There has been a fair amount of comment on blogs etc. in the literary world about the recent outbreak of back-of-head cover illustrations on books.
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... to show but a few. Many are female, though even the male of the species gets a look in:
‘What’s it all about?’ They cry. ‘Is it a good idea?’ I think it is – and it is not only because my next book Upgrade Me: Our Amazing Journey to Human 2.0 due out in a couple of months from St Martin’s Press has this on the front:
There are two reasons this trend makes good psychological sense to me. One is that anticipation gets the brain more active than the experience that’s anticipated. We can get more of those ‘who is THAT?’ neurons firing with a back of the head than a face.
Secondly it overcomes a real problem, particularly for younger readers. You really get into a book, really see a character in your mind. Then you look at the representation of them on the front of the book and it’s wrong. With a back of the head shot this is less likely to happen.
Of course the nice thing about my cover is it’s even ambiguous as far as the sex of the person featured is concerned. I first thought it was male, but after someone made this comment and I looked again, I’m really not sure… (But, be assured, it’s not me!)
There’s a lack of bald patches in the photos. I demand equal rights for those of us with hat-worn heads!
Rene Magritte had a thing about the backs of heads, or the absence (or ambiguity) of faces. Check this out here, here and esepcially here
I think your second point is spot-on, and would also explain why movies of much-loved books are often so disappointing.
I thought about this some more last night whilst watching that (arguably exploitative) documentary about the ‘Chinese Elephant Man’, so terribly afflicted with neurofibromatosis that he literally had to support his huge face with his arm.
The face is so important to us visual creatures that, if we can’t see it, it causes tension, because we can’t read it. So, with the back of the head, there’s that slight concern about the other side – think the cellar in Psycho.
Also, as the face is looking away from us – and they’re often shot as looking into distance at nothing in particular – then, being nosey so-and-so’s, we’re drawn to what that might be; something profound is suggested.
The more I think about this post, the more interesting it gets. The writers of the Bible obviously felt the same way about seeing faces as opposed to backs of heads. Moses had about as intimate knowledge of God as anyone in the Old Testament, but he spends almost all his time talking with representations of God (such as burning bushes and so on). The only time he gets to see God himself he explicity does not see God’s face, only a view from behind (The back of God’s head? Or God’s arse? The Bible isn’t that specific, at least not in English, but you get the point).
Interesting they have moved to backs of heads: a few months ago it was female torsos—no head, no hips or waist, just the “middle bit”. It makes me wonder about the target readership and just what it is about the torso-only approach that publishers think is so attractive. (See in particular historical fiction of the Philippa Gregory variety.)
Sorry, for “waist” read “legs”.