Pasadena Art Beat: After watching “Cloud Atlas” and reading the many comments posted on Roger Ebert’s Facebook page, I found myself reflecting on circumflexion and the evolution of the yellowface East Asian eyebrows in cinema, particularly in regards to men. As a former copy editor, I developed this into a diacritical reflection on circumflexion.
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I don’t know about you, but I’m have so little body hair that I don’t need to shave my legs, I never worry about waxing my moustache and my eyebrows are so thin I pencil them in. If I didn’t my eyebrows would be little more than en dashes over my eyes. Diacritically speaking, my eyebrows and eyes could be represented as a inverted semi-colon.
4 comments:
I never thought the world of eyebrows specifically "East Asian" eyebrows was so complex. I certainly never considered how much eyebrows play into movies as well as the characters. I know that I have commented on characters' eyebrows and how they add to a characters being/personality/etc. I was surprised at how much this was considered in the character designs and how detailed the descriptions were in the movies. I certainly will consider characters' eyebrows in movies after reading this.
I have never really paid very much attention to characters' eyebrows, unless ntoing that they serve to make the character look particularly alien. That said, I am not sure that I have ever seen someone with eyebrows that look like "East Asian" eyebrows in real life. And considering half of my family is East Asian, I think that would be something I'd notice. I also find it interesting how close the Fu Manchu eyebrows are to later depictions of alien eyebrows, such as the Vulcans. Eyebrows are one of those things that tend to be unnoticed unless something is radically different about them, at which point the brain categorizes them as alien.
wow, do some things go unnoticed. I remember when Les Miserable came out, many of my costume design friends were complaining that Anne Hathaway's eyebrows were far to perfect to fit the time period, but none of them have eve mentioned the false stereotype in asian yellow face eyebrows. I'll admit I didn't even think twice about the eyebrows in "Cloud Atlas" I just took what I saw as reality. Because this style eyebrow has been around for so long, I think society has just stopped second guessing it. but now that I think about it more it really is a problem. Why do we have to exaggerate someones eyebrows just to be across a point. Also, why does to shape of the eyebros have to be such an "evil" one. It all seems quite racist.
I cant say I've ever been watching a movie or television show and had to stop what I was doing because of a characters eyebrows. Nor have I ever really paid any attention to a character's eyebrows. The costume designer / make-up artists already know what you are already expecting you to see and so they are pretty tough to notice.
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