Give and Take

"When someone shows you who they are believe them." 

Maya Angelou

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"The expressiveness of the individual . . . appears to involve two radically different kinds of sign activity: the expression that he gives and the expression that he gives off."

Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

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As individuals, it is always in our interest to control the impression that others have of us. Thus, we attempt to convey to others what we want them to think of us by our dress, our speaking style and language, our gestures, and so forth. These are the signs that we give. They are choices made to establish our persona and to allow us to navigate the world in the manner we desire. 

But we are not always in control of our expressions, and thus the impression that others have of us. The ill-fitting suit, the outdated slang, the nod when there should be a wink are examples of “sign activity” that subvert the intended impression that we wished to convey.

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No one of recent vintage has been more assiduous at giving verbal signs in an attempt to influence the perception of his persona by others than Donald Trump. He is, he has claimed to be, “very smart”—indeed, “a stable genius.” We note these statements here without bothering to pursue them further at this time. What we are interested in right now are two recent statements (verbal expressions, in other words) by Trump in which he attempted to control others’ impression of him—but which gave off contrary information that contradicted the impression he tried to give.

The first statement was Trump’s attempt to maintain the image of a Teflon don (pun not necessarily intended) in a blue Bar Mitzvah suit. Attempting to give that impression in response to criticism of the bungled response to the coronavirus pandemic, he stated, “I don't take responsibility at all.” However, Trump’s verbal sign is contradicted by the expression given off by a knowing reading of the words by his audience. Here is a man, says this contrary reading, that is not responsible—that is, irresponsible. “I don't take responsibility at all” thus equals “I am irresponsible.”

The second statement recently made by Trump in an attempt to give a favorable sign came when he was asked if he had “any interest in reaching out to presidents Bush, Clinton, Obama, Carter . . . .” Trump replied, “I don’t think I’m going to learn much.”*

This was Trump with his “very smart,” “stable genius” hat on. But what the statement gives off is the impression of someone who is either unable or unwilling to learn anything.

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I used to make the point to my freshman classes that it would be wonderful if people carried a sign that announced what they were really like (“I am a jealous person”; “I am a generous person”; and so on). Unfortunately, that’s not the case in the real world. We can, if we dare, take people only at their self-evaluation, judging them on the signs that they deliberately give. But it is always best to scrutinize the signs given off, those unconscious expressions of selfhood that convey to us observers what trust we should or should not have in the expressions that others’ give us.

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*  https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2020/03/2020-time-capsule-7-i-dont-think-im-going-to-learn-much/608569/

Art, Artifice, and Real Life

One thing above all is genuinely unknowable and it is the supreme matter of fiction. That is, what is going on in anyone else’s mind? 
Laura Ashe
https://www.historytoday.com/laura-ashe/invention-fiction?mc_cid=80d53b14f5&mc_eid=c9770e1a07

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Unknowable to others because they are outside and the thoughts are inside the shell  of the other person’s head. To the outsider thinking looks like this:

or this:

or this:

Writers of fiction overcome the problem of unknowable thinking by either telling the reader what a character is thinking:

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning — fresh as if issued to children on a beach. (Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway)

or demonstrating the character thinking:

no thats no way for him has he no manners nor no refinement nor no nothing in his nature slapping us behind like that on my bottom because I didnt call him Hugh the ignoramus that doesnt know poetry from a cabbage thats what you get for not keeping them in their proper place pulling off his shoes and trousers there on the chair before me so barefaced without even asking permission and standing out that vulgar way in the half of a shirt they wear to be admired like a priest or a butcher . . . (James Joyce, Ulysses)

In the theater thinking is externalized by the playwright’s having his character speak his thoughts out loud—the soliloquy:

“Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York.” (Richard III)
“To be, or not to be: that is the question . . .” (Hamlet)

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Art is a wonder. These “artistic conventions” allow us to do what can’t be done in real life. “Here I present you the thoughts of another,” says the novelist or playwright. And the audience accepts the unnatural for the sake of enlightenment and enjoyment—but only after the conventions are learned. Young Bernard Shaw did not walk into the musical theater knowing where the singers were (and weren’t)*. Likewise, when my grandson Tomás, playing the Beast in his school’s production of Beauty and the Beast, was “killed,” his young sister, Emma, was frightened because she didn’t understand that art is sometimes better than life—because everybody takes the curtain call; nobody has been killed.**

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But if art is conventional, so is life. Consider the spectrum of human societies; how vast are the possibilities of human behavior: from cannibalism to veganism, from polygyny to polyandry or—to be mundane—driving on the left side of the road versus driving on the right. Each society uses only a small part of the spectrum. Looked at that way, one can say that “real life” is as artificially constructed as art itself. 

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“Real life” is as much of a theater as the theater itself.*** It is not only Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock who has “To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet”; what woman has never said at one time or another before leaving home that she has to put her face on? Make-up for the stage or for life—needed in preparing a theatrical character (art) or our “real life" character to face an audience. And costuming ourselves as well: swim suit for swimming, and suit for being a suit. We follow the (artificial) codes for dressing in “real life” or suffer real consequences. Is your shirt tucked in? Is your slip showing? (And why are you wearing a shirt, anyway?)

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And your actions must align with your costume. A real life Yossarian, who recognized that real bullets cause real injury, would be a disgrace to his costume (i.e., uniform) and suffer real consequences for violating the artificial norms of his society. 

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Ultimately it all comes down to the contest of the artifice of art versus the artifice of life. 

Art is a critique of the artifice of life; life is a critique of the artifