The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Spotlight ===> YOU

            Imagine being on a stage with hundreds of people staring directly at you. How would this make you feel? How would you act in front of them? Once you’re back-stage, would you act completely different? The answers to my questions would probably differ from person to person, but according to Erving Goffman, author of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, we all act at different parts of our lives. This is saying a lot because if you’re reading this, you’re probably not an actor (unless I have the privilege of Jim Carrey reading my blog). You are most likely a college student, or a parent, or a professor, or you’re a combination of these three. BUT, according to Goffman, these are roles that we play, as actors, which define us as individuals. Now, if you saw the documentary The Codes of Gender, based on Goffman’s book with the same title, you would see some similarities between the two works. I plan to name a few in the rest of this post.

How do you act in this situation?

            Personally, I see the need to study gender differences within advertisements and the rest of media, but when it comes to how an individual perceives him/herself, I find the results much more interesting. Now that I got that off my chest, Codes of Gender was still a very important piece in which an individual learns how others strive to become what they see on TV. I notice that in  Western society, women are always depicted on TV as super-models whose sole-purpose is to attract a man. This can be noticed in Presentation of Self. Goffman notes that there are three different types of regions,each with different affects on an individual’s performance. These are the front, back, and off-stages. Basically, front-stage is when an individual is putting on a show for everyone (as a whole) around him/her, back-stage is when that person is alone and is truly him/herself, and off-stage is when a person acts in front of each “audience member”. The individual may act a different way for each “audience member” based on the relationship with that member. Now, by saying this, a woman may see an ad and respond to it in a way in which she may be turned on by it. For example, if a woman saw a commercial for a particular type of perfume, she may want to buy it so she could smell nice for her husband or boyfriend. That’s an “off-stage” approach. She possibly might want it for not just her hubby, but everyone else in her social circle. This is an example of when she is “front-stage”. This example cannot be used in a case of “back-stage” unless she wants the perfume strictly for the smell without caring about who else smells it. Of course, these statements could be argued because everyone’s personality is different.

A distorted photo of my cousin and I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            The only other similarity I can see between the two pieces of Goffman’s is the fact that everyone “shows off” during points of their lives. Do gender laws used in the media create this persistent need to act in front of others? I believe so. Case in point, me. To be short, I tend to act a fool in front of many of my friends just to get a few laughs. In front of strangers, I am the exact opposite, I’m quiet and almost act invisible. The real me is a soft-spoken, intelligent, quick-witted guy. Of course, you’ll never be able to tell.

            To conclude this post, I will state that the two of Goffman’s work are fine pieces, but I hardly found any similarities between the two. There were some there, and there’s most likely more than what I could find, but after going back and forth between the two, I was only able to identify two of them. Nonetheless, they are both very good theories, and I do enjoy reading Goffman’s books. That’s probably because I can relate to a few theories he mentions, but hey, who wouldn’t?