Paul Leni’s The Man Who Laughs (1928) typifies this marriage of exploitation and empathy, using the non-normative appearance of its protagonist to directly interrogate conventional ideas about the face and the role it plays in how we understand ourselves and others. Originally planned as a Chaney vehicle, this adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel stars Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine, a travelling show attraction famous for his wide frozen grin, carved into his face as a child by a Comprachico surgeon under orders from the King of England.

While his condition does not, in theory, preclude his entry into the spaces and pursuits enjoyed by the masses, Gwynplaine’s world is circumscribed by his facial difference. Most welcome on society’s edges, in carnivals and freak shows where difference is a valued commodity, he internalises the daily ridicule and the aesthetic and moral judgements of a callous, grotesquely prejudiced, yet superficially “normal” public; he fears he is unworthy of the woman he loves, Dea (again played by Philbin), for her blindness prevents her perceiving the real him.

To portray a man who can only laugh, Veidt’s wide grin was held in place using a bespoke, and apparently painful, appliance that deprived him of access to normative facial expressions, along with the social cues associated with them. Where the face is conventionally seen as inseparable from selfhood, the foremost means by which we recognise each other, Gwynplaine’s face not only fails to reflect his inner self but seems to contradict it, thanks to the fixity of its lower half; when not covering his mouth via a protective gesture of sorts, he is seen to grin his way through incidents to which such a reaction rarely seems appropriate. His character divorced from his appearance to jarring ends, the result invites audiences to search for an understanding of his agony in his eyes and comportment, and, in the process, perhaps reflect on their assumptions about how a face should react and look.

A Damaging Reliance on Disfigurement

And yet, for all the nuance, or at least ambivalence, that The Man Who Laughs brings to its handling of disfigurement – being, at once, indebted to and critical of the exploitation of facial difference – the film’s enduring place in the popular consciousness again owes overwhelmingly to the unusual look of its protagonist. In 1940, a photograph of Veidt in make-up as Gwynplaine was used by DC Comics artists as a model for a new villain: the Joker – flamboyant nemesis to the noble, honourable Batman.

A staple Halloween costume today, the Joker has gone through numerous incarnations in the intervening eight decades, with the extent and cause of his scarring and famous malevolent grin being repeatedly reimagined. The latest, in 2022’s The Batman, finds him with full-body scarring and a permanent smile attributed to a congenital condition. Director Matt Reeves explains, “…he’s had this very dark reaction to it, and he’s had to spend a life of people looking at him in a certain way…and this is his response.”

Nearly a century on from the unmasking of Chaney’s Phantom, and in a world where media images are routinely decried as a source of body dissatisfaction, Reeves’s comments illustrate the extent to which popular cinema’s damaging reliance on disfigurement as a visible expression of inner corruption or evil continues to go unexamined in many circles. Moreover, they speak to the unique challenges faced by the facial difference community and how these extend beyond the cosmetic and the medical, beyond even the more overt forms of discrimination and abuse to which many of us have grown up accustomed.

Everyday Prejudice

Yet, for all that characters with facial differences are disproportionately given (often lurid) backstories involving some kind of “dark reaction” to what is treated as an inevitable social stigma, the toll such everyday prejudice can have on the life experiences and mental health of those affected by it has rarely been addressed via bespoke legal protections or support. Recent years have, it should be highlighted, seen some more promising signs on this front: the British Film Institute’s 2018 commitment “to stop funding films in which negative characteristics are depicted through scars or facial difference”, and the ongoing efforts of Face Equality International, a global alliance of NGOs working around disfigurement, advocating the overdue recognition of facial difference as a human rights issue in its own right. These are significant steps and, in their being so, reminders of how much remains to be done.

Author Bio

Patrick Adamson is an editor and independent film researcher who lectured at the University of St Andrews from 2021 until 2022, having received his PhD from there in 2020. Specialising in silent Westerns, early popular historical filmmaking, and universalist discourses in 1920s Hollywood, he has been published in journals including Film History and received awards for his research from BAFTSS (British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies) and SERCIA (Société pour l’Enseignement et la Recherche du Cinéma Anglophone).

He is a member of the Face Equality International Lived Experience Working Group.

Further reading

view all

Diminishing their Voices: Face Transplants, Patients, and Social Media

by

Diminishing their Voices: Face Transplants, Patients, and Social Media

The Author

Patrick Adamson

Public Engagement and Events Officer, Sarah Hall, writes about facetransplant patients and social media. In this blog, Sarah explores the familiar narratives that circulate in the media, and argues that the primary voice should be restored to the patients themselves, giving them control over their own narratives.

