Facial Expressions: The Scowl

KEY CONCEPT: There is a long tradition of depicting male authority figures with a scowl as a way to project power and agression.

Figure 1:  Winston Churchill's bellicose scowl as captured by Yousuf Karsh during the dark days of WWII.

Emperors do it. CEOs do it. Politicians do it. Even, school mascots do it : they are all depicted knitting their brows in the Imperial Frown. Image makers for thousands of years have exploited the expressive power of scowling foreheads above an otherwise neutral face to create a sense of combativeness, authority, and stern self-possession, without escalating to out-and-out anger, which would require the addition of a frowning mouth. The Imperial Frown is an expression that never seems to go out of style, and it’s one that we associate with men rather than women, perhaps because, up until recently, the ranks of monarchs, prime ministers, and mercenaries were so overwhelmingly male.

Figures 2 to 5. The Imperial Frown expression itself is quite simple. The contraction of the corrugator group of forehead muscles pulls the inner ends of the eyebrows closer together and further down, narrowing the eye into a scowl. With no activity around the mouth, the brooding forehead appears as more of a description of an ongoing state or belligerent mood, rather than a flash of anger. It can be realistic or cartoon-y, so long as the oblique direction of the eyebrows and/or upper eyelid is made clear.  

Figure 6. The Mad Monk! ​As seen in this animated GIF of an Orthodox Christian monk, simply lowering the brows changes the entire expression of the face.  Many people will see the monk’s mouth as more tightly clenched when he frowns with his brow but, in fact, the mouth remains the same. The scowling version of his face seems consistent with his image – a serious, militant, and brooding religious figure

​Figures 7 & 8.  "Don't even think of messing with me!" ​Here are two of the many extant frowning busts of the Roman emperor Caracalla, who reigned around 200 AD.  Once a likeness was done from life, the royal workshops would produce multiple copies to be spread around the empire. Citizens of Caracalla’s time would thus be more than familiar with the image of their scowling chief.  The neutral mouth leaves the question of anger ambiguous; we’re more likely to read this expression as indicative of his personality (short-tempered and aggressive) rather than mood.  

These busts of Caracalla represent some of the earliest examples of The Imperial Frown in existence. The sense of bare-knuckles combativeness in his expression is consistent with his historical reputation as a serious tyrant. What interests me is not so much the accuracy of the portrayals, but what these sculptures say about Caracalla himself who, after all, had to approve the result. He clearly wanted to be seen as an aggressive, intimidating ruler; contrast this with earlier Roman leaders who preferred to pose as philosopher-kings and for whom nasty scowls would not have been appropriate.

Caracalla started a trend; successor Roman notables were often portrayed with a similar frowning countenance, a popular and, no doubt, effective mask of authority. Given the frequency of Roman revolts and assassinations, their motivation to appear tough and powerful is quite understandable.​

​Figure 9​. A stoic, stern & scrupulous Senator. This Imperial Frown, from the 1st c. AD is depicted on the face of Cato the Younger, an adversary of Julius Caesar.  In Wikipedia, Cato is described as “remembered for his stubbornness and tenacity”, “stubbornness” being another way of describing the scowling face. Note the expressive frown lines on his forehead.

Figure 10. One Mean Dude. We don’t know the identity of this frowning gentleman, but he is from the same period and place as Caracalla. The likeliest explanation is he was a wealthy patriarch (the head of the family in ancient Rome wielded life and death power over their relations) wishing to share in that stern Imperial look.  In all these classical sculptures, the bulging, furrowing, and knitting of the brows is accurately and expressively depicted. ​

Figure 11. ​"Et tu, Brute?" While living in Rome, Michelangelo became expert at sculpting figures in the style of the ancient Romans. This sculpture of Brutus is clearly influenced by examples like the Caracalla busts in Figure 3 & 4. Commentators have pointed out the frown as an important and expressive feature of this work, a portrayal of the Senator tough enough to dispatch the great Caesar. The scowl is a bit on the mild side compared to the earlier busts.

