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My thoughts on another show I have recently picked up: Lie To Me.  Minor, minor spoilers up through most recently aired eps.

Lie To Me is a great show. I like the characters, the premise, the riffing on famous people using certain expressions/gestures. Of course, the snark is love as well. (Plus, did I mention TOMIN?)  I do have a problem with Lie To Me though, and that is the show's repeated insistence that micro-expressions and gestures are universal. They spend a lot of time reinforcing this idea, showing the main character having studied with various obscure cultures on many a continient, and with this most recent episode, the fact that Korean cultural emphasis on stoicism would not change the existence of micro-expressions.  I don't know whether this is true or not. I am not an anthropologist nor a linguistist. I'm not even a sociologist, beyond my amatuer fascination with the subject.  But anytime people start throwing around terms like 'Universial', all of my flags go up. A priori assumptions about Truth, Beauty, or Goodness have long obsessed western philosophical inquiry, all centering around the (white, european, male) assumption that there is such a thing as universal truth, that there is something out there that any human should be able to comphrehend beyond upbringing, culture, ethnicity, or religion (some people may merely require 'enlightenment'). I know it is comforting to think there is some base truth that applies equally to everyone and everything, but anytime someone carelessly or even earnestly uses phrases like 'universally accepted', I start grinding my teeth. For example, the claim that 'Black is universally understood as the color of mourning, shame, and degradation.'  Um, no. In fact that is not only an European conception, but also a relatively recent idea, traceable to the Victorian era.  In more distant times in Europe, black was considered the color of wealth and class.  In many parts of Asia and Oceania, white is the color associated with death and mourning, which probably has more to do with their approach to death and how it differs to the Christian tradition, but I am totally digressing now. Lol.  My point? Maybe I am just a cynical child of the Postmodern world, but I don't think there is anything that is universal.  And to assume there is, is very dangerous.  Truth, much like beauty and gender and 'goodness', are social values and thus variable, something not set in stone that varies through time and place, culture and religion.  Mostly, I see claims of universality as a sign of ignorance, or eurocentrism, which, heck, we are all guilty of.  It's really, really hard to see beyond our own preconceptions, the bread and butter we have been fed and raised upon, which is exactly why it is so dangerous. 

So maybe Lie To Me's claim of universal expression is just a harmless plot device, hell, maybe it is even true, but I hope we can all at least think before we just accept universalities, that we might stop and consider what suspect visions of truth we are propogating, and the impact they might have.

*channels Daniel Jackson*: But that's just how I feel about it.  What about you?