Diminishing their Voices: Face Transplants, Patients, and Social Media

A video showing a woman inside a spider monkey enclosure at El Paso Zoo, Texas, started circulating on social media in late May 2021. The woman allegedly broke into the enclosure to get a video of her feeding the monkeys Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. She did so for her social media channels. The video predictably gained a lot of attention, much of it negative. Commenters decried the woman’s reckless disregard for her own and the animals’ safety. These reactions are familiar to those of us on social media. Whether because of the relative anonymity that it affords, or because we are so strongly encouraged to share our opinions on any given issue, we are used to witnessing, feeling, any maybe even contributing to waves of collective outrage. But such moments are fleeting, and the outraged crowd will flock to a new issue before long. 

Social media is core to my work on AboutFace. The Institute of Historical Research’s History Labs+ recently invited me to speak about my work in this area. Namely, on how we present sensitive histories on our social media channels. Over the past six months I’ve come to realise that social media is capable of being far more than a tool for disseminating research. Additionally, it can be a space in which to conduct research. A valuable place to connect with trends, conversations, and public feeling. 

Drawing Parallels

It was while looking for recent tweets mentioning face transplants that I came across the video of the woman in the spider monkey enclosure, and the vitriol that followed it. I noticed that a number of angry responses mentioned Charla Nash. Nash (pictured) received a face transplant in 2016, after being brutally attacked by her friend’s pet chimp in 2009. Tweeters drew parallels between the real life attack and the potential for a repeat occurrence. However, few actually named Nash. Comments instead mentioned ‘the woman overseas who needed a face transplant’. One referenced what happened to Nash indirectly, writing ‘I see a face transplant in her future’.

Unusually, a number of replies came from British authors, who may have recently been reminded of, or learned about the event for the first time in a recently published Daily Star article. The article presented a graphic description of the attack, including audio of the 911 call made by Nash’s friend.

The news of Nash’s attack circulated widely in the US when it happened. And follow up coverage shared news of her face transplant. But coverage in the UK was limited to a few sensationalist pieces in the tabloids, while the broadsheets focused on surgical innovation. There is likely a link between the publication of the Daily Star article and the references to Nash’s attack in tweets from British authors. Tweets largely focused on the event, on the chimp, not on Nash herself, echoing the tone of the article. 

Familiar Narratives

Face transplants receive diverse treatment in social media. From flippant remarks to government conspiracies, fascination to condemnation and mockery of the aesthetic outcomes. Stories such as Nash’s circulate in public discourse according to familiar scripts. They are presented like films, featuring protagonists and antagonists, and readers treat them accordingly. Both social and news media present a fragmented view of reality, distancing audiences from the actual trauma of events. This process is exacerbated by the fact that most face transplant recipients are rarely the protagonists in their own stories. For Nash, people remember the chimp, Travis, before they remember her. They remember the attacker, not the attacked. If you Google ‘Charla Nash,’ the first result is the Wikipedia page for Travis, which remembers him both as perpetrator of the attack and tragic ‘child star.’ 

Contributing to this is the plurality of online discourse. Nash’s story, no longer simply her own, has been hi-jacked by multiple different parties. Just as some news outlets have used it to hail the victories of the surgeon leading her treatment, others have used it to mourn the tale of a wild animal raised in captivity. On social media, it circulates as a warning, a lesson against reckless contact with animals. Not long ago, it was employed to mock the people who had responded to a YouGov survey, claiming that they would beat a Chimpanzee in a fist fight. 17% of respondents answered that they would win. In these public spaces, Nash’s story is not her own, despite her efforts to present her own narrative. 

https://youtu.be/tOLaDP5UgRI

A fixed moment?

When the media, hospitals, and surgeons share news of completed face transplants, naming the patients, they catapult them onto the world stage, and directly into the public eye. Instantly, these patients’ stories are available to be picked up, claimed, shared, and transformed by others. Patients become supporting characters in other stories. I even find myself asking: were they were ever presented as something more? At AboutFace, we are concerned about this process. 

Face transplant patients are patients for the rest of their lives. There is no final ‘healed’ state, where they will no longer need medical care to monitor the donated tissue for signs of rejection. They may even have to undergo further surgeries to improve the function of their new face. But these are not the stories that are presented to the public. The people who continue to make passing, flippant remarks about face transplant, are presumably not aware of the ongoing challenges that transplant patients face. But there is no good reason that they should not be made aware. 

There is a sense, almost, that the moment the patient was presented to the media, their story became fixed in time. And it is that moment, that memory, that holds pride of place in the public consciousness. That is the moment that circulates periodically on social media, sitting below the surface until familiar details emerge in current events or conversations. Even then, it is sensationalised. These patients, who did not choose the spotlight, have been given it nonetheless.

