Life as a Stage

Following on from the examination of how the 'self' is created, this week we looked at Dramaturgy. Simply put, this is the way in which life can be seen as a 'game' or 'drama'. In another long reading, Goffman argues that everybody 'performs' certain roles in everyday life. We will adjust our performance to suit the audience, time and place, cultivating the personality which is most appropriate. In this way, we do not always reveal our true selves. This idea of performance is put into words very nicely by none other than William Shakespeare (1623), who wrote:

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely

players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts...”

(As You Like It, Act 2 Scene 7)

Goffman uses the idea of a front stage and backstage to explain the way in which our performances change. An example of this was given in the lecture (I found this one particularly helpful as I am a waitress myself): Waitresses must perform a certain role while in the restaurant – they must be polite to customers and be, as my boss calls it, the “hostess with the mostess”. This would be seen as the front stage. When the waitress goes out into the kitchen (backstage) she can relax somewhat and for example, vent about rude customers. I feel this backstage also allows us to maintain our front stage persona, by giving us somewhere to release the parts of our self which do not work with our front stage persona.

Another example which I was quite interested in, is the way in which celebrities handle these ideas of front stage and backstage. The introduction of social networking sites, such as Twitter, create a situation where the celebrity can somewhat escape their 'most' front stage performance, which I think would be official events/interviews, and instead allow fans to see another side of themselves which is getting closer to the backstage. However, even their 'tweets' must be staged. Alice Marwich and Danah Boyd argue that on Twiter “celebrity practice involves presenting a seemingly authentic, intimate image of self while meeting fan expectations and maintaining important relationships” (2011, 140).

I found Goffman's argument very interesting and the more I thought about it the more I could see how it works in almost all interactions. As was discussed last week, the social reality stops us from having everything we feel and do on display to every person, therefore allowing us to maintain specific relationships.

Goffman, Erving. (1971), 'Performances',The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Marwick, A and Boyd, Danah (2011), 'To See and Be Seen: Celebrity Practice on Twitter' Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Sage, Vol.17: 139, 19^th May.