Making Faces, Playing God: Identity and the Art of Transformational Make-up; does it question the morals behind changing appearances? Does it link to industry? Author Thomas Morawetz, a professor of Law and Ethics, has written many books but ‘Making Faces’ was driven by his personal interest in movie making and transformation`, his target audience are like-minded individuals.

 

Morawetz’s book fulfils the human curiosity on why we want to become another. Chapter one discusses how appearance is used for more than recognition, how our uniqueness influences society and how looks are an art in their own right. It considers how make-up artists use this and its development. In Chapter two Morawetz identifies how fantasy is the staple of popular culture.  He argues that obsession about identity, self-knowledge and change heavily informs philosophy, psychology and religion. Chapter three explores the art of transformation and the relationship between emotion and art. Morawetz looks at the appeal and fascination of an uncelebrated kind of art, living faces created by make-up artists, and their significance.

 

Part two, ‘The Practise of Transformation’ formed of 6 chapters, considers how the culture and theories are put into practise. Through these chapters we explore misconceptions of transformation make-up in movies, how/where our preconceptions come from, identification of creatures supported by historical images/texts and how it has affected practise. It explores the demonic, alien, impersonation and variant selves. These chapters look for the answers to the questions asked in Part One, exploring how we draw inspiration and how others affect our practise and our application of this knowledge.

 

Images are referenced and acknowledged for information from make-up artists, actors and studio staff providing primary and quantitative research. Each chapter starts with a quote; the only reference is who said it and the title of where it came from. With no reference list, to find the original source would be an independent activity.

 

Analysing why/what we do helps me to improve my own progression; it allows me to see the whole picture and how this would affect people’s perceptions, a key point for my current work, making this book a vital tool to challenge my own and other preconceptions, focusing on identity and transformation, which impacts highly on my appraisal and design work.

 

Tattoo an anthropology contrastingly focuses on the specifics of what actually affects our identity as a whole, it focus’ on tattooing as it’s case study linking to how age, gender, culture, among many others, directly impact what is our identity.

 

Chapter one discusses the place and history of tattooing as an art form, exploring the developments up to the nineteenth century. Kuwahara in chapter two moves onto investigating the practise of tattooing, its different forms and how they link. Chapter three focuses on the relationship between tattooing and society, looking at the Tahitian society in particular. For chapters four and five he looks at the Tahitian’s culture how they use tattooing in festivals and their interest in other tattoo cultures. Leading to a comparison of future, past and present in chapter six. Here he looks at prison tattoos from both the tattooist to the tattooed and the preconceptions attached to this.

 

The illustrations are listed in the front but no reference for where they came from, however there is a large bibliography of the sources Kuwahara used in researching this book, as seen in Morawetz’s book he has used both primary and quantitative research which allows me to back source and explore this subject deeper with ease.

 

This has allowed me to develop a better understand of how our cultural up bringing, gender, age, etc. have a big impact on how we choose to modify ourselves. This book has allowed me to analysis in depth contributors to why and how we manipulate our bodies, which will allow me to further my thought and discussion into challenge preconceptions of identity.

 

The following book looks at another perception of identity, which again contrasts to the two books previously reviewed. Human Identity and Identification;

 

The key aim of this book is to examine the different tissues of the human body and the way in which these contribute to human identification and identity research.. (Gowland and Thompson, 2013, p3)

 

The structure of the book, as discussed and as introduced to you in chapter one, takes you through a logical analysis of the many ways identification of a person is made with, starting from the outer layers of the skin and working inwards the further you read. Looking at the different themes of social identity literature appropriate with the corresponding chapters.

 

Chapter two explores the historical development of bodily categorisation, a brief overview of the multiple concepts of human identification, identity and how they link together. Moving to chapter 3 we learn about the skin, also referred to as the integumentary system, as it plays one of the most important parts when trying to identify someone through scientific methods such as fingerprints (friction ridge identification). Examining our own perceived identity and the role our skin plays in our perceptions; by looking at the gender, age and ancestry.

 

Chapter four moves into the softer deep tissues of the body, such as blood and organs and its importance on identification. It then discusses ‘the boundedness of embodied identity’ (Gowland and Thompson, 2013, p13) and the social issues of western culture surrounding donor transplants, does having others’ blood or organs affect your individual identity. The aim of chapter five is to discover what our bodies say about us through examining the skeleton, looking back at its importance throughout history.

 

The biomolecular view of our bodies is explored here looking at DNA and the chemical components of our body’s tissue in chapter six. The main focus is to look at it from the scientific stance linking it to social perspective. In contrast chapter seven looks at body modification, particularly surgical implants and tattoos, and it’s impact on identity and identification. The final chapter draws out the key themes of identity and identification which have been touched on through out to investigate in more depth.

 

This book informs the scientific arguments surrounding my topic of ‘challenging perception of identity’, giving me more depth and breth to my research. All quotes are referenced giving me a good basis to research further into this area. This allows me to look as other social perceptions I have not discovered in the other books, therefore making it a key book for influencing my appraisal and more importantly my disertation.

 

 

 

Word Count: 1077

 

References:

 

Gowland, R and Thompson, T. (2013). Human Identity and Identification. USA: Cambridge University Press

 

Kuwahara, M. (2005). Tattoo an anthropology. Oxford: Berg

 

Morawetz, T. (2001). Making Faces, Playing God: Identity and the Art of Transformational Make-up. Austin: University of Texas Press