Public Perception

It’s notable that the people referring to Nash’s story online rarely know more than the most basic details of her story, and even these details are not always accurate. As these narratives are picked up and reframed to suit the story being discussed, they take on new life. But what happened to the patient’s story in the process? 

With the distance afforded by the internet, social media users are removed from the reality of the people whose stories they co-opt. Face transplants can, in this space, continue to exist as both medical miracle and science fiction, and everything in between. The patient almost becomes irrelevant in the effort to prove a point, make a joke, or impress with a display of knowledge. But these narratives are still important to AboutFace, because they provide insight into public perceptions of face transplant. As an experimental procedure, where fewer than 50 have been performed worldwide, face transplants are still not common knowledge. We seek to understand what people know, what they want to know, and how we might contribute to more productive narratives. 

In this process, social media becomes an important research tool. We can quickly tap into the swift moving debates, opinions, and currents of public opinion. In few other spaces are people so willing to share their innermost thoughts. The anonymity afforded them provides a safety net. The nature of social media means that thoughts are shared instantaneously, without the pressure of, say, an online survey where people may seek to impress or please a reader, rather than honestly sharing their thoughts. Social media remains a performance, but it is a performance to which we have a front row seat.

Providing a Voice

When face transplant patients are not the protagonists in their own stories, something is wrong. They do not have control over the way that their narratives are told. It is time for that to change. At AboutFace, we believe that restoring the patient to the centre of the narrative is essential if we are to fully understand face transplantation and its outcomes. We speak to patients, as well as the medical teams who work with them. In doing so, we seek to place greater attention on patient reported outcomes. This means identifying ways in which medical teams can more effectively record what it means to live with a transplanted face, and what success looks like. In doing so, we will give a voice to the people who are actually at the centre of the story.

Author Bio

Sarah is Public Engagement and Events Officer on the AboutFace project. She is an experienced events manager with significant experience in the Higher Education sector, and is interested in engaging with creative methods for disseminating academic research to different audiences. She manages the social media profiles for the AboutFace project, and offers training in social media use for ECRs. Sarah is a passionate believer in the benefits of interdisciplinary research and collaboration. She is also interested in academic outreach, and is committed to making research widely accessible to non-specialist audiences. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, Sarah’s research is interdisciplinary and engages closely with digital humanities.

Further reading

view all

Daring to be Different

by

Daring to be Different

The Author

Amanda Bates

The fourth and final blog in our Halloween series, written by Paddy Adamson, brings together the key themes of Hollywood and disfigured faces. As a researcher in film, and a member of Face Equality International’s Lived Experience Group, Paddy brings a unique perspective to the topic. Don’t miss the rest of the series, starting with Fay Bound Alberti’s introduction, Sara Wasson’s blog on Les yeux sans visage and Lauren Stephenson’s analysis of The Eye. Let us know what you think!

Daring to be Different

Dr Amanda Bates, CPsychol, is a Patient Experience and Public Involvement Lead in the Centre for Health Services Studies at the University of Kent. She brings health researchers and service users together to enable patient involvement in the design and management of research using best practice principles of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI). Aside from these roles, Amanda conducts freelance training in disability equality, resilience and living with difference. As someone with a facial difference from birth, Amanda is also involved with the charities Changing Faces, The Cleft Lip and Palate Association (CLAPA) and Face Equality International and has carried out media work on behalf of all three organisations. Amanda sits on our Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP).

Daring to be Different

Despite numerous surgeries in my childhood and teenage years owing to a cleft lip and palate (and other differences), staring strangers and intrusive questions, I rarely spoke about my appearance and what it meant to me. Although I was okay with my reflection, I had put my appearance–my face–and therefore a significant part of who I was-in a box and locked the lid so tightly that opening it seemed an impossibility.

How I relate to my appearance has changed over time (flipped 180 degrees actually) but eventually I found my voice as a self-advocate, grew into my own skin and ultimately learned to like who I was, as a whole person.

As a child/teenager, I was seen as someone who generally coped well, was sociable and ‘lived’ life. It was presumed I’d accepted my difference. Far from it I’m afraid; it wasn’t until my early 20s that I started grappling with the issues.

Why did I separate my appearance from myself and my identity for so long? Well, difference was a taboo subject in my family. My Mum and I were busy protecting each other by not discussing it and my Dad founded the British stiff upper lip society. Therefore, I assumed people didn’t want me to talk about it as it was difficult for them.

