#Social Power and the Face

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of the Face

The philosophy of the face delves into the significance of the face as both a physical and symbolic representation of identity, expression, ethics, and human interaction. The face holds profound philosophical meaning, often considered a site where individuality, sociality, and ethical responsibilities converge.

Key Themes in the Philosophy of the Face:

Identity and Subjectivity:

The face is the most recognizable and unique feature of a person, serving as a primary means of identifying and distinguishing individuals. Philosophically, the face represents individual subjectivity and personhood. It is often tied to the idea of selfhood and how we understand ourselves and others as distinct beings.

Thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas have emphasized the face as a central aspect of ethical relations. For Levinas, encountering another’s face is a direct confrontation with their humanity, which demands responsibility and ethical consideration.

Expression and Emotion:

The face is the primary medium through which humans convey emotions such as joy, sadness, anger, and surprise. Philosophers of mind and emotion, like Charles Darwin in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, have studied how the face communicates internal states.

The face also plays a key role in nonverbal communication and body language. Merleau-Ponty, in his phenomenology of perception, views the face as part of our embodied experience, where internal states are manifested externally in the physical world.

The Face and Ethical Responsibility:

In Levinas’s philosophy, the face-to-face encounter is the foundation of ethical relations. The face of the other calls us to responsibility, evoking a moral imperative to recognize their vulnerability and dignity. This idea contrasts with objectifying others, where the person is reduced to a thing rather than recognized in their full humanity.

The face, in Levinas’s ethics, is unavoidably tied to vulnerability. Seeing another’s face can invoke a sense of empathy and care, demanding that we treat the other as more than just an object or a means to an end.

The Gaze and Power:

Jean-Paul Sartre, in his work on existentialism, discusses the concept of the gaze. The idea is that when someone looks at us, we become aware of ourselves as objects in their perception. The gaze of another can be experienced as oppressive or objectifying, leading to feelings of shame or discomfort.

The face is the focal point of the gaze, and philosophers like Michel Foucault have explored how visual power dynamics—like surveillance—operate through the act of looking. The face becomes a site of control and regulation in social contexts.

Facial Recognition and Social Interaction:

In social philosophy, the face is a crucial component of how we interact with and recognize others. Recognition theory, explored by philosophers like Axel Honneth, focuses on the importance of mutual recognition in shaping personal identity and self-esteem. The face plays a central role in these processes of acknowledgment and affirmation.

Social norms about facial expressions also shape interactions. For instance, in certain cultural contexts, smiling or maintaining eye contact is a form of politeness, while in others, it may signify dominance or intrusion.

The Mask and Concealment:

The face is often considered a symbol of authenticity, but the act of masking the face introduces questions about identity and deception. Masks, both literal and figurative, can conceal the true self, leading to philosophical inquiries about authenticity and self-presentation.

In postmodern philosophy, thinkers like Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze question whether the face can ever fully reveal the self. Instead, the face may be seen as a surface, a construct that conceals as much as it reveals.

Facial Alteration and Technology:

With advances in plastic surgery, facial recognition technology, and artificial intelligence, the face has become a subject of technological and ethical debate. The ability to alter, enhance, or track faces raises questions about identity, privacy, and authenticity.

Transhumanist philosophers discuss the role of technology in altering human bodies, including the face, and what that means for personal identity. Facial modification challenges the idea that the face is a static, natural marker of identity.

The Face and Beauty:

The face is a primary site for judgments of beauty, and philosophers have long debated the nature of beauty and its relation to human worth. Aesthetic philosophy considers how facial symmetry, proportion, and expression contribute to perceptions of beauty.

Feminist philosophy critiques the societal emphasis on women’s faces as objects of beauty, exploring how cultural norms around appearance can lead to objectification and unrealistic standards that shape individual self-worth.

The Face in Art and Representation:

Throughout history, the face has been a central subject in art. Portraits, sculptures, and photographs focus on capturing the essence of a person through their facial features. Philosophers of art, such as Arthur Danto and Theodor Adorno, explore how the representation of the face in art reflects deeper truths about human existence.

The face in art can reveal vulnerability, character, and emotion, serving as a window into the subject’s inner life. Artists like Rembrandt and Picasso have used the face to explore deeper psychological and existential themes.

The Face and Memory:

The face plays a crucial role in how we remember and recognize others. Phenomenology and cognitive science explore the significance of the face in memory and the emotions tied to recognition.

Faces are tied to personal history and relationships. The memory of a face can evoke emotions, both positive and negative, shaping our interactions and relationships.

The philosophy of the face encompasses a wide range of issues related to identity, expression, ethics, and social interaction. The face is a powerful symbol of human individuality and vulnerability, playing a central role in communication, recognition, and ethical responsibility. Philosophers across various traditions explore the face as a site where personal and interpersonal meaning is created, raising important questions about how we understand ourselves and others in social and ethical contexts.

