George W. Smirkology: An Update
This just in (via e-mail) regarding George W.
Bush's smirk from the University of North Carolina's John Shelton Reed, who
co-edits Southern Cultures magazine:
The phenomenon has an easy explanation. Young Bush is a Texan. Texans are
Southerners. Southerners smile more than other Americans. Ray L. Birdwhistell
has studied this, and discussed the misunderstandings that result.
You're probably too young to recall that Jimmy Carter smiled all the time,
too. [ Au contraire : Chatterbox cast his first-ever ballot for Jimmy
Carter in the 1976 California primary.] This spooked Yankees, who feared
that he knew something they didn't. The fact that Al Gore doesn't grin much is
eloquent testimony to the fact that he's a St Alban's graduate and (at best)
what Doug Marlette calls a faux Bubba. And my theory is that Bill Clinton bites
his lip to keep from smiling.
Chatterbox, who during his one-day immersion in the science of
nonverbal communication never came across the name Birdwhistell, asked Reed
for more information about Birdwhistell's work. Reed replied:
Ray Birdwhistell was an anthropologist, late of the Annenberg School at
the University of Pennsylvania, who pioneered what he called "kinesics," the
study of non-verbal communication. Unfortunately, he died about five years ago and I don't remember where I saw the
article about smiling, but I wrote it up for a book my wife and I did
called
1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the
South
.
(It's No. 163.)
Here's my summary: Smiling appears to be a Southern custom. Ray L.
Birdwhistell found smiling among middle-class folk on the street most common in
Atlanta, Louisville, Memphis, and Nashville, followed by cities in the Midwest,
the New England, and, last, western New York. ... Such differences can be
misunderstood: "In one part of the country an unsmiling individual might be
queried as to whether he was 'angry about something,' while in another, the
smiling individual might be asked, 'What's funny?'"
Chatterbox was unable to get his hands quickly on a copy of Birdwhistell's
magnum opus, Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body Motion
Communication , but he had no difficulty believing Birdwhistell's
thesis, as summarized by Reed. If Bush had the kind of unctuous smile
associated with many southern politicians, Chatterbox would say: Case closed.*
But, as has been widely noted, Bush's smile is a kind of half-grimace. This
leaves two possibilities:
Bush's compulsion to smile is essentially southern, but the smile
itself is corrupted by other influences (a few possibilities were cited in
Chatterbox's previous
item) that transform it into a smirk;
or
Bush's compulsion to smirk bears no relation to the southern
compulsion to smile , but is wholly the result of other phenomena.
If the first possibility were correct, that would be good news for
the southern credentials of George Bush Sr., since (as C-Span's Brian Lamb
observed in the Wall Street Journal piece quoted in Chatterbox's
earlier
item) the smirk was clearly passed from father to son (acquiring some
exaggeration in the process). It will be remembered that George Bush Sr. was
never taken seriously by some people as a Texan; he was criticized as being
"all hat and no cattle"--a transplanted Connecticut preppie who tried too hard.
But if the Birdwhistell theory explains (even in part) George W.'s smirk, it
must perforce also explain (in part) the milder version worn by George Bush
Sr.
However, if the second possibility were correct, then both
George Bush Sr.'s and George W.' southern identities would have to be called
into question. Chatterbox leans toward this latter interpretation, because he
can't recall ever seeing any true southerner smirk, not even Molly
Ivins; hers is a different kind of smile altogether. If Birdwhistell, in his
travels, had been looking not for smiles but for smirks ,
Chatterbox strongly suspects he would have found lots of them on the
smile-barren East Coast, especially in the vicinity of its prep schools
and Ivy League universities . Here's a thought experiment: Summon up a
mental image of Ali McGraw, the smirkiest performer in the history of the
movies. (If you need a little help, click here.) Now try to imagine her speaking with a southern accent.
Can't be done, can it?
* Chatterbox is well aware that many Texans resist attempts to classify
their breed as southern, or western, or anything other than Lone Star. For the
purposes of this discussion, though, Chatterbox will accept Reed's premise that
Texans are southerners.
