Smiling when something bad happens

April 29, 2008 4:06 PM

In the Art of Fiction interview in the current Paris Review, Kazuo Ishiguro says of his father: "He had a Chinese characteristic, which was that he smiled when something bad happened." Is that really considered a Chinese characteristic? Are there other cultures it's commonly associated with?
posted by Cucurbit to society & culture (14 comments total)

"Someone once asked a great sheikh what sufism was. ‘The feeling of joy when sudden disappointment comes.’"

--The Essential Rumi
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] at 4:50 PM on April 29, 2008

It might be universal: my husband, who is american of german/irish descent, smiles in the most inappropriate situations. He has struggled all his life to control this impulse, since he has been berated repeatedly.
posted by francesca too at 5:01 PM on April 29, 2008

I don't know about you, but that sounds like Dr. Hibbert to me.

(I am Chinese. I have never heard this before. I would say it's Chinese to swallow bitterness quietly and get ulcers later but smiling? Never heard of it.)
posted by reebear at 5:16 PM on April 29, 2008

I don't know if this is a specifically cultural trait, as it can occur in several situations that come to my mind:
- When yet another piece of bad news arrives at work, and people cheer ironically.
- When a sad outcome was inevitable, but provides closure; bittersweet.
- When personal tragedy strikes suddenly, emotions sometimes erupt in surprising ways. I've seen people laugh while crying several times, especially after someone passes away - someone who'd brought a lot of joy to their life is suddenly gone, and memories of happier times are erupting and melding with their sorrow.

However, I've often wondered the same as you after watching Chinese films - in so many that I've seen, someone important dies at the end, usually the love interest of a main character after they've spent the whole movie overcoming obstacles to be together. And they usually die in an especially tragic, ironic way. This wouldn't be so unusual, except sometimes it almost seems thrown in at the end, as in, "And they all would have lived happily ever after... except she died in childbirth, screaming his name, as he crashes his motorcycle trying to be by her side at the hospital - yes, the same motorcycle that saved them earlier when they escaped their captors. The End." I don't know if Chinese people smile at the end of these movies, but I don't.
posted by krippledkonscious at 5:20 PM on April 29, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

And they all would have lived happily ever after... except she died in childbirth, screaming his name, as he crashes his motorcycle trying to be by her side at the hospital - yes, the same motorcycle that saved them earlier when they escaped their captors. The End.

krippledkonscious, I must know the name of this movie.
posted by hobbes at 5:27 PM on April 29, 2008

This is not necessarily a characteristic of only Chinese films. I've seen some Russian films which do that too -- the ending of Prisoner of the Mountains seems like a great big YOINK!

I've known some Chinese people who don't exactly smile when something bad happens, but smile when they are embarrassed, either for themselves or for you.
posted by Comrade_robot at 6:23 PM on April 29, 2008

Anecdotally, Polynesians smile when they're nervous. Some of my Thai students smile for a whole lot of reasons, including when they're unhappy: link.
posted by Paragon at 7:30 PM on April 29, 2008

I wonder if there was a translation error there somewhere - Kazuo Ishiguro's father is Japanese, isn't he?

In any case, in Japanese culture there is a certain emphasis on putting a brave face or a smiling face on things when faced with adversity. This attitude is most exemplified in the "Sukiyaki" song (_Ue o muite arukou_), whose original lyrics say say, 'Let's walk with our faced turned upwards, so our tears won't spill'. There was a documentary a few years ago about the singer who sang it, Kyu Sakamoto (who was tragically killed in the JAL 123 plane crash at age 43), where they said that during times of great adversity such as during the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, people would gather together and sing that song with a brave smile on their faces. Kyu Sakamoto himself was famous for having a relentlessly happy smile on his face when singing what is really a pretty sad song, and that's partly why the song was such a tremendous and enduring hit I think, especially in the 1960s, which were a period of great social upheaval. Here he is singing it.

