hola researchers,

I think there is a directional term a fashion photographer/director
would give to a model or actor where they roll their eyeballs to one
side showing only the whites of their eyes.  what's this called?  it
might be a foreign (German?) word.  I think it was used in the film
"Gia."  this is probably really difficult to research for this price,
so only answer if you know it off the top of your head.

thanks@GB

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 06 Jul 2003 16:41 PDT

Do you recollect what the term in Gia sounded like?

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Clarification of Question by badabing-ga on 06 Jul 2003 17:34 PDT

no, sorry, it's been too long and granny's memory is slipping.  have
no VCR or I'd rent it myself.  gran could be hallucinatin' again.  was
supposed to make the model look "dead."

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Clarification of Question by badabing-ga on 08 Jul 2003 13:54 PDT

this could also be a term used in Kabuki theater.  I found this in an
old LAT article.

"In one scene Gia appears at her most spectacular, wearing a Kabuki
wig and striking red satin gown designed by costume designer Robert
Turturice to mirror the dramatic style of the reigning fashion gods –
Yves St Laurent and Fabrice. Yet, beneath her mask of make-up she’s
sick and stoned, and she bolts from a photo session to grovel among
junkies for a hit. Out of the fashion photographer’s view, the picture
isn’t pretty."

in case it jogs anyone's memory...

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Clarification of Question by badabing-ga on 08 Jul 2003 14:34 PDT

...or it could be French.  ;-)  

if gran were naming it, she'd call it vapid eye movement.

Hi, Granny!

Hope you still want an answer to this. I am one of those folks who,
once an idea gets into her head, does not tend to let go of it until
the thunder rolls, and I really wanted to find the answer to this
question.

To solve the mystery, I finally got my hands on a tape of "Gia." What
the photographer says to Gia after asking her to show the whites of
her eyes is this:

"We're looking for the sanpaku. It's Japanese. It means you're half
dead."

Here are a few interesting bits of info from the Web about the term
"sanpaku":

"Sanpaku is a Japanese term that literally means 'three areas empty'.
It refers to two sides of the eye that show white ('empty') plus the
lower area... A person manifesting this appearance was considered
chronically fatigued, headed for serious illness, and accident-prone.

George Ohsawa, the founder of Macrobiotics, wrote an article which
appeared in the New York Times many years ago titled The Fate of the
Sanpaku.  In the article he named a number of famous people, including
US President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert
Kennedy, as well as Marilyn Monroe and other Hollywood celebrities.
Mr. Ohsawa predicted tragic outcomes for all of these people based on
photographs he had observed in the news media. All of the people he
mentioned exhibited the condition called Sanpaku."

Macrobiotic.org
http://www.macrobiotic.org/Sanpaku.htm

"Diana, Princess of Wales had a rare condition called sanpaku, and so
does Cherie Blair, according to the artist David Hockney. Sanpaku is a
Japanese word that means 'three whites'... Hockney noticed that in
photographs and on television, Mrs Blair gazes out with the typical
sanpaku wide-eyed stare, the whites of her eyes clearly visible above
and below the iris... people who are sanpaku are believed to be more
prone to violent death. John Lennon was sanpaku, as was John F
Kennedy. There are two types of sanpaku. Yang sanpaku is when the
whites show above the iris. This is rare and is usually associated
with anger and aggression.

Yin sanpaku, when the whites show below the iris, is associated with
vulnerability."

Welsh Association of Licensed Kennels
http://www.walk-wales.org.uk/sanpaku.htm

Here's an interesting excerpt from a site about the Beatles,
specifically John Lennon:

"SANPAKU

'You,' Yoko told him one day after gazing into his eyes, 'are
sanpaku'.

Sanpaku, she explained patiently, was a Japanese term meaning
literally 'three whites'. If a person was sanpaku it meant that the
irisis of their eyes were turned upwards so that white could be seen
on three sides. The condition had been recognised for centuries in
oriental countries where it was thought to signify poor physical and
psychological health – caused primarily by an unwholesome diet. Worse,
people who were sanpaku were prone to meet with violent accidents or
death...

History showed that Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, President Kennedy
and Adolf Hitler were among those who had become sanpaku towards the
end of their lives.

