Q: Where does the expression “talking head” originate from? And why has it become so pejorative?
A: When the term first appeared in the mid-19th century, it referred to mythical robotic talking heads purportedly created by medieval scientists.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the original sense of the term as “a legendary automaton resembling a human head, supposed to have been able to speak and answer questions put to it.”
The dictionary’s earliest “talking head” citation, which we’ve expanded, refers to a brass head supposedly created by the polymath, philosopher, scientist, and Franciscan friar Roger Bacon in the 13th century:
“Roger Bacon, having succeeded in making a talking head, was so wearied, says the chronicler, with its perpetual tittle-tattle that he dashed it to pieces” (from The Examiner, a London literary weekly, Sept. 16, 1848).
In The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay (1594), a play by Robert Greene, Bacon describes his supposed plan to create an artificial talking head with the help of infernal forces:
“What art can work, the frolic friar knows; / And therefore will I turn my magic books, / And strain out necromancy to the deep. / I have contrived and framed a head of brass (I made [the demon] Belcephon hammer out the stuff).”
However, Bacon falls asleep before the head begins to speak, and his helper, the poor scholar Miles, belatedly awakes him: “Master, master, up! Hell’s broken loose; your Head speaks; and there’s such a thunder and lightning, that I warrant all Oxford is up in arms.”
By the time Bacon gets up, the head has fallen to the floor and broken, and he laments his loss: “My life, my fame, my glory, all are past.”
As it turns out, the idea of a talking head dates back to ancient Greece, where it was a popular theme in mythology. The most famous example is the legend of Orpheus, a Thracian bard whose severed head continued to sing mournful songs after his death.
Getting back to reality, the modern sense of “talking head” as “a speaker on television who addresses the camera and is viewed in close-up,” appeared in the mid-20th century, according to citations in the OED.
The literal “talking head” here is the televised head and shoulders of the person talking. The dictionary’s first example is from an Ohio newspaper:
“It’s easy to come up with just ‘talking heads’ on the TV screen. We have to fight this all the time” (The Middletown Journal, June 5, 1964).
Why, as you’ve noticed, is the term “talking head” often used in a derogatory way, as in the citation above?
Oxford Reference, an Oxford University Press website, suggests that “talking head” is “often used in a pejorative sense because the use of such commentators in a visual medium suggests an over-reliance on ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing.’ ”
We’d add that the TV talking heads may be viewed negatively as people reading scripts, often written by others, rather than expressing thoughts of their own.
Incidentally, as we’ve noted elsewhere, a TV talking head is sometimes called a “gob on a stick” in British English.
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