Masking emotions

I get my second shot today. But I won't be liberated from masks, not yet. 

People at the grocery store won't know I am smiling.

Masks interfere with communication, and this blog is about political communication. 

 

When people ask why I put up a blog post every single morning, I tell them it is because I remain interested every single morning about the way humans really communicate ideas and leadership. My observations of politicians in campaign appearances gave me an insight that should have been obvious, but was not, at least not until I watched events up close in early primary election states. Political speech is a presentation. It is acting a role, written under the supervision of the politician, and most of the communication is done with non-verbal body language and tone, not denoted words. Understanding political speech is like understanding art. There is more to it than just pigments on canvas. Art needs interpretation. Political communication needs to be examined, especially for how it affects people who don't examine it. 

That's it. That is why I keep writing.

Humans communicate the important things much less with denoted words than I had understood. Politicians, hoping to get political traction and emerge as a political leader are ground-zero for examination of this phenomenon. I got lucky in my life timing. I retired in 2015 and shortly after about 20 viable Republican candidates began showing up in New Hampshire in an open free-for-all campaign to be president of the United States.  They came, they spoke, they shook hands, and I could be there. Trump won--a world class example of the primacy of theater and optics in politics. Then, in 2020, there were about 20 viable Democrats. I watched them speak. It isn't what they say; all Democrats say about the same things. As in the 2016 cycle, what matters is who says it and how they say it. Political actors get traction--or not--because of who they are and what they represent in the public mind. They communicate through a mixture of biography and demeanor. Not words, or at least not much in the denoted content of words. Audiences barely remember words. We think we do, but we don't. We remember attitude. From that we infer character.

Masks hide attitude and therefore character. We have examples of the masking of attitude and intent in our own lives as we navigate in grocery stores while wearing masks. Normally we interact with others, avoiding bumps, through countless subtle signals about our intention about whether we are going to open a freezer case or defer to the other person to reach first, about whether we are going left or right, whether we are friendly and in a good mood or irritated and in a hurry. Masks obscure that. In a grocery store, everyone looks cold and vaguely hostile because we associate a blank face with impervious disregard. Masks make us look robotic, not human.

The people at the local university, Southern Oregon University, took this set of photographs. They make in an exaggerated way my point about emotion. One set of photographs show emotion, the other hides it. 

A century ago silent movies enthralled audiences, and silent movies make my point in two ways. The first is that for the audiences of the 1920s, the faces and actions of the actors on screen communicated a story, done without spoken words. It worked. The second is that modern audiences don't experience how credible silent movies were because we aren't seeing into the story of the movie; we are conscious of seeing century-old technology of a story. We are seeing a "black-and-white" jerky film with over-acting people with subtitles. The real communication we are getting is of watching an old-fashioned movie.

It is why Joe Biden's comment "Make sure you have your record player on at night" was understood as a gaffe. His anodyne comment imbedded a huge piece of communication about his understanding of the world. Record player!

Trump understood the theater of politics. He essentially refused to wear a mask, and the time he was most visible wearing a mask is when he strode triumphantly to a balcony to remove it with a flourish. He represented courage to his supporters and liberation in a COVID world. 

Biden, often photographed in a mask, represents prudence, courtesy, and being not-Trump. Being not-Trump is a thing in itself, and Biden has it. That was enough to be elected. Biden also embeds a look of feebleness and a lack of verbal fluency. His supporters try to overlook that and his opponents focus on it. Again, it is body language--who Biden is. Can we trust that guy to lead us? Democrats think we can. He isn't Trump-like. Republicans think we cannot; he is a Democrat and senile.

My insight about body language is not new. Charles Darwin, after writing Origin of Species, wrote a book on the facial expressions of man and animals. Our brains are connected to our faces and bodies. We reveal ourselves. We also communicate with tone of voice. Anyone who has ever been around a teenager understands undertones of insolence, resentment, or disagreement buried inside denoted words of consent. The classic example of tone determining meaning is the phrase, "Yeah, right."  Depending on tone it is either matter-of-fact agreement or derisive disagreement.

I will get my COVID shot, and then I will put on my mask in public, and keep it on until we are given an all clear. That, too, is body language, expressing my respect for the rules and guidance. Others will be careless about their mask, or refuse to wear it, and that, too, will be body language of politics, communicating their view of mask policy and policy-makers. An example was this couple which reluctantly slipped the masks up from below their chins when I said I wanted to photograph a couple of Trump scofflaws. They said the rule was bullshit. 

And, of course, my behavior was political communication, too. My words, demeanor, presumption they were Trump voters, and camera all combined to send a message.

We communicate all the time, just by being there. We aren't really social animals--not really human--until we can have our faces back.