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Outline
History of contemporary performance, with emphasis on the 'concept' of performance. Includes, cultural studies links, as well as current exploration of performativity in anthropological and social sciences.
Tags: contemporary performance
Review
The book is very informative and interesting from a personal standpoint. It strongly concerns body language and social interaction and thus is directly relevant to me as Scriptwriter.
Goffman begins by likening social interaction to a theatrical performance – similar to the Mel Brooks quote "Hope for the Best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed." Goffman details how we communicate, verbally and non-verbally, often with ulterior motives, or concealed feelings. He goes on to say how we will display ourselves in order to ascertain a particular outcome of our own desire, perhaps to get the better of someone, or as Goffman puts it: “…he may wish to ensure sufficient harmony so that the interaction can be sustained, or to defraud, get rid of, confuse, mislead, antagonize, or insult them. Regardless of the particular objective which the individual has in mind, and of his motive for having this objective, it will be in his interests to control the conduct of the others, especially their responsive treatment of him.�
Also, it is interesting to learn how we act in a particular way in differing circumstances and arenas, and how we dress affects how we socialise/how we are viewed.
Goffman has a methodical approach and simplifies the situation(s) to A and B characters. He makes it easy to understand the tactics employed and exploits certain social etiquettes. An interesting example from the book is of prisoners in Chinese indoctrination camps, who use slang and wrongly emphasised words to undermine the situation.
Tags: identity macmp media-participation performance society stage
Short review on
This book struck me as being indirectly relevant to me on the IMP course. Although Goffman was dealing with a broader take on Identity in society it was strikingly applicable to the use of social networking and the "Cyberspace" that is developing on-line.
Goffman identifies trends in society that bring to light the way we interact with people socially and physically,formally described as a "Front persona". These can be sometimes shaped by the "censorship" in our cultural society.
He contrasts this with the idea of "Back persona" that demonstrates more of what we are actually like behind closed doors. This is found in games such as Second Life.
Another aspect that is looked at is the Idea of the "stage". The "stage" being how we are almost in a constant performance all of the time. It looks at how we "act" as such in everyday life.
“Trust, I argue, is a crucial generic phenomenon of personality development as well as having distinctive and specific relevance to a world of disembedding mechanisms and abstract systems.� Quote from "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life"
What Giddens is saying here is how creating trust with the user is crucial as it will develop a sense of trust with say a social network. This will in turn add to them being able to develop as sense of personality or Identity on the social network.
This book has sparked off some interesting thoughts in me and has brought to light some interesting theory's that explain the way, as the title describes, we present ourselves in everyday life.
Tags: identity media-participation performance society stage
Dominant States in Gendered Representations
In this book, Butler outlines some important issues about the performance of gender, and how institutions and people in positions of power determine how those genders should be performed.
Based entirely on my own dissertation, however, I have been using her associations of gender representation as being a 'law' drawn up hegemonically by people in positions of power with reference to the representation of women in my case study, Narnia. She outlines the fluidity of hegemony and how it changes, sometimes substantially, over time, and how this can affect such representation.
She calls into question the notion of 'women as subject', and that it is dubious to categorise a broad social strata based on one attribute in front of the 'law'. She claims that:
"law produces and then conceals the notion of “a subject before the law� in order to invoke that discursive formation as a naturalized foundational premise that subsequently legitimates that law’s own regulatory hegemony."
(Butler, 5: 1999)
And while this viewpoint essentially challenges the viewpoint that I am in a way perpetuating, it is useful to draw upon given the flexibility of any time periods cultural hegemony, and if that does indeed clash with the inflexibility of gendered performance and representation.
Tags: feminism gender performance
from a paper I'm writing
From a paper I'm writing....
Goffman argues that interactions between people are based on their understanding of specific performances. When we understand our role within a performance we then ‘act it out’. These acted out performances take place in a given space, (the setting for a ‘front’ of stage), and tend to be bounded, i.e., they have clear spatial and temporal settings, for example: the doctors consulting room, the living room. In terms of ‘dramatic realisation’ there is a need to make a performance visual and the visual aspects of a performance therefore often come to be valued more.
In addition to these fronts, there tend to be backstage regions. These are where the preparation for the performance takes place, and where ‘out of character’ discussions can thrive. The ‘unguarded’ aspects of backstage can also produce a secondary performance that is, in Goffman’s terms, more truthful in that it knowingly contradicts the front stage performance. The acknowledgement of front and back leave a third space: ‘outside’ the stage. These are all the spaces that are not part of the performance, or actually where individuals cannot gain access to the agreed performance (although they may of course be part of other performances). This reminds us that it may be difficult to stage an accepted performance is a space that is not designed for it. Start giving an academic lecture in a pub and the people around you probably won’t start performing their role as students. This also means that those that don’t belong either front or back stage for a particular performance are considered outsiders and can cause problems when they encroach on performance space because their very presence ‘undoes’ the performance. More likely though, outsiders will remain outside a performance.
Goffman further explains how front stage performances may also be ‘cynical’. Cynical performers lie because their audience does not want the truth. Goffman’s example is of the shoe salesman telling the female customer the size they want to hear, rather than the one that fits best.
Actually there is perhaps something more sinister here. Goffman tells us that individuals who are new to a performance may take a journey from disbelief to belief resulting in them coming to believe the performance they start off only acting. So regardless of ability to critically reflect, an actor new to a role acknowledges and learns the existing performances associated with it. That differences between roles may be relatively fixed is explained by Goffman in terms of ‘ranks’. Ranks are associated with specific performances and some tasks may ‘carry too much rank’ for a particular performer who would need to take on the elevated role before feeling competent to carry out the task. Goffman also notes that change therefore happens from the outside in. An individual adopts the manner of the role that they want to take on first, then comes to actually act that role. And in addition when playing an agreed role it is possible to ‘act down’ to an accepted role. Goffman’s example is collage girls pretending to be dumb in front of datable boys.
Tags: identity macmp performance stage
Documentary and Performance Theory
Although this (my) book in terms of identity focuses on isssues of gender, you may be interested to note that chapter 2 includes a useful breakdown on documentary and performance thoery. Therefore please examine this if you are interetsed in issues on performativity within the doumentary genre. Furthermore this contextualsies Bill Nichols' modes of documentary, Paula Rabinowitz's ideas on social identity, Victor Turner's ideas on 'liminal' and 'liminoid', plus Richard Schechner's ideas on performativity.
Tags: documentary performance