Pulling Faces

Not faces for pulling

Today on a dog walk I was thinking of face pulling, and Great Face Pullers I Have Known. In no particular order:

1. Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

   So many good faces!! Calvin’s map is an absolute wellspring of rubbery goodness, and Watterson is a master of expression and body language. But the one that always sticks in my mind is when Calvin’s going for his school photograph, and his mum has made him dress up nice, wear a tie, and slick his hair down - and at the moment of being captured for posterity, he pulls this face. So good!

2. Anthony Rapp in Adventures in Babysitting

   My sister and I do this one to each other to this day. We call it the lizard: you have to dry out your upper lip to get it to adhere to your teeth in juuuust the right way. Then you get closer than personal space rules dictate, and linger.

3. Wendy from different Wendy books by Walter Scott.

   This one is *gasp* modern!! I bought Wendy, Master of Art during the first lockdown, and loved it. Wendy is a total liability, but winsome with it, and her expressive face and body language (often when pissed) is a joy to look at.

4. Jim Dixon from Lucky Jim by Kingley Amis

   Jim has a repertoire of faces that he pulls to express disdain and hatred throughout the story. These include: Martian-invader face, Mandrill face, Evelyn Waugh-face, Shot-in-the-back face and, surely the best one, Sex Life in Ancient Rome face. The pleasure here is in imagining what those faces might look like, although for the last one I can only picture Kenneth Williams in Carry on Cleo.

   

   Does anyone else have some virtuoso face-pullers that spring to mind?