Growing up, difference scared me as I assumed it was always a bleak, woeful experience, something to be avoided and certainly to never identify with. Multiple signs reinforced this; being bullied, rarely mixing with anyone who was different, media stereotypes, never seeing disabled people on television…the list goes on. When at times I was forced to face my difference (usually via bravery awards – well-meant but utterly mortifying) or by people telling me they would ‘throw themselves off a cliff’ if they were me, I saw it as a reluctant, unwanted challenge and would shake it off pronto.

A traumatic thread running through everything was surgery. Healthcare culture is mostly different now but growing up I had no say and felt I was on a treatment conveyor belt whereby surgeons were determined to ‘correct’ my appearance, regardless of my feelings. The many required ‘corrections’ surely meant my difference was far from desirable? Given everything, it’s unsurprising that to cope, I locked my face away so it was a separate entity to my being; I had no reason to see it positively, to embrace it as part of my identity, why would I?

The catalyst for change happened when pursuing a health psychology qualification. I deliberately chose a course that incorporated the topic of visible difference so at some level of consciousness I must have wanted to explore these issues, albeit in a ‘removed’ way via academia. Rather inevitably however, when suddenly immersed in a culture where it was acceptable and encouraged to talk and write about visible difference, I was no longer able to hide from myself. My ensuing emotional reactions were immensely powerful and cut deep. Letting go of the well-rehearsed, protective mechanism of projecting myself as someone who wasn’t different in any way, shape or form, was, for a time, catastrophic.

I felt isolated and on display, terrified I would be asked to talk about appearance issues. I started counting the number of times I was stared at. My difference, although always evident to others, was newly noticeable to me and I started to reflect upon my family and hospital experiences. A fuse had been furiously lit within me and I knew my perception of myself and my past was changing; I was powerless to stop it. I realised I couldn’t continue to separate myself from my difference–it was a significant part of my identity. I reached out for support from friends, family and professionals who all answered the call.

With time and support, I realised I wasn’t born knowing how to cope with looking different. None of us arrive with a handbook (if only!) and much less support was available when I was growing up compared to nowadays. I just lived my life; I didn’t question how and why I did things a certain way.

Talking with others gave me permission to explore my difference and related issues in a way that I hadn’t ever done. I gave myself permission to talk and to feel, too. In time, my experiences at last felt validated and understood. I started working for a disability rights organisation and volunteering for visible difference charities; these strands further enabled me to grow into my own skin, find my voice and explore societal views about difference.

Facing my past and processing all that had happened allowed me to embed my appearance and related experiences into my identity. It was a lengthy and difficult process, but a liberating, rewarding and ultimately empowering one. I stopped counting the number of times I was stared at and went on to deliver disability equality workshops and take part in media interviews about appearance diversity. Quite a journey…

How anyone deals with their difference is of course a personal issue and no-one should be forced to feel a certain way about it. I just chose a path that was ultimately right for me.

Difference is perfectly normal and should be respected as such. Not hidden, not dehumanised, not infantilised. Societal perceptions and images around difference have started to change, but there is still some way to go to achieve Face Equality. We all have a role to play to facilitate positive changes so people living with difference don’t feel they have to hide either all, or part of themselves, away.

Have open and honest conversations with friends and family about difference, embrace the normality of it. Start early, talk with children about it. Don’t cross the road or sweep the issues under the carpet, making difference awkward and shameful. Treat others as you would wish to be treated. Respect and value difference.

That’s enough from me, so over to you…what will you do to help bring about Face Equality?

Further reading

view all

The challenges of living with an unusual appearance: What do we know, why don’t we know more and where do we go from here?

by

The challenges of living with an unusual appearance: What do we know, why don’t we know more and where do we go from here?

The Author

Nicola Rumsey

Nicola Rumsey

Our second Face Equality Week blog is on the subject of living with an unusual appearance, and is written by Nichola Rumsey. Nichola is Emerita Professor of Appearance Psychology, University of the West of England, where she founded the Centre for Appearance Research in 1992 and was its Co-Director until 2018. Nichola was a member of the RCS Expert Groups on Face Transplantation from 2003-2004 and 2006-7. She was appointed OBE in 2016 for services to people with disfigurement. Nichola now works as a Consultant Research Psychologist and is developing training and clinical aids designed to improve standards of patient care in the cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery sectors.

The challenges of living with an unusual appearance: What do we know, why don’t we know more and where do we go from here?

The AboutFace project has given me the opportunity to reflect on the debates about face transplant that ranged from 2002-2006 in the UK and in doing so to reflect on what we currently know (and don’t know) about the challenges of life with an appearance that is different from the norm.

