As quoted from a Yiddish proverb,"The eyes are the mirror of the soul." More often than not, our social behavior are largely influenced by eye contacts and facial expressions made during interactions.
The eye conveys our thoughts, emotions by assuring and also disagreeing. It is one of the most important nonverbal channels for communication and connecting with other people. "A person's thoughts can be ascertained by looking in his or her eyes." This is yet another proverb that can been traced back in English to 'Regiment of Life' (1545).
An example is as shown in this picture below with Keira Knightley in movie, 'The Duchess'.
(click on the picture for more on the movie review from Los Angeles Times)
The eye conveys our thoughts, emotions by assuring and also disagreeing. It is one of the most important nonverbal channels for communication and connecting with other people. "A person's thoughts can be ascertained by looking in his or her eyes." This is yet another proverb that can been traced back in English to 'Regiment of Life' (1545).
Personally, I feel that oculesics is an effective and necessary tool in the acting and modeling industry. Actors and actresses take upon different roles in a script. By putting substantial effort and importance in training themselves on facial and bodily expressions, they are able to convey many different scenarios from a plot to stir emotions among audiences.
An example is as shown in this picture below with Keira Knightley in movie, 'The Duchess'.
(click on the picture for more on the movie review from Los Angeles Times)
In the picture, apart from the staggering headgear and spectacular gown, the portrayal of seriousness in this scene is brought about by Knightley's widen eye and still facial expression. This helps to give audiences an idea towards her character as Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire.
Another example in movie, 'Nights In Rodanthe' illustrates a sense of assurance and love through their mutual eye contact in the scene. Richard Gere and Diane Lane takes upon character roles as Dr. Paul Flanner and Adrienne Willis.
Likewise in the modeling industry, models generally have to express emotion in their photographs with their physical appearance. Not only that, the ability to form various postures and body movement adds on to how they would want to instill an momentary action to the overall picture.
Although intentional kinesics such as affect displays are commonly used by fashion models in the execution of their job, I still find that facial expressions and the eye give a significant cue to one's overall character as shown for Vogue's August '08 magazine cover.
All in all, our eyes and body movements do help us achieve our professional task roles should we follow a similar career path like these people mentioned. Interestingly, experts on deception tell us to observe leakage cues on the body such as guilt, anxiety and excitement to determine if someone is lying. Doesn't this make us hold admiration for actors and models, since their job requires conscious effort to control such natural actions from hindering the course of their job?
Source of article "Keira Knightley talks about 'The Duchess,' getting wigged out" from,
1 comment:
I agree with what you said about admiration for actors and models.
They need to hide their real emotion almost all the time in the public; Eyes, especially, sometimes reveal stories of a particular person. This is not what all people in the world can do; that's why there's still a slight difference between actors and normal people.
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