About
TennantFace is an exploitable photoshop meme in which actor David Tennant’s face is superimposed on other base images for comedic effect.
Origin
The original image of Scottish actor David Tennant was taken on the set of the British science fiction television show Doctor Who, in which Tennant stars as the tenth protagonist of the series. While the identity of the photographer or its date remains unknown, the image began circulating online as early as September of 2009.[4] The photo continued to spread on sites like Uniblog[5], SodaHead[6] and Unification.[7] On November 30th, 2010, the first photoshopped version was uploaded by Tumblr user invisibleduck[1] and subsequently reposted on the single-topic Tumblr TennantFace.[2] In the first three years, the TennantFace blog featured over 800 posts.
Spread
On June 19th, 2011, Tumblr user invisibleduck added a definition of TennantFace to Urban Dictionary.[3] On September 1st, two French fans waited outside a performance of the play Much Ado About Nothing in the West End of London to have David Tennant sign a blown-up picture of the TennantFace, to which he responded “That’s just creepy.” The same day, a recording of his reaction was posted to YouTube (shown below).
Notable Examples
Additional examples are often posted to Tumblr under the hashtag #tennantface.[8]
Template
Related Blogs
There are several single-topic David Tennant fan sites on Tumblr, ranging from the general Fuck Yeah David Tennant[9] and All Things Tennant,[13] to body part specific blogs highlighting photographs of his tongue[10], eyebrows[11] and hair.[12]
Search Interest
External References
[1]Tumblr – The Visible World of the InvisibleDuck
[2]Tumblr – TennantFace
[3]UrbanDictionary – TennantFace
[4]LiveJournal – sofiej– david tennant/10th doctor picspam
[5]the Uniblog – 10 Pictures of David Tennant Looking Fine as Hell / 10 Pictures of David Tennant Looking Crazy as Hell
[6]SodaHead – Will you miss David Tennant?
[7]Unification – Doctor Who: Le rôle du Docteur ne manque pas à David Tennant
[8]Tumblr – Posts tagged “tennantface”
[9]Tumblr – Fuck Yeah David Tennant
[10]Tumblr – David Tennant’s Tongue
[11]Tumblr – David Tennant’s Eyebrows
[12]Tumblr – Tennant Hairporn
[13]Tumblr – All Things Tennant