​Figures 12, 13 & 14.  ​Go Team!  There is nowhere the Imperial Frown is more commonly deployed than modern sports team logos, and artists have had no trouble adapting the frown to fit the heads of animal mascots like the hawk and ram (shown here) and lions, tigers and bears elsewhere.  Besides animals, teams called The Trojans (and there’s lots) can be forgiven for grafting the Roman Imperial Frown onto the face of  their ancient Greek warrior, as shown here.  We clearly expect our football players to take the field with the grim certainty that they can demolish the other side.  Smiles would be out of the question.

Figures 15 & 16. Smiles are for peace time; frowns are the expression of the warrior. These two photographs perfectly sum up what you get when you add in the factor of the Imperial Frown. The young Canadian photographer, Yousuf Karsh, had only several minutes to take a definitive photograph of Winston Churchill during a visit to Ottawa to rally Commonwealth support for the war effort.  Clearly, the smiling Churchill would not do to inspire the troops; Karsh risked everything by purposely annoying the British Prime Minister, and the resulting scowl went viral around the world, becoming the face of the Allied war effort and Churchill's most iconic image.  ​

Figure 17. "I WANT YOU!" World War I inspired this poster image of Uncle Sam asking for recruits with a guilt-inducing frown, suitable for framing.  The great American illustrator James Montgomery Flagg depicted Uncle Sam (who seems to have faded from view in recent years) as the stern father/principal/boss fixing us in his harsh gaze and making sure we don’t think we can squirm away.  Modern recruiting posters use a totally different strategy, stressing the attractions, rather than the obligations, of military service. 

Figure 18. ​Non-alcoholic beer gets no-nonsense logo. Associating a beer brand with royalty and tradition makes some sort of sense, but why a horse, and why a frowning one?  Perhaps the company was worried that customers would associate their non-alcoholic beer with wimpiness and compromise; here we are reassured that alcohol or not, this beverage will still make us feel tough and manly – hence the Imperial Frown.  (But doesn’t the leafy mane deliver a bit of a mixed message?) ​

​The illustrations in this posting offer diverse examples of the Imperial Frown, mostly in the service of an assertive, bellicose image, suitable for a football team, army recruiting poster, political strongman, or cartoon villain. The fact that real-life strongmen, like Putin of Russia or Erdogan of Turkey, don’t typically display this expression doesn’t make it any less effective; as we can see, these curated depictions get the message across.

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CREDITS:
Figures 1, 11, 12: Photos by Yousuf Karsh of Winston Churchill after his famous “Some chicken. Some Neck” speech to the Canadian Parliament in 1941; Figures 2 to 5: Frowning CEO GIF drawn by author; Figures 6: Scowling monk GIF drawn by author; Figure 7: Marble head fragment of emperor Caracalla sculpture with military style hair and stubble beard, 14-1/4”, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Figure 8: Marble bust of emperor Caracalla in military uniform, from Capitoline Museum in Rome; Figure 9: Portrait bust of Cato the Younger from Capitoline Museum in Rome, photo by Oscar Savio; Figure 10: Marble bust of old man from mid-1st century, 14 3/8 inches, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Figure 11: Marble bust of Brutus by Michelangelo, 1538, in the Bargello Museum in Florence; Figure 12: Spartan mascot graphic from http://cliparts.co/spartan-logo-clip-art; Figure 13: Eagle mascot from Shorter University in Rome, GA, http://shorter.prestosports.com/information/athleticlogos; Figure 14: Ram mascot from Portales Municipal School District in NM, http://www.portalesschools.com/; Figure 17: “I want you for the U.S. Army” poster, painted by American illustrator, James Montgomery Flagg for US government, published in 1917 and used to recruit soldiers in both WWI and WWII; Figure 18: Scowling horse image on Kaliber low-alcohol beer label, from Guinness Beers in Dublin, Ireland. ​