| Masks, Reality, Expression, Screens: Things that David Foster Wallace chooses to educate the reader about through his story in Little Expressionless Animals. Author: Christine (yes, that's me) “Stares straight ahead,” (3), “her face hangs loosely,” (3), “everything about her is sort of permeable,” (13), “Julie sits staring at herself in the harsh makeup mirror… her face loose and expressionless,” (17), “’I continue to worry about my smile. That it’s starting to maybe be a tired smile. Which is not an inviting smile, which is professionally worrying,’” (19), “the faces remind you of the carved faces of pumpkins,” (35). David Foster Wallace’s short story, Little Expressionless Animals, is a story that is engrossed in how people’s expressions are given and received Julie’s struggles with her own dislike of blank and loose faces that hold no expression at all and her love for Faye is when her face is in motion, “That’s when I love you… is when your face moves into expression,” (41). Expression plays a key role in television as seen in “JEOPARDY!” Television images are invested with human features, therefore indicate a blur of the boundary between images and real things. But this blur has a more philosophical side to it: as television images become more humanized, real human beings are increasingly treated only as objects that we watch. Wallace has many examples in the story but one that is most intriguing is when Dee is watching and conversing with the television. Julie and Faye watch her through the remote viewer in Faye’s office, and by doing so, turn Dee into an object that is just watched and discussed, not treated like a human in suffering. Julie tells Faye, "It's mean to watch her like this," (9) Julie senses that by spying on Dee they somehow have reduced her of her individual features. Another passage in the story discusses screens and how people view things through them. While trying to come up with stories as to why Faye is a lesbian, an idea about a college boy who gradually turns his girlfriend into an aesthetic object comes up. He makes her diet or gain weight, exercise, and supervises her haircuts and make-overs. During the night he watches her naked body lifting weights in his room. Finally, he watches her from outside his window. He has literally put a screen between him and his girlfriend, and thereby turned her one step further into an object. Yet, there remains some form of exchange between them because he can see her and she can see him and then is broken the moment he invites his friends to stare at her too. This imitates a TV-like situation; a gaping crowd outside and a dehumanized body inside. The exchange between the girl and her boyfriend is now only one-way. He can still see her, but she cannot distinguish him anymore in the midst of the faces outside, which remind her of carved pumpkins whose faces do not move in expressions but stay in one, like a mask. Masks play a key role to Julie and her struggle with people who choose to wear them. Julie explains time and time again that when a person puts on this mask there are no holes to grab onto, “Tell them there are no holes for your fingers in the masks of men. Tell them how could you ever even hope to love what you can’t grab onto,” (32). When people put their masks on they separate themselves from reality. Television stars often do this to allow for a more agreeable (or disagreeable, whatever the stage calls for) character and therefore hide their own true character in exchange for the more acceptable one. In Trebek’s case his smile plays a key role in his performance on JEOPARDY! “I continue to worry about my smile… that it’s not an inviting smile… which is professionally worrying,” (19).He is in constant worry about his appearance and makes sure that he is always inviting and friendly to the crowds who in return that only see his “expressions” and base his “character” off of those. The crowd still views him as an object but they need to be engrossed in the object(s) so they won’t turn off the television. “’I’m just glad he’s on the inside of the set, and I’m on the outside and I can turn him off whenever I want,’” (31). Julie sometimes slips into a loose or expressionless face, especially when she is on air with JEOPARDY! This is an odd case because usually audiences don’t like expressionless people on stage. They eventually conclude that, “her expression, brightly serene, radiates a sort of oneness with the board’s data,” (17). Given no character they assume one for her and love her for it. She is a mystery to them and they want to learn more. Wearing the mask during taping she then takes it off when the cameras stop rolling. Tears spill out of her eyes and she becomes human again with real emotions, not just some robot-like person who can spit out almost every answer that JEOPARDY! throws are her. Trebek makes an observation about her smile that troubled him because her smile breaks him out of his own fake reality behind his mask and realizes the reality outside of it. “Odd girl. Something odd about her. When she smiled things got too bright, too focused. It took the fun out of it, somehow,” (21). By smiling with so much emotion people could tell she was not wearing a mask and accepted reality at that moment. It was trouble especially at a place where people needed to wear the masks to obtain higher ratings from the viewers. Julie’s dislike for expressionless faces stems from her being abandoned by her mother near a cow. “Tell them the cow stood there all day, chewing at something it had swallowed long ago, and looking at you…the cow’s face had no expression on it… it stood there all day, looking at you with a big face that had no expression… A cow watches you, standing, the same way it watches anything,” (40). While this may seem a bit extreme, the reader must put themselves in Julie’s shoes when she was a child. Her mother left her and her autistic brother standing in a field with their hands on a fence post all day. She told them she would come back for them, she never did. Children tend to associate things with emotions or situations and in this situation the cow stood there while the children suffered, indifferent to their situation. While looking for something to reach out to and be comforted by, Julie was met with an expressionless animal who continued to watch her as it would anything. With so many references to expression and the stress that is associated with it, it is no wonder that people choose to put masks on and not deal with the reality of their emotions or character. Expression plays a large part in society and everything that people do. It allows some to climb the corporate ladder and others to fall down it or people to be loved by the crowd or hated by the crowd. People revolve around their emotions, how they can hide or express them and the effects it has on others. Little Expressionless Animals shows the reader this and allows them to examine his or her own mask and true reality. |
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