We live in a society that attaches considerable importance to an attractive physical appearance.  Social media and the internet, together with marketing and advertising funded by the ever-expanding cosmetics industry, have conspired to produce and then fuel unprecedented levels of dissatisfaction, worry and anxiety about “looks” in most segments of the population (for more, see Nuffield Council on Bioethics Report, 2017).

In our daily lives, we are bombarded by images of people exemplifying current appearance ideals, often accompanied by explicit or implicit messages that suggest that we should be striving to match up to these ideals ourselves. To a greater or lesser degree, we take on board these messages and the resulting belief that changes to our appearance will enhance our relationships and social lives, maybe even our achievements at work.  For many people, the value placed on outward appearance is becoming disproportionately large compared with other aspects of self-esteem and sense of self-worth.

In this social context, living with an appearance that is noticeably different to current ideals is widely acknowledged to be challenging.  Visible differences result from a diverse range of causes.  They can be permanent, temporary, progressive or fluctuating and yet, despite this diversity, the psychological and social issues that people experience are similar.  The emotional impacts can be extensive, encompassing anxiety – particularly in social situations, shame and embarrassment, negative body image, self-consciousness and a lack of self-confidence.  These impacts can also influence behaviour.  For example, the experience of negative emotions, coupled perhaps with unwanted attention or questioning from others, can lead to the avoidance of potentially anxiety provoking social situations – such as meeting new people, forming new friendships or embarking on an intimate relationship.

Despite similarities in the experiences of many people living with a visible difference, there are also striking variations in their levels of adjustment and wellbeing. Some people experience these challenges as no more than a minor inconvenience, whereas for others, there are devastating effects on psychological wellbeing and daily life. Interestingly (and often in contrast to the beliefs of healthcare professionals and the lay public), the extent, severity and cause of a visible difference are not good predictors of adjustment.

A very noticeable disfigurement is not necessarily an insurmountable impediment to a good quality of life. Neither are gender, age, or socioeconomic background good predictors of adjustment. Instead, research has demonstrated that psychosocial factors and processes play major roles in a person’s level of resilience or distress. The key role played in adjustment by a person’s outlook on life (this varies from optimism – the tendency to look on the bright side and make the most of things, to pessimism – a focus on the down sides) is now well established.  In addition, the extent to which a person’s feelings about his or her appearance contribute to the person’s sense of self-worth is important.

Think of someone’s self-esteem as a pie chart.  If the person has internalised the messages from advertisers, social media and their peers about the importance of appearance in many aspects of life, then their pie chart is more likely to be dominated by their feelings about their looks. They worry about what they “should” look like and fear that they will judged negatively by others because they are failing to match up to current standards. These people are more likely to experience distress and to judge their quality of life negatively.  If, on the other hand, the person has populated their self-esteem pie chart with lots of different elements (for example, their sense of humour; their ability at sport etc), with appearance occupying only a small segment, then that person is more likely to be resilient to the challenges of an unusual appearance (and also to many other hurdles they may encounter in life).

So, we have made some progress in understanding individual differences in adjustment to visible difference, but why don’t we know more?  The short answer is that these differences result from the combination of a myriad factors and processes  On the upside, this complexity makes us all unique. The bad news (for researchers at least) is that progress in understanding the detail is slow. Rather like trying to complete an enormous jigsaw made up of thousands of tiny pieces, some small clusters of the overall picture are now clear, but we are still a long way from completing the tantalising picture on the outside of the jigsaw box.

Researchers have very different ideas about the key variables in adjustment and use these different ideas to drive their own agendas for research. Many different methodologies and measures are used making it impossible to combine data sets from different studies. As a result, we are continuing to populate new, small areas of the jigsaw but less progress is being made with the inter-connections.  Researchers from The Centre for Appearance Research at UWE in Bristol are working hard to produce a framework of adjustment to appearance and a set of key measures, proposing these as a common currency amongst researchers in the field, but we are still in the foothills of persuading research communities across the world to join this effort.

The good news from a psychological point of view is that many of the factors that have already been identified as contributing to the wellbeing of people with visible differences are amenable to change.  For example, people predisposed to a pessimistic outlook on life can be helped to become more optimistic. The challenge is how to make effective interventions available at scale – both within the health services and also as open access resources online. Training packages designed to help health professionals and community workers to support people with visible differences have been developed, but we need to find ways to persuade those in charge of policy and practice to prioritise and fund the roll out of this training.

The biggest challenge is the societal one.  How can we bust the ‘beauty myths’ – the idea that a more ‘attractive’ appearance is the key to happiness, relationship and occupational success – and instead, promote positive attitudes towards diversity in appearance?  Achieving change at this level is complex, challenging and definitely not for the faint hearted.  To make progress, we all need to lean in and get involved.  Face Equality Week is a great place to start.

