Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Universality of Emotions

I wonder a lot if this is true, and if so, it's affects on abhinaya and what it means for a dancer trying to express stories through facial expressions to a global crowd.

But there are a lot of culturally learned ways of displaying emotions as well. Note the recent investigations of an anthropologist who realized that eastern and western emoticons might be different for a reason as well...

And then how does rasa theory play into all of this? Oxytocin seems to play a role in how well we interpret emotions on a very general sixth sense level, and training also allows us to understand micro-expressions extremely well (like Paul Ekman's research).

I wonder if a study can be created to isolate and understand these components in how we understand art?

This is certainly an incomplete post. More to be pondered later.

Other resources:
Paul Ekman
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

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