The two of them had together pored over photographs of the Beatles and
realised that, though none of them were sanpaku in their early days,
now all of them were.

Yoko explained that sanpaku could be cured if the person followed a
macrobiotic lifestyle and ate the right types of food. This led to
John's lifelong interest in macrobiotics."

Restless Wind: John, Yoko and Macrobiotics
http://rwbeatles.tripod.com/aisumasen.html

I could not discover whether a photographer actually said this to Gia.
If so, in view of the eventual fate of Gia Carangi, the remark would
have been an unintended and grimly ironic prophecy.
 
Google search strategy:

Google Web Search: "sanpaku"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=sanpaku

This was an interesting search. I always love to learn a new word, and
I really enjoyed watching "Gia." Not exactly a fun flick, but the
performance by Angelina Jolie was impressive.

Here's hoping you show 'three whites' in your breakfast eggs, but not
in your eyes. ;-)

Best,
Pink

wow, interesting indeed!  I'd seen GIA twice on HBO and never could
catch that word, nor could I rewind and relisten.  thanks for checking
it out for me and, yes, I was definitely still interested.  thanks for
being a bloodhound on this little project of gran's and I'm glad you
saw the movie, even if it was somewhat of a downer.

In photo portraiture, rolling the eyes to one side is called
"cheating."

"In a profile portrait, when a person looks straight ahead, only the
whites of the eyes are seen by the camera. This causes an undesirable
effect. Instead have the eyes cheat-turn the eyes slightly toward the
camera, without turning the head, to show enough of the iris so the
eye can be seen as an eye, not a white ball."

http://www.tpub.com/photography1/ph209142.htm

I haven't seen "Gia," so I don't know whether this is your term. It's
certainly not a foreign word, but I did know it off the top of my head
(a repository for a whole lotta weird factoids).

Another thought: how about the German word "Augenbewegungen"?

I thought this might be housed in the Pink Repository of Factoids. 
seems like the pose is used for dramatic effect in haute coutre.  if
anyone has "Gia" in their movie library, it was used right before
Angelina Jolie flees from a shoot in her puffy red ball gown on the
back of Chuck Zito's Harley.

since the fashionistas were heavily copying Helmut Newton's
photographs in the 80s, I thought it might be a coined term --
possibly German -- but I'm afraid I wouldn't recognize the word if I
heard it.  can we keep the question open for any late returns?

Hmmm.

If you wouldn't recognize this German word if you heard it, then I
have your answer.

The word is "Fahrvergnügen."

Either that, or "Mittelalterliche."

Or maybe "Liebfraumilch."

Hee hee.

I don't know anything about modeling, but I do know something about
theatre. In theatre "cheating" doesn't refer to the eyes (after all,
small movements of the eye don't show up much on stage), but to the
positioning of the body. Generally, this is moving one leg toward the
wings, so that instead of showing the audience your side, you are
showing them most of the front of your body.

Kriswrite

Granny's kind words, the five stars, and the incredibly ample tip are
very much appreciated. This bloodhound's tail is wagging.

~pupfreud

and you do be the piddiest, piddiest bloodhound, too.  gran wanted to
pad the tip in case a rental fee was involved.  she hated to coerce
anyone into watching this film who isn't a die-hard Jolie fan as she's
virtually in every scene.  I can't imagine anyone else in that role
though.

now that I know this word, gran will do some further investigation on
her own.  here's a ref for Hillary being sanpaku (June 14, 2003).
http://randomwalks.com/archive/books/index.php

Howdy again, Granny. I ran across something on the Web that I thought
might interest you.

If, by any chance, the UPN series "America's Next Top Model" is rerun,
you may want to catch the first episode, in which supermodel Tyra
Banks apparently gives a demo of "dead eyes":

"What's more entertaining than the 'Survivor'-meets-'Are You Hot?'
competition are all the 'Zoolander' moments of unintentional
self-parody. The first episode is almost worth the time just to see
[Tyra] Banks demonstrating what she believes to be the difference
between dead eyes and alive ones."

http://sns.metromix.com/entertainment/chi-0305270198may27,0,709296.story

~Pink