Dramaturgy

This week’s topic is dramaturgy, which I have rather been looking forward to because I remember it from year 12 Drama! It is the second instalment of Goffman’s ‘theory’ (or collection of ideas as he prefers to put it).

Dramaturgy is all about performances, and imagining that the world is a stage whereupon you act to be perceived in the best possible light (I don’t know where ‘whereupon’ came from, it just popped into my head - hope it’s in the right context!).

Some major concepts to wrap your head around:

• Frontstage/backstage - The continuum between these two stages show that what we ‘put on’ for the outside world (frontstage) may be completely different to what we really think on the inside (backstage). For example, I tell my parents that I am always studied and getting amazing results on the frontstage, but on the backstage I am actually hooked on tumblr and my results are slowly spiralling down to nothingness.
• Teams - at the same level as you; who you go ‘backstage’ with. So the friends who got me addicted to tumblr would technically be on the same team as me, although whether that team is beneficial is debatable (I hope you guys read that :P).
• Cynical/sincere performances - Along the same lines as the frontstage/backstage dynamic, cynical performances are put on to please the audience, while sincere performances are those that you truly believe in. My ‘team’ gets to see my sincere performance through my tumblr posts, while my parents get the cynical performance.
• Role distance - Playing a role because it is what is expected of you, rather than because you want to i.e. playing the role of “diligent uni student”.

Oh and before I forget, here's a link to a comment I made on someone else's blog:

Shirin's fabulous blog

Hey all,

Here's the link to the data I was thinking of using for my independent research project, and what I will be basing my data discussion presentation on tomorrow:

Kanye interrupts Taylor at 2009 VMAs

Presentation of Self

This week is all about the presentation of the self and the opinions of Erving Goffman. While the readings (both by Goffman) seemed a tad dry to me (especially the first one), they basically describe the intricacies of social interactions, how the ‘self’ is then constructed with these interactions, and the importance of establishing a sense of self in every encounter. The lecture delved into the man himself and his unconventional collection of theories that really separated him from other Sociologists. For example, the fact that he went to the extreme of enrolling into a mental institute in cognito to study the patients showed how involved he was in his work and how he lived to do things his own way.

One concept of Goffman’s that I found particularly interesting was facework. Loosely summarised, facework is the idea that everything we do is to keep good face (i.e. to keep our dignity). If we lose face, we suffer a certain ‘social death’, which is the worst consequence imaginable. We can sometimes try and keep other people in good face, but essentially we only care about ourselves.

Ok, so since I am utterly obsessed with Glee, I am going to give you an example from this amazing TV show. In one episode, Puck (the school bully) lost his trademark Mohawk and suddenly started getting picked on by the nerds he used to bully, completely uprooting the social hierarchy. Puck was absolutely humiliated and suffered a severe social death. He couldn’t face the rest of the school until he gained his ‘face’ back. This demonstrates the importance of keeping in good face.

Andrew also briefly introduced Goffman’s ideas on roles and role distance, which directly relates to the view of the self. Since I have gone slightly over the recommended word count for each blog, here is a fascinating scholarly source which can help you understand the idea of roles:

Marginality, Role Conflict, and Status Inconsistency as Forms of Stressful Interaction 

Test blog

What is happening?!?! This is so confusing! >.<

Ok so here's my first blog (if it works it will be). I'm just posting to see how this all actually works, but in later posts I will be talking about the SOC250 topics.

Test:

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Minor Artistic Choice:

I decided to use Verdana font because I thought it was a slightly more approachable font (can fonts be 'approachable'??). It seemed like a casual font to me, and I thought it would give my blogs a less formal tone. :)