One Reason the Pope’s Visit Was Smart
Apr 20th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | Start the Discussion |
Here in America, it has become usual to associate Benedict XVI with Emperor Palpatine. So anyone who’s seen video of his appearances in the US has probably been shocked. The Pope looks nothing like the evil Emperor. Instead, he looks friendly, gentle, and wise.
Brit Hume nailed it on Fox News Sunday today, as his co-panelist Nina Easton noted:
My sense about this pope is that he turned out to have something we might not have fully recognized. He had the reputation before this as being kind of the enforcer, the tough guy in the church hierarchy.
And he turns out to have about him sort of a beatific sweetness that I think is enormously important for a religious leader . . . .
I think the issue was that Pope Benedict XVI suffers from a condition which afflicts most of us. As I’ve written before, to be “photogenic” is simply to have the kind of face that looks good flat, two-dimensional, depthless. But most of us don’t have faces that look good “steamrollered.”
To actually see what a person looks like, you need to see him or her in person. The next best thing is to see him or her on screen, in motion. In videos, the movement and rotation of the subject (or of the camera) helps you get a feel for facial depth.
And now that the Pope has spent so much time on American television, we can finally see more accurately what he really looks like. Turns out we were drastically mistaken before.
