That’s what you do when you furrow your brow. Seven is an eye squint. It’s called “lid-tightener.” He’s kind of scowling and closing his eyes at the same time, so that’s a stereotypic anger. Then the 10 in this case is very classic for disgust. You kind of lift your upper lip, not really moving the nose, but it gives the appearance that the nose is being turned up. The 16 sometimes happens with that. That’s a lower-lip depressor. That’s when you push your bottom lip down so that you can see your bottom teeth.
Monica, at the door, tries to pretend nothing is amiss. She smiles at her brother. But it’s a Pan-Am smile, not a Duchenne smile: some 12 and the barest, least-plausible whisper of 6.
Ross chases Chandler around the kitchen table. Chandler hides behind Monica, and as Ross approaches, he says: “Look, we’re not just messing around. I love her. OK? I’m in love with her.”
Then Monica reaches and takes Ross’s hand. “I’m so sorry that you had to find out this way. I’m sorry. But it’s true, I love him too.”
There’s a long silence as Ross stares at the two of them, processing a storm of competing emotions. Then he bursts into a smile, hugs them both, and repeats himself, only this time happily: “My best friend, and my sister! I’m so happy!”
As Monica breaks the news to her brother, Fugate scores her as 1C + 2D + 12D. The 1 and 2, in combination, are sadness: She’s raised the inner and outer parts of her eyebrows. 12D, of course, is the emotionally incomplete Pan-Am smile.
“She kind of gives—as strange as that sounds—an indicator of sadness,” Fugate said, “but then happiness. I think it kind of makes sense, because she’s apologizing, but then she’s showing Ross that she’s actually okay with this.”
Ross looks at his sister for a long beat. His face scores classic sadness. Then his face subtly shifts to 1E + 12D. He’s giving back to his sister the exact same mix of emotions she gave to him: sadness combined with the beginnings of happiness. He’s losing his sister. But at the same time, he wants her to know that he appreciates her joy.
Fugate’s FACS analysis tells us that the actors in Friends make sure that every emotion their character is supposed to feel in their heart is expressed, perfectly, on their face. That’s why you can watch the scene with the sound turned off and still follow along. The words are what make us laugh, or what explain particular nuances of narrative. But the facial displays of the actors are what carry the plot. The actors’ performances in Friends are transparent.
Transparency is the idea that people’s behavior and demeanor—the way they represent themselves on the outside—provides an authentic and reliable window into the way they feel on the inside. It is the second of the crucial tools we use to make sense of strangers. When we don’t know someone, or can’t communicate with them, or don’t have the time to understand them properly, we believe we can make sense of them through their behavior and demeanor.
3.
The idea of transparency has a long history. In 1872, thirteen years after first presenting his famous treatise on evolution, Charles Darwin published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Smiling and frowning and wrinkling our noses in disgust, he argued, were things that every human being did as part of evolutionary adaptation. Accurately and quickly communicating our emotions to one another was of such crucial importance to the survival of the human species, he argued, that the face had developed into a kind of billboard for the heart.
Darwin’s idea is deeply intuitive. Children everywhere smile when they are happy, frown when they are sad, and giggle when they are amused, don’t they? It isn’t just people watching Friends in their living room in Cleveland, Toronto, or Sydney who can make sense of what Ross and Rachel are feeling; it’s everyone.
The bail hearings described in Chapter Two are likewise an exercise in transparency. The judge does not correspond with the parties in a court case by email or call them up on the telephone. Judges believe that it’s crucial to look at the people they are judging. A Muslim woman in Michigan was the plaintiff in a lawsuit a few years ago, and she came to court wearing the