Resting Bitch Face A.K.A. RBF is a recognised and researched condition. It is a facial expression conveying that the person who has it is (take your pick) angry, annoyed, arrogant, contemptuous, superior to you or at the very least removed from the current conversation. The condition is genuine and is covered in extensive detail in populist portals such as Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary. Celebrities known for it, or accused of it, include Victoria Beckham, Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza and among the relatively few men with it, Kayne West.
I have it. And I can tell you that in my experience, it is not a case of what you see is what you get. If I look at you with an expressionless face, I am not holding you in contempt, I am not angry with you, and I certainly don’t think I am superior to you. It is just that smiling (for example) takes a physical toll on me. I want to smile more to make you feel better, but I prefer to have a spontaneous, shared, and warranted smile. I could make a smile a permanent fixture on my face, but that would be both physically exhausting and somewhat hypocritical. Just—please—be assured that unless you hear something to the contrary (from me), I like you and am interested in you even if my face doesn’t show it.
I like faces, particularly eyes. It is said that eyes are windows to the soul. They are certainly the most expressive of our facial features. As evidence of that, consider the greatest actors of our time—particularly in the time of close-ups. They act with their eyes. They tell a story with their eyes. Their eyes suggest they have set aside their souls in favour of that of their character. The best modern-day exponent, in my view, is Anthony Hopkins. He did it early with Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs (if you believe Lector had a soul) and again as Burt Munro in The World’s Fastest Indian. The best single example of the eyes at work is that of the great British actor Tom Hardy in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. In the film, Hardy plays Farrier, a Spitfire pilot. He spends almost the entire movie wearing an oxygen mask. Yet, Hardy manages to convey all his emotions of his character—fear, anger, triumph, and despair—through his only exposed facial feature, his eyes. It is a work of art which in these Covid-masked days we can but envy and perhaps aspire to.
So that brings me to the dude above. But, before I reveal who he is, allow me to ask you two questions:
- What year was the photograph taken?
- Which films has he appeared in?
Take your time; I’ll wait
……
The answer to the first question is 1910.
The answer to the second question is none. Despite Brad Pitt good looks (to whom he has been likened), he is not an actor. Hermann Rorschach was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who lived from 1884 to 1922. His most significant and possibly only claim to fame is as the creator of the once exalted ink blob test as a means of identifying a person’s personality traits. That test has since been discredited.
Yet I can but wonder whether there would have been a better outcome for Rorschach had he followed a similar path in our time? And that is perhaps an indictment on the media today. We see it in New Zealand; we see it on CNN and Fox. In these days of style over substance, presentation over professionalism, visuals are our default position.
In Rorschach’s case, with those film star good looks and medical qualifications, he surely would be the media’s go-to guy for all things medical. He may have to eschew that inkblot stuff, but why not be our latest covid-modeller? He might not be any better at the job than the current lot. But let’s face it, if we can no longer expect credibility, we could at least improve the eye candy.
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