“People are more concerned with being normal than with being natural.”
– Erving Goffman
“I think we definitely are living in an image-obsessed era. Everything became about what we look like on the outside as opposed to who we are on the inside.”
– Michael K. Williams
DRAMATURGY
These days, people make an effort to act normal rather than to just be natural. Because of the way people are socialized, they try to craft, and then project, a socially meaningful image of who they want others to believe they are. In addition, people don’t care whether or not these images run counter to the way Mother Nature intended humans to act, look or behave. As a result of these types of social games, anymore, most people don’t know who they really are.
The media has been complicit in people’s quest to present socially manufactured images. Its institutionalized images have come to define how people actually think they want to live. As a result of this socially-mediated process, today, a person’s social image is all important; even if what it takes to maintain that image may cause them harm. People put hair where it doesn’t belong, and they shave off hair where it does belong. Other people binge-eat and then they secretly go throw up what they ate in order to avoid gaining the weight they would normally put on when consuming those calories. Despite the inherent dangers these types of behaviors pose, people still engage in them in order to maintain their socially-approved image. There are dozens upon dozens of such examples of how this type of phenomenon has come to permeate our society.
Instead of social attention being distributed on a face-to-face basis, it is now mass distributed. Online platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and others provide the images that people want to copy and emulate for their own presentation of self. As a result of these social practices, people no longer care what type of character they develop, they are more concerned with how good-looking they are and how many “likes” they can get on social media.
This all means that “substance” has taken a backseat to “style.” In other words, as long as a person “looks the part,” it’s enough to get them wide-spread notice on the various online social media platforms. A recent commercial mocks this reality when a character in the spot is asked if they are really a doctor. The actor responds with, “No, but I play one on TV” as to imply that “reality” is one thing, but social media is everything.
One’s “true self” no longer matters in modern-day society. I would even venture to say that most people have been presenting their “socially mediated self” for so long that they may not even know who their “true self” is. These days, one’s physical appearance has taken priority. Thus, a person’s authentic self no longer matters as much as the “self” they are able to present digitally.
The result of such a juxtaposition of a person’s “true self” with that of their “digital self” means that our relationships are now built on such unstable foundations. When creating a dating profile, a person can choose to be almost anything they want people to believe they are. Initially, anyway. But can these overly-exaggerated phony dating profiles deliver when it comes to the actual face-to-face meetings? Eventually, some remnant of their “true self” will manifest itself and it may not come close to resembling their “digital self.”
In this competition to “look good” socially, only a relatively few individuals can naturally look and act like the socially mediated images mass produced for a media-intensive society. Therefore, there exists an unbalanced amount of positive social attention given to these naturally good-looking individuals. As a result of this natural unbalance, the individuals not lucky enough to be born with good-looks must find a way to even the paying field to their attractive counterparts. The less good-looking people do this by engaging in what Goffman called “Dramaturgy.”
Dramaturgy is a term Goffman invented to show how people perform their social roles as an actor would perform their part in a theatrical play. First, people choose a particular social role to enact from a number of possible role choices. After choosing a role to play, the person then attempts to enact it successfully. Remember that some actors aren’t as skilled as are others.
People try to make their “act” appear as genuine as possible by utilizing the proper scripts, props, and anything else that will make their “act” appear as authentic and “real” as possible. A successful “act” is one that makes people believe it enough to treat it as authentic. If the “act” is successful, the actor will get treated accordingly and they will receive their desired outcome. An unsuccessful “act” is one that fails to make others believe that it is genuine. In these latter scenarios, an unbelievable “act” may be called out along with the actor attempting to get away with behaving in a disingenuous manner. In these unfortunate cases, the actor will not achieve their desired outcome.
And if you think that this social situation couldn’t get any worse, think again. So many people have been brainwashed into thinking along these lines that many of them no longer know how to be their authentic selves. Moreover, many people do enact a convincing and believable role, and achieve digital popularity. But then they can’t handle the resulting attention and popularity that such social images bestow upon them. These types may end up consuming drugs and/or alcohol in order to escape such hollow and undeserved attention.
“I feel like if I’m not lying to a woman, it feels like something is wrong with the relationship.”
– Conversation overheard on light rail.
Our social world has become so lopsided that it is severely affecting our relationships. Remember the unnerving statistics I mentioned at the beginning of this book? Those depressing indicators of how many relationships fail is a direct reflection of the phenomenon I have described above. And to add insult to injury, people have believed in, and acted according to such a socially-mediated system that they no longer know what it means to look and act in an authentic manner. Thus, people have to try and act in a way that makes them appear as authentic. In short, true authenticity has lost much of its power.
LIFE AS THEATER
Goffman used the metaphor of Life as Theater to explain how social life functioned. This was his dramaturgical approach to explaining and understanding how modern “digital” society functioned. What he showed in his writings was that while engaged in social interaction, we are all social “actors” performing for specific “audiences.” Goffman admitted that in the dramaturgy approach, psychology is definitely involved (individual thinking). However, according to him, it is stripped and cramped into sociology where it is “played out” (group interaction). What he meant by this was that social life does begin with a person or social actor. However, Goffman considered the social scene to be paramount. In other words, in this type of thinking, the individual is secondary to the group.
According to Goffman, the entire purpose of social action is geared toward IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT or “image maintenance” during social encounters. During the process of impression management, people tend to emphasize and accentuate the positive aspects of their performance. While doing this, they simultaneously avoid or limit any negative views of themselves. This process of enacting a successful role can be accomplished in a variety of ways; using a variety of items to make an “act” more believable. A sketch of Goffman’s view on how people enact a successful social role (and image) is illustrated below.
Goffman’s types of Impression Management
ROLE THEORY
PERFORMANCE
FRONT STAGE
BACK STAGE
PROPS
SCRIPTS
“GIVING” INFORMATION
“GIVING OFF” INFORMATION
COVERING MOVE
UNCOVERING MOVE
COUNTER-UNCOVERING MOVE
INVOLVEMENT CONTOUR
TEAM PLAY