Not that 'putting up a brave face' this is a uniquely Japanese thing of course. There's that old standard "Smile, though your heart is aching" for instance (Nat King Cole version).
posted by thread_makimaki at 7:40 PM on April 29, 2008

I've observed Vietnamese women laugh at what I felt were gravely serious moments: when a police officer had pulled them over, when discussing being desperately short of money. It wasn't an ironic laugh either, more than a giggle, continuing, but quiet. An American who soldiered there 40 years ago mentioned that he had received some indoctrination to the effect that one should not think that Vietnamese are amused when laughing. That may be the case, or they may be very anxious. A little search found this quote: "Many will smile easily and often, regardless of the underlying emotion, so a smile cannot automatically be interpreted as happiness or agreement. Vietnamese often laugh in situations that other cultures may find inappropriate. This laughter is not ridicule or beratement."
posted by gregoreo at 7:47 PM on April 29, 2008

> Kazuo Ishiguro's father is Japanese, isn't he?

Yes, but as Ishiguro discusses in the interview, his father was born in Shanghai and lived his youth there.
posted by Cucurbit at 8:11 PM on April 29, 2008

I'm surprised that no one has yet speculated that this may be a Japanese stereotype about Chinese people, and Kazuo Ishiguro may be alluding to it (humorously?), given his father's personal history. If that's the case, it doesn't matter which cultures actually do this, it matters which cultures Japanese people think do it.
posted by Gnatcho at 8:23 PM on April 29, 2008

I haven't seen the review and thus don't know the context this was said in, but here is a related concept: schadenfreude. From the Oxford American Dictionary:

schadenfreude |ˌʃɑːd(ə)nˈfrɔɪdə| |ˌʃɑːdənˈfrɔydə| (also Schadenfreude) noun
pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.
ORIGIN German, from Schaden ‘harm’ + Freude ‘joy.’

A quote from the Avenue Q song, "Schadenfreude", illustrates why this particular concept may not necessarily be limited to the Chinese:

"Nicky: What's that, some kind of, uh, Nazi word?

Gary Coleman: Yup, it's German for "happiness in the misfortune of others"!

Nicky: "Happiness in the misfortune of others"? That is German!"
posted by WalterMitty at 11:22 PM on April 29, 2008

I have heard my Japanese co-workers use "Chinese" as a way of describing behavior/attitudes that they don't think fit in the categories of "Japanese" or "Western."
posted by betweenthebars at 12:18 AM on April 30, 2008

There's at least one whole book on how familiarity of a group with its own members or with members of another group affects how well they can judge the facial expressions of someone else.

It led me to this study [pdf]:
Two studies provide evidence for the role of cultural familiarity in recognizing facial expressions of emotion. For Chinese located in China and the USA, Chinese Americans and non-Asian Americans, accuracy and speed in judging Chinese and American emotions was greater with greater participant exposure to the group posing the expressions. Likewise, Tibetans residing in China and Africans residing in the USA were faster and more accurate when judging emotions expressed by host versus non-host society members. These effects extended across generations of Chinese Americans, seemingly independent of ethnic or biological ties. Results suggest that the universal affect system governing emotional expression may be characterized by subtle differences in style across cultures, which become more familiar with greater cultural contact.

Randomly:
* "The Japanese are said to smile when reprimanded (Labarre 1947); instead of concluding that smiling can be an expression of distress, such smiles should be seen as the social signal saying, 'Thank you, Master, for putting me right.'"
* This book has a passage comparing Euro-American reaction to reprimands (looking straight into the eyes of the superior) and Mexican (downcast) and Chinese (smiling) reactions.

Several sources corroborate this site, which seems close to what you're asking about:
Asian Smiles and Laughter

Smiles and laughter in Asia serve a rather different function than in the West. Smiles may indeed portray happiness and joy but also hide sadness and embarrassment.

To determine whether a smile is one of joy or of sadness it is imperative that you look at the eyes and body language. A smile of embarrassment or sadness will not be expressed through the eyes as a smile of joy would be. Don’t think that Asian smiles over the death of a pet dog is cold heartedness, but an attempt at protecting you from feeling their own feelings of remorse.

Alas, this is all probably whence the word "inscrutable" derives its power.
posted by dhartung at 2:00 AM on April 30, 2008