Anthropology Politics

Facial Theatre

June 7, 2026 by David 100 Comments

From the comments – which of course you’re reading – a phenomenon to ponder. A small but telling feature of our unrelentingly progressive times.

It began with this exchange from Question Time, the BBC’s flagship political debate programme, in which Green Party candidate Sarah Wakefield struggled with causality. Specifically, the apparently alien notion that a rapidly growing UK population – overwhelmingly a result of immigration – requires more housing. And thus the two topics – immigration and housing availability – being very much related.

Ms Wakefield is, it seems, somehow unaware that immigration accounts for almost all population growth over the last six years, and the vast majority of such growth over the last twenty years.

When not struggling with simple arithmetic, Ms Wakefield spends her time announcing that farming is riddled with “white supremacy” and is in need of “decolonisation.” British food production, says she, “entrenches racial oppression.”

Still, whatever her shortcomings in terms of readily available facts and observable reality, she does put her face to eye-catching use.

Which prompted the following from your host:

It’s the facial theatre – the ‘eww’ face – the seeming incredulity that an obvious variable should be considered as an obvious variable. A thing one might need to address in order to solve the problem being discussed. As if considering such things – even suggesting that one might consider them – were beyond the pale, somehow scandalous or beneath rebuttal.

I’ve seen this same facial theatre many times, not least among left-leaning women who’ve been appointed to positions for which they are clearly ill-suited. An observation that would itself most likely result in the ‘eww’ face.

And,

It seems very much related to niceness, or some desire for the appearance of niceness. As if niceness, so conceived, should be the sole measure of rightness. And so, any suggestion that one might have to consider a course of action at odds with that niceness is met with theatrical disbelief, as if one had belched very loudly during a wedding ceremony.

Again, the conceit seems to be that doing what is necessary, and right, will somehow never entail saying no. As if the correct and imperative decision could never entail doing things that might seem unfashionable or insufficiently accommodating of the latest Designated Victim Group, if only among one’s equally pretentious peers.

As if saying, “No, the entire third world may not come here and live entirely at the expense of the indigenous until the system collapses” were just some gratuitous meanness. For instance.

In reply, commenter [+] shared a link to this video, which may amuse, and deployed the term Longhouse Face.

Which in turn brought us this not implausible observation:

Dicentra added,

It’s a highly illustrative moment. A man injects an observation involving measurable quantities. The woman reacts with an “I can’t believe you said that” face…

She was evaluating the STATUS conferred by expressing a particular opinion. His comment was LOW STATUS, so it had to be disdained.

Quite.

This facial phenomenon has subsequently, and happily, attracted wider attention. Among the commentary to be found elsewhere, this caught my eye:

These expressions vary. The common adjective would be “quizzical.” But it’s an affected quizzical, because they’re also smiling. At some level they get it, but they’re going to pretend to be baffled and amazed by what you’re saying. You might say they are pretending not to understand, and that is key to why this expression is so annoying and so characteristic of today’s progressive.

Cue the meme.




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