[syn0vial]

yes, yes, boba fett finds it strange and uncomfortable when people can see his face and this is one of the major reasons he almost never removes his helmet (in the expanded universe anyway), but another factor that i think isn't explored nearly enough is just how much his helmet shapes how he sees the world. it grants him 360° vision, lets him interface with his weapon systems and slave I, and automatically dampens loud noises and dims bright lights. imagine going through the vast majority of your life seeing the world through that lens and then suddenly taking it away. removing his helmet for any significant length of time likely isn't just uncomfortable for him but downright disorienting.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The girls are plottinggggg

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[donelywell]

HERES YOUR ART PAYMENT

SILVER!!!! (and Espio)

The boyyyy!!! Worth every cent!

[cator99]

out of curiosity, would you consider yourself butch?

used to be a blonde underweight twink and now I'm a based jock still got the chanel bag and the sick albeit matured mind of a suckpig to prove it so I'm gonna let you decide whether you wanna call me that word just cuz I got a pussy and short hair. I promise you that there have been enough advancements made in the art of lesbian sexual dynamics in the past 50 years to broaden the vocabulary used to describe the plethora of types of masculine females.

[bayetea]

I don't like the judo flip in moa as much as the next guy but in my eyes it's largely the result of rick not taking female violence half as seriously as male violence (a result of viewing women as weaker and inferior to men such that their acts of violence don't need to be taken as seriously) and not so much anything about annabeth herself. like I do genuinely feel that annabeth is a complex heroine and definitely one of the better ones in the realm of ya action-adventure fiction produced in the past 25 years but she is still a girl being written by a man and all I'm saying is that her writing clearly reflects that sometimes (more in tags)

[trans-yllz]

obsessed w the scene where wei wuxian goes to jinlintai to ask about wen ning, because when he comes in, while he Has sort of crashed their party, he is still, Technically, following all of their social rules. he's polite, and courteous, and respectful. he tries to speak with jin zixun away from everyone else first, he's well spoken and appropriately vague, he doesn't say anything when everyone continues to insult him directly to his face. they all know what he Means but he is, technically, still behaving exactly as a respectable cultivator should. and then it sort of starts to go sideways, and you're like uh oh. we can still make it out of here unscathed tho I bet. he hasn't said anything crazy yet. but then wei wuxian looks jin guangshan in his face and says "please allow me to ask another question - does jin zongzhu think that without the qishan wen sect, lanling jin is supposed to take it's place naturally? so everything should be handed over to you, and everyone should follow your orders?", which is insane,

[shalom-iamcominghome]

It's no worries at all, please don't beat yourself up. It's a lot of mental energy for so little. There is a lot worse in the world

Thank you once again for your kindness - as someone who loves art, and loved your art, it's always important to me to recognize all the work y'all do. Your art is honestly really gorgeous... Is there anywhere to find out more about your game? 👁️u👁️

[setevulpo]

feeling very green and yellow light in this dungeon tonight

angústia, florbela espanca (translated by me)

interview with the vampire, s02e05: "don't be afraid, just start the tape"

i lock you in an american sonnet that is part prison, terrance hayes

island of the sequined love nun, christopher moore

beautiful short loser, ocean vuong

kinnporsche, s01e11

red doc>, anne carson

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[loveguts]

i’m not a transandrophobia truther in the slightest don’t get me wrong, but i think some people on here really need to realize and comprehend the fact that cis women, way WAY more often than not, hold extremely significant social and political power over trans men the vast majority of the time in our day to day lives

[wonder-worker]

people really do not know what they're talking about when it comes to Elizabeth Woodville's social status, huh?

[crystalpallette]

the fact that rafisol is weak to ally's puppy eyes is crucial information. sega please port puzzle pop so I can have this information forever thanks

[darkwood-sleddog]

This is me @everybody taking staff’s words with goodwill after like 12? Years on this goddamn website:

[the-everqueen]

re: WIPs, i have several sandman fics i'm working on and i'd like to finish. these are informed as much by (my opinions on) the spinoff comix and the actors' choices in the tv series as the original comix. also the neilman doesn't get any money from me having better opinions about the Corinthian and Rose Walker than he did back in the 90s (or now tbh). regarding the allegations - i believe the victims, i'm disinterested in any discourse that dismisses them or other women as liars in order to preserve this one man's fragile ego, and i don't want to materially support him via books or events or streaming. but i understand that some of my mutuals need to totally disengage from anything related to him. i'm fairly religious about my tags, so moots feel free to blacklist as needed and/or request specialized tags to avoid potential triggers. (this also extends to other things: if you need accommodations for specific tws, please ask.)

[lovethatmakingcoffee]

at this rate the qsmp will explode by summer.