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Unwoven Rainbow

Loved the phrase unweaving the rainbow in this essay. Made me think about perfectly symmetrical faces is almost automatically a path to a career on screen. When I first read about this as a kid, I would scan faces all around me (which there was never a lack of growing up in India) and make mental lists of who could make it to the movies - not necessarily in a leading role but could have a part at least. 

I realized not a lot of folks qualified if perfect symmetry was the entry criteria but very good symmetry opened the door for many more. Not everyone that was blessed with great facial symmetry was also conventionally good looking but there was something harmonious about them. I could imagine that face in a movie in some role that made sense for their look. They would rest very easy on the viewers eye and that was the secret. A much more "attractive" face lacking the same degree of symmetry would have to shot from angles that worked to their best advantage because everything else would cause some cognitive strain on the viewer. 

Formalism holds that we can account for aesthetic judgments in non-aesthetic terms. Maybe we find a song beautiful because of its tertian harmonies, or we like a certain photo because the angular lines converge on a point. Formalism “unweaves the rainbow” by telling you exactly why you find something beautiful. 

To many parents their child is perfectly beautiful. This is where objectively and formalism no longer matter. They probably see ultimate symmetry in their baby's gap-toothed smile. 

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