Cherubism

Show untangles mysteries of the face

Python alum Cleese mugs for Learning Channel camera

By DOUGLAS J. ROWE

Associated Press

Friday, August 24, 2001

New York -- Want to know the face value of the human face?

There's no price tag of course, but our mugs are "nature's name tag," says John Cleese, who, himself a master of mugging, hosts a four-part series on "The Human Face," airing Sunday and Monday on The Learning Channel.

"In other words, it's this particular arrangement of features that tells you I'm me, and not Michael Palin," he said, pointing to his own visage while referring to another Monty Python alumnus (who makes a few cameos in the series).

But a key point in this examination of the muscles and bones that make up our mugs is: They don't tell you much else.

A poignant segment of Part Three focuses on a young woman who suffers from cherubism, a rare genetic disorder that turns a face into a chubby caricature.

"I'm not doing anything wrong looking like this. This is the face that I have, and I don't want to change it, because this is me," said Vicky Lucas, who reveals herself as a lovely, intelligent person to anyone getting past her looks.

"What Vicky shows is that we should be wary of the sort of instinctive, knee-jerk judgments that we make about people," Cleese said. "A face merely gives us a few clues to start with. After that, you really need to check the person out properly."

The series is leavened with humor, as you might expect since Cleese is involved, while offering the history, science and sociology of the human face. Such as:

-- Some people aren't so content to stand out from the crowd. In the show with Lucas, a Hispanic woman undergoes plastic surgery to look more Anglo, and she's quite pleased with the results even though she doesn't look drastically different.

-- Looks do matter. "No woman's husband ever came home and said, `The floor's immaculate, lie down you hot slut.' Never happens," Joan Rivers says.

-- Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder -- but there's a certain universality to our standards. A "golden ratio" of 1.618 to 1 can be found in beautiful faces and bodies, between the width of the mouth to nose, the height of the legs to the torso, upper front teeth to the teeth next to them, etc.

For his part, Cleese explained in a recent interview that psychology and human relations have been longtime interests of his.

He's co-written two books, "Families and How to Survive Them" and "Life and How to Survive It." And two of his three wives have been therapists.

Cleese, who is featured in the new movie "Rat Race," started a company 30 years ago, Video Arts Ltd., specializing in witty training films. He later sold the company.

"The whole business of putting across a message, or information, entertainingly is something that attracts me, not least 'cause there's a lot of research to it," said the 61-year-old Cleese, who besides the highly influential Python TV series did the sitcom "Fawlty Towers."

"You learn a lot. See, the trouble with being creative . . . is that you learn nothing. There may be an early-on research stage, but after that, it's kind of digging it out of yourself," he said. "And I love it when I can learn something."

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