This primer in “cognitive cultural studies” explores the cultural fantasy of perfect access to mind through body. It shows that different genres and media—movies, novels, classic Chinese operas, medieval ribald tales, musicals, paintings, documentaries, stand-up comedy, and photography—have different strategies for making us think that we have just glimpsed someone’s "true" emotions (sometimes at the precise moment when the person is trying to conceal them). Old, obvious strategies become subject to subversion and parody, and new ones emerge
