法令
Beomnyeong (Law Lines, 法令)
The pair of lines flowing from beside the nostrils toward the mouth corners are today's ‘smile lines’, but the traditional plate calls them beomnyeong (法令): the characters for law and decree, riding on a pair of wrinkles.
Why law, of all things? Here is the name's story, along with the 1920s film experiment about why one and the same line can make opposite impressions depending on what surrounds it.
Editorial markA plate for examining the names a culture placed on the face.
Location plate
A line from nostril to mouth corner
On the plate, the beomnyeong are the symmetric lines starting beside the nostril wings and running toward the corners of the mouth. Anatomy calls them nasolabial folds; they form where the skin of the cheek folds against the mouth area as expression muscles work.
The more a face smiles and talks, and the more skin elasticity changes with age, the clearer they become. They are something like a resume of a face that has laughed a lot.
- Plate label
- 法令
- Anatomical term
- nasolabial folds
Name and tradition
The customary story behind ‘law lines’
Read literally, 法令 is ‘law and decree’. The customary gloss likens the lines to an official gravely proclaiming the law, and tradition is said to have talked of clear beomnyeong as a sign of upright office and steady work.
In the old charts, then, these lines were read not as marks of aging but as an emblem of social dignity. That is a bureaucratic culture's metaphor drawn on the face, and the depth of a wrinkle is not used to settle anyone's job or character.
Psychology in contrast
The same line reads differently in context
In the 1920s the Soviet director Lev Kuleshov intercut the same expressionless face with shots of soup, a coffin, and a child, and audiences read hunger, grief, and tenderness into the identical footage. The observation is known as the Kuleshov effect.
A line whose depth shifts with expression, like the beomnyeong, is especially context-hungry. In a smiling photo it reads genial; in a deadpan photo the very same line reads stern. The line did not change; the context did.
Texts and research
Sources for this plate
- Standard dictionary entries for beomnyeong (法令) and the nasolabial fold
- The ‘official proclaiming the law’ gloss of traditional physiognomy, as customarily transmitted
- Lev Kuleshov's 1920s editing experiment (the Kuleshov effect)
Terms and further reading