Nuffield Council on Bioethics report on Cosmetic Procedures.  2017.  Available from www.nuffieldbioethics.org

Further reading

view all

Adam Pearson: Face Equality Week

by

Adam Pearson: Face Equality Week

The Author

Adam Pearson

Interface face

This week, we are dedicating a series of blogs to Face Equality Week. The first comes from Adam Pearson, an award-winning disability rights campaigner, actor, presenter and speaker. He has a genetic condition called neurofibromatosis (NF1), which causes benign tumours to grow along the nerves.

Adam Pearson: Face Equality Week

So here we are, Face Equality Week 2020, though this one feels different to previous years. If I’d have been writing this article merely a few months ago, under normal circumstances this article would be very different in tone, style and conclusion. Though at this unique moment in human history I wanted to say something meaningful, something helpful.

Allow me to introduce myself, or for those of you who know me reintroduce myself. My name is Adam Pearson, I am a TV Presenter, Actor and Campaigner (and Celebrity Mastermind Champion). I, like over 1 million people in the UK, have a facial disfigurement / visible difference. Mine is caused by a genetic condition called Type 1 Neurofibromatosis (NF1). This condition is characterised by the growth on non-cancerous tumours, called Fibromas, on nerve endings. In the same way that cables such as iPhone chargers are wrapped in plastic, your nerves are wrapped in cells called Schwann Cells. It’s the over-multiplication of these cells that cause said tumours. The condition itself has a very broad spectrum, with effects ranging from mild to extreme, I am at the later end of the spectrum. I often refer to myself (within very selected circles) as the Spinal Tap of NF1 – and if you got that reference congratulations, you are officially cool.

My experience of living with a facial disfigurement has been filled with ups and downs, it has shaped who I am as a personal and dare I say it has made me a better person. When you boil it down, it has been one of the main driving forces in my career, after being bullied horrendously for all 5 years of secondary school I naturally fell into advocacy as an adult.

As a disclaimer I should point out that I handled being bullied terribly, at the age of 11 I guess that my emotional intelligence and social fluidity wasn’t then what it is now. I was also, be it for better or for worse, a lot smarter than the people who were calling me names and giving me grief, as a result I was able to outwit, and out-insult them at every turn, which at the time seemed both justified and hilarious but with the benefit of hindsight I now know better. Rather than defusing the situation, I was simply exacerbating it. I’m not into having regrets, though I regard secondary school, in all its dirty glory, as one of those regrets. I often say that, regardless of your position on his work, Darwin’s theory exists in perfect motion in school playgrounds across the earth.

Fast forward 20 years (God I’m old) the situation is very different, I have a voice, I have a profile, I get to travel the world making movies and documentaries, I get to talk to people about things that I am passionate about and get to hear what they, in turn are passionate about. However this whole media career was never the plan, moreover it is a very fortunate by-product of being very good at advocacy, about learning to recognise inequality (and there is a difference between things being unequal and thing being unfair) and being able to communicate that with grace, humility and humour. Even over the past year I have learned that not everything is a battle and that not every hill is one worth dying on.

Adam Pearson

I have always been incredibly grateful to have had an amazing support network, be it my parent, my friends, media professionals who were willing to take a chance on me, as an adult I’ve never really struggled to find my place in this crazy world – I am one of the lucky ones. However, I am also aware that there are people out there with a facial disfigurement / visible difference who haven’t had the same support I have.  People who live there live in constant fear of judgement and ridicule, for whom the outside world is a scary and unstable place, people for whom the idea of self-love seems so far out of reach.

If that’s you, trust me when I tell you it gets better, things get easier. I can’t wave a magic wand and make it all go away, but what I can do is be there, if your confidence is low, borrow mine, rest assured that there are people out there that love you for who you are right now, they aren’t looking back nostalgically at an older version of you they preferred. Nor are they looking to some future version of you that has their s**t together.  The person you are right now is plenty good enough, and if people have an issue with that, that is their burden to bear, not yours.

This is normally the point in one of these articles with the writer hops up on their soapbox and judges the world for its transgressions against a particular minority group, siting their own life experiences blow by brutal blow. Currently though that honestly doesn’t feel like the right tack, here in May 2020.

Right now, in the midst of COVID-19, the world has never been more equal.

Right now, for one reason or another, everyone is afraid to leave their house.

Right now, for one reason or another, everyone is staring at each other with fear, loathing and suspicion.

Right now, we all wish we could see our friends, hug them and know that, come what may, we are loved, honoured and respected just as we are.

