Journal Part 3 Cabinet Magazine: Are ya laughing or Crying?

In an article on Cabinet Magazine’s website titled Tears of Laughter by Christopher Turner; the age-old question, “Why does laughing, look so similar to that of crying,” is put into examination. I know what you’re thinking, “that’s an age old question?” I was perplexed at first as well, but upon further reading of the article, apparently this question really is “age old.” In an excerpt from the article Leonardo da Vinci states, “Between the expressions of laughter and weeping there is no difference in the motion of the features.” Yes, back around the 1500’s, the painter was contemplating the reason behind similarities in facial expressions. Finally it most definitely could be understood why the Mona Lisa is depicted with such a blank stare. Da Vinci simply didn’t want to confuse anyone, so he left her mouth in a neutral form! All jokes aside though, this article soon enough completely gained grasp of my attention.
First off, I quickly learned that back in the 1700’s people were not too fun. I say this because the article points out that the act of laughing in this time period was looked at as barbaric. Yes, laughing was a “no-can-do” it seems back then. The article signals this by referencing, “In a letter to his son in 1748, the moralist Lord Chesterfield proclaimed, ‘In my mind there is nothing so illiberal and so ill-bred as audible laughter,’ especially by virtue of ‘the disagreeable noise that it makes, and the shocking distortion of the face that it occasions.’” Talk about a bummer. I got mad when my dad wouldn’t let me drive the good car, if he told me not to laugh, I’d probably lose my mind. In addition the article gives more examples of how laughter was rude in old times, as well as emphasizing this by stating, that in the history of art a slim number of paintings have even dared to depict laughing.
The article seems to suggest, although it doesn’t say it, that this is due to the fact that laughing and crying look way to similar to be framed. As well as da Vinci, another extremely historically famous person who also took interest in this subject was none other than evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin. Turner explains that Darwin looked to capture people’s expressions through photographs in order to study the phenomenon further. However he found a readymade batch of pictures in the works of Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne and reproduced his book. Duchenne was just about as out there as one could be in regards to having this laughing/crying “expression-obsession”. In his photos Duchenne used electrical devices in order to fake expressions on his subject’s faces. In one in particular he, “galvanized each side of his subject’s – or victim’s – face with a different expression; one half is given a fake smile, the other is made to weep.” It was strange to me that such a deep, crazy method was used back then to examine such a topic yet today; one hardly hears anything on this matter. Still Turner continued to provide me with more hallucinating history regarding the similarities between smiling and crying and its examination through the years. In a standout set of two photos we see another photographer (in which Darwin examined the topic with) smiling in one and crying in the other. Visually the two are stunningly reminiscent of one another.
Soon enough the question that had been bugging me all throughout my reading conquest had finally arrived at being answered. Why in the hell was Charles Darwin concerned with the whole “I can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying,” ideology? The answer is flat out simple, yet I never saw it coming. Of course Darwin’s intrigue within the topic stemmed from the belief that monkeys laugh and we evolved from them. In contrast to Darwin, Turner points out that Aristotle believed that humans were the only creatures who laughed, though he was apparently wrong. Darwin wrote, “If a young chimpanzee be tickled – the armpits are particularly sensitive to tickling, as in the case of our children – a more decided chuckling or laughing sound is uttered.” Ah to be Darwin, a life of tickling monkeys and studying the reasons for the similarities between crying and laughing; sounds like the life for me. Except Darwin never found the conclusive evidence on why the similarity between the two actions exists.
According to the article, after extensive research beginning in the 1990’s, the center of the human brain where laughing and crying is stimulated are remotely close. So close it seems that a new disease has even been diagnosed in patients across the world called PLC or Pathological Laughing and Crying syndrome. People with this literally don’t know which one to do in certain situations and often times do the opposite of expected. For instance a man with it may laugh uncontrollably at his mother’s funeral and cry tremendously when watching an episode of Full House. Wait, bad analogy, I cry when I watch Full House too. Anyways, “ this man” would cry at something he found funny, which very well might be Full House, if he were a seven-year old. Enough of ripping on Bob Sagget and back to the real question at hand though; why is laughing and crying so similar? I think it’s because the two are the rawest, deepest forms of emotions pure and simply. We only have one face and with that being the case it seems preposterous that the two emotions should widely differ.