I was always puzzled by accounts of criminals trying to disguise their appearance for fear of being caught by someone who recognised them from a picture: there is a reasonable chance I may fail to recognise someone I've known for years if they're in an unfamiliar context or if they've change their hairstyle, so the thought of recognising a complete stranger from a picture
Hahahaha, YES. I hate that in movies/books, when someone's recognized despite having changed clothes/hair/speech-patterns. I just can't believe it, not unless there's something really distinctive (and unchanged, like tattoos or birthmarks) to off-set the otherwise radical change. What makes it worse is that I've read/seen plenty of books/shows where the person who does not catch onto 'this is the same person but with different clothing, etc' is treated as stupid (if not outright lying) for not recognizing the criminal. It's a subtle line through many of the texts, but I guess being sensitive to it already, I can see it: the message is that the person who doesn't recognize must be deficient, slow on the uptake. So very rarely is it treated as the other way around, that the person who recognizes is the unusual one.
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Date: 3 Dec 2010 06:21 pm (UTC)Hahahaha, YES. I hate that in movies/books, when someone's recognized despite having changed clothes/hair/speech-patterns. I just can't believe it, not unless there's something really distinctive (and unchanged, like tattoos or birthmarks) to off-set the otherwise radical change. What makes it worse is that I've read/seen plenty of books/shows where the person who does not catch onto 'this is the same person but with different clothing, etc' is treated as stupid (if not outright lying) for not recognizing the criminal. It's a subtle line through many of the texts, but I guess being sensitive to it already, I can see it: the message is that the person who doesn't recognize must be deficient, slow on the uptake. So very rarely is it treated as the other way around, that the person who recognizes is the unusual one.