Once this COVID-19 situation passes, that day will happen, those fears will fade, those anxieties lift and those friendship rekindle.  However, for many of the 1 million people who are affected by facial disfigurement / visible difference, the emotions may be conflicting. For them lockdown has been a welcome break from the cruel day to day life they experience, for many a return to “reality” is a return to a world that is rife with hostility, mockery and anxiety. Therefore, if you take anything away from Face Equality Week 2020, if there is one word I could burn into our collective consciousness, it would be empathy.

The very uncertainty we are all experiencing right now, that’s remarkably similar to the uncertainty I experienced at school. That feeling of being isolated, alone, not know where I fit within this ever changing world around me. So let me encourage you, no matter who you are, visible difference or not, when this is all over and we slowly go back to our lives, let empathy be at the heart of what you do.  If you see someone who looks different, smile, say hello, ask them about their stories, be united by our commonalities rather than stand divided by our differences.

Have a great Face Equality Week 2020 and thank for taking the time to read this article, I hope it helped.

Adam

Further reading

view all

Visualising Evil: Depictions of Visible Facial Difference in Film Culture

by

Visualising Evil: Depictions of Visible Facial Difference in Film Culture

The Author

Dr Sarah Hall

Facial scarring has long been used in the film industry to imply evil or villainy. In this blog, Dr Sarah Hall (University of York) explores the damaging effects of this outdated trope.

Visualising Evil: Depictions of Visible Facial Difference in Film Culture

At a pivotal moment in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the antagonist of the sequel trilogy, Kylo Ren, is healed of the facial scar that he received in The Force Awakens. That scar, which had mysteriously moved across Ren’s face by the time that The Last Jedi was released, was inflicted after the antagonist committed his darkest act in that film. That the scar healed as Ren was brought back to the light side was no afterthought. The appearance and disappearance of the scar represented Ren’s character progression from troubled, to unquestionably, abhorrently and violently evil, and back to redemption.

Visual Clues

It is a familiar trope. There is a long history of popular film culture relying on facial difference, particularly scarring, to denote villainy. Viewers are inundated with visual references to remind us of the immorality of the antagonists that occupy our screens, and the final Star Wars instalment continued to cement the narrative that a wounded face is a signifier of evil. To really bring the point home, we should perhaps remind ourselves that Ren’s redemption story failed to offer up any real reasoning for his change of heart, only that he was moved by protagonist Rey’s decision to heal him. The scar, then, becomes a primary signifier of his redemption. Not only is it a visual clue for the viewer, but its removal forms an emotional foundation for change from bad to good, dark side to light.

Star Wars is set in a galaxy full of archetypes. Good and evil form the balance on which numerous characters teeter in all three trilogies. However, this familiar simplicity should not prevent us from questioning why popular film repeatedly returns to this tired trope.

Scarring and James Bond

I am new to the AboutFace project. I will admit to not having thought critically about this issue in any depth until recently. It is something that I’ve had a background awareness of, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone that isn’t, but I’ve been afforded the privilege of not being directly impacted by these issues. Since joining AboutFace in March, I have been thinking about faces, facial difference, facial injury, surgery and their representations more than I ever thought I would. All of a sudden, the presence of villains with facial scarring became excruciatingly apparent. My timing was perhaps partly to blame.

After seeing a trailer for the new Bond film, No Time to Die, I decided to tackle my entrenched dislike of the Bond franchise and watch all of the Daniel Craig films before the release of the latest instalment, which was due in April but has been pushed back to November due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I was surprised. I did enjoy the films, but they also made me uncomfortable.

The Bond series is especially wedded to the trope that scars, burns, and other facial injuries signify evil. Even if you just take the recent releases, you can’t help but notice the trend: Mads Mikkelsen’s La Chiffre in Casino Royale; Javier Bardem’s Raoul Silva in Skyfall; Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld in Spectre (back for a second instalment in No Time to Die); and if one scarred villain wasn’t enough for No Time to Die, Rami Malek has also joined the cast to play a terrorist leader with an injured face, partially covered by a mask. That two facially scarred villains were written into a single film might suggest that the 25th Bond instalment may not, as hailed, be the ‘most woke yet.’ It might be fair to say that Bond films are not known for their subtlety or nuance, but these are villains played by talented actors whose abilities need not be augmented by visual scarring. Why, then, do producers continue to rely on this trope?

Credit: MGM/Columbia Pictures

The face, identity and history

The history of this association goes back further than you might imagine. Beauty ideals have long contributed to the notion that beauty equates with goodness and ugliness with evil, stemming from the classical world. While beauty ideals may have shifted over time, there is a consistent connection between the face and identity. In the early modern period, the face also carried deeper suggestions of honour, and severe facial difference or injury often carried dehumanising associations. The connection between villainy and facial scarring or difference is not new, it was not invented by film companies, though it has become their bread and butter.

These cultural and emotional histories have also been influential in contemporary medical intervention. It has been suggested that negative responses to facial difference could have emerged from a cognitive threat detection mechanism. Health professionals working on the human face, whether in psychology, dermatology or surgery, have drawn connections between disgust and facial disfigurement. Perhaps, then, producers and writers in the film industry are just playing on recognised human responses? But the argument that disgust is somehow an evolutionary response does not take into account the fact that disgust sensitivities are far from static throughout history, that ‘disgust’ is subjective, dynamic, and emotionally and culturally influenced. Is it not time to give current cinema audiences the credit that they might be able to work out which character is the villain without facial scarring?

A ‘historical document’?

In an article for The New Yorker, David Owen wrote that over time, the body becomes ‘a kind of historical document.’ Dramatic moments are memorialised in scar tissue. It rings true for scars in film. Scars can be illustrations of a traumatic incident that either marks the point of descent into evil, as with Kylo Ren, or they might signify a past event in a character’s life that has contributed their villainous state. Suggesting stormy lives, filled with pain or violence, think Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight, scars are visual clues to a villain’s (sometimes complex) backstory. All too often, however, the scar is little more than a device to make a character appear more sinister, as with the surprisingly superficial Isabel Maru played by Elena Anaya in Wonder Woman (2017). I say surprisingly, because the film was so widely praised for its progressive outlook. The suggestion in this case is that Maru is evil from the outside in.

But while there may sometimes be a rationale for choosing to give facial scars to on-screen villains, this does not negate the significant negative stereotypes that can be associated with visible facial difference as a result. In a video produced by the Guardian, the notion that scars are representative of past trauma is reinforced. However, the speakers remind us of some of the painful reactions people have had to their scars. Whether the scarring serves to reveal the hidden depths of a villain to the audience, or if it solely serves as a visual clue for evil, the association strengthens the notion that a visible facial difference marks the bearer as unfamiliar to many audience members, defining them as ‘other.’

#IAmNotYourVillain

UK charity Changing Faces sought to challenge this tired trope in 2018 and have continued fighting for change on our screens ever since with their #IAmNotYourVillain campaign. Their call for action followed numerous studies that highlighted the negative association between visible facial difference and villainy on-screen. The charity’s CEO, Becky Hewitt, told the Guardian that young people don’t tend to make the association between facial difference and negative traits until they are exposed to popular media representations. This would suggest that the prejudice is learned, and possibly at a young age.

AboutFace hopes to contribute to the efforts set in motion by Changing Faces, challenging prejudice and misconception as part of our research, which will explore cultural systems of conformity, beauty and facial perfection in the age of the selfie both through academic research and public engagement events. Our Lived Experience Advisory Panel supports us in this work. Their involvement at key milestones in the project will ensure the research is relevant and meaningful to those to whom it matters the most.

Representation

Misrepresentation can be incredibly damaging, but so can a lack of representation. Changing Faces has called not only for fewer negative depictions of facial difference, but an increase in positive representations. They encourage the diversification of occasions of facial difference in film, moving away from the most prevalent villainy or vulnerability. The reasons for this have been powerfully articulated by some of the charity’s champions, such as Tulsi Vagjiani, a plane crash survivor who told the Telegraph that she was compared to Freddy Kreuger when she was growing up. The makeup used to transform actor Robert Englund into the notorious horror villain was based on medical photographs of burn victims, directly connecting real scarring to the demonic Kreuger.

The BFI quickly moved to support the Changing Faces campaign in November 2018, making the decision not to fund films in which the villain has scars, marks and burns. Speaking about the decision, deputy CEO Ben Roberts referred to the criteria in the BFI diversity standards, which call for meaningful representations on screen. In 2019, the BFI helped to fund Dirty God, a film about a woman trying to reclaim her life after an acid attack, starring burn survivor Vicky Knight. The film has been hailed as a strong positive representation and has also had a positive transformative effect on Knight’s own outlook.

This might be new ground for film, but it doesn’t appear to be the herald of a new era. While high-budget, high-profile films like No Time to Die, continue to dominate, can we hope to see any meaningful change in the cinematic representation of visible facial difference? The AboutFace project is seeking to explore the social context in which facial transplantation happens. In doing so, we are drawing attention to the social pressures to look a certain way. This theme of the scarred villain is part of our broader discussions of difference in societies fixated by visual appearance.

Author bio

Dr Sarah Hall is Associate Lecturer in Public History at the University of York. She was previously Public Engagement and Events Officer on AboutFace.

Further reading

view all