Hey Dexter, what's with the frown.
Every once in a while I like to give some insights to the reader about what goes on in my mind as I create these strips. So here goes:
In the above cartoon I just had an image of Dexter with a big frown on his face, walking towards some of his acquaintances. That was the initial “gist” or “flash”. Nothing more. So where to go from there? I asked myself a few questions: Why is he sad, what happened, what’s the story behind this face…I guess no story came along, and my face began to look like his.
Suddenly, I decided that there was no reason for a frown. What’s with this sadness? In fact his frown was a smile, it was just upside down. He was really carrying a big smile which made him look very sad wearing it the other way. We could say that the moral is simply turn your frown upside down, right?
There is also another moral to this story which occured to me as I gave the cartoon another look. This usually applies to people whom we see but we don’t know very well, and we make decisions about what they are like based on their facial expressions, or demeanor. Then we imagine what our interaction with them would be like. You may say that a person looks unapproachable, mean, sad, boring…etc, I don’t want to meet them. And then by accident you get into some kind of contact with this person and your view is suddenly reversed.
Now don’t go out of your way to make contact with people you think you may be misjudging, only to test this theory. Probably not a good idea. But remember, if you do start to make judgements about someone, they may in fact be wearing an upside-down frown.
