That's all true. Though i haven't been talking about physical perfection at all, but about facial expressions and what they can reveal about the inner person.
And perceiving a politician being an "actor" is also discomfiting. Doesn't Gore's performance give you a creepy feeling for that reason, that he seems to be an actor?
Clinton did seem like a snake oil salesman, in his facial expressions. And voila...!
I think some people's, even politicians' natural personas, accurately convey, or reveal, something about themselves, and that we would be throwing away our evolutionarily-acquired ability to "read" people if we ignored unconsciously-revealed cues. The politicians think so too, and hire experts to train them to hide what the focus groups don't like
Obviously facial expressions aren't always accurate; if someone doesn't smile because they can't for a physical reason, it would be a false conclusion that they were gloomy, of course.
(Well, heck, that would make one gloomy, but gloominess would be the cart, not the horse.)
Take Barney Frank. Some people, his politics aside, like him, some hate him, but when he gives a press conference, you know you aren't seeing an actor, you're seeing a human being, for better or worse. |
