Lie To Me

I hope that everyone is enjoying the end of their spring breaks. I went to Punta Cana for 6 days with some of my friends and had a great time. Trying to avoid a lot of phone charges for using my phone in another country, I turned off my data package, which left me Internet and email free for the whole time. When we finally landed at Newark on a rainy Thursday afternoon, I turned my Internet back on and was hit with a flood of emails. One of them was an invite from Professor Jason Mittell to an advanced screening of an upcoming episode of The Chicago Code, which was produced by a Middlebury Alum. When I read the email, I saw that Shawn Ryan ’88 had also produced Lie To Me (among many other noteworthy shows). Lie to Me was a show that I have been meaning to watch for a while because of the high reviews my friends have given it. This email was just what I needed to spark my interest in the show.

The pilot opens with Dr. Cal Lightman questioning a supposed criminal. Cal questions the suspect, but instead of trying to solve the crime by listening to the suspect’s answers, he reads the suspects facial expressions and involuntary body language. You see, no words are necessary for Cal to solve the crime; he is a prominent deception expert that helps law enforcement solve crimes using this technique.

In the first minute, Cal drops a shocking statistic: an average person lies 3 times in every ten minutes. That boggled my mind. Being called a liar is probably one of the worst things I think someone could be called, but this statistic suggests that not only is everyone lying, they’re doing it a lot.

One of my favorite parts of the episode came when Cal seemed to be giving a lecture on reading body language and facial expressions to an auditorium full of people. He broke down the interview that the show opened up with and paused the interview at certain parts to show certain facial expressions and body movements that the suspect made and explained what each of them meant. Each reflected a different emotion that gave Cal information related to the crime. To the average eye, many people would not pick up on these, but in freeze frame, these emotions become clear. Cal then went on to show the audience pictures of many recognizable people from well-known public criminal cases. He placed images on the screen of some of these people making the same body movements or facial expressions that signify a certain emotion. For example, he put a picture of Hugh Grant, Marilyn Monroe, and Bill Clinton sided by side, showing them making the same facial expressions and hand gestures. Cal suggested that this particular look signifies shame. After going through a few examples like these, he says “Emotion looks the same whether you’re a suburban housewife or a suicide bomber. The truth is written on all of our faces.” This quote is backed up by the pictures he shows and really makes the viewer rethink how we question people to get to the truth.

Writing this blog post the day after I saw the episode, I can honestly say that I have found myself on numerous occasions thinking about my own facial expressions and what they suggest. Having Cals’s ability to read body language and facial expressions to get to the truth would certainly be cool, but I don’t know if I necessarily would want to be able to do this all the time—I think I might go crazy if people are actually telling lies 3 times every ten minutes on average.