Week 5 Reading: Goffman, E 1971, ‘Performances”, in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, pp28-82
Front stage, back stage, audiences, masks, performances. I don’t even know who the hell I am anymore! This subject has got my already overactive brain in a spin.
During the week 5 lecture, going over the reading and seeing examples posted on people’s blogs got me thinking about times in my life where I have also had a back and front stage experience. I worked at a vet surgery in Notting Hill where there were many celebrity clients, snobby people and spoilt pooches. I was the receptionist, so I always had to pretend to be really interested in what people had to say as I cleaned up their precious puppy’s pee. Fast forward to me gagging as I ran down the stairs to complain to the nurses about dog pee all over me and the heinous woman that I’m entertaining upstairs that was too posh to clean up after her animal. Then there was the ‘I’m cool’ and ‘I’m not phased you’re a rock star’ front stage performance and the ‘holy mother of god, sweet baby Jesus I think our hands just grazed’ excitement quiver overload backstage performance. For me that was how I related to Goffman’s front/back stage. I get it, that everyone acts differently according to the situation and the type of audience; it’s just a standard rule of conduct that we all follow.
It is strange though that we all have these ‘masks’ that we put on just so we can get in to character and ‘perform’ a certain way in front and back stage situations. Working at that vet I was told many times by my boss that I had to control my inappropriate questions and outbursts when famous people came in and go downstairs to release my excitement or frustration – so I just had to put on a performance to avoid losing my job and possibly incurring a restraining order.
Here is a link to a video that I just love. I’ve always been told I laugh at inappropriate things so it’s nice to know there are others out there….
http://youtu.be/hSFWgKl-O-A
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