“‘Smiling’ (Wittgenstein writes) is our name for an expression in a normal play of expressions’ (Zettel§527). Thus I would not be able to react to a fixed smile imprinted on a paralysed face as I do to the smile of someone who smiles at me in the ordinary course of affairs. A stranger in a bus drops his ticket. I pick it up and give it to him. He smiles as he thanks me. I smile back. ‘No wonder,’ says Wittgenstein, ‘we have this concept [of a smile] in these circumstances’ (ibid.). The significance of the smile, indeed its identity as a smile, is bound up with this background. Remove the background or alter it radically, freeze the smile so that it no longer varies with the circumstances, and you no longer have a smile . ” (Dilham, 1999: 126) What if, the smile freezes? It doesn’t vary with the circumstances. Do we still call it a smile? Look at the character of Joker, from the Batman comics. He has a smile, a permanent smile. Scars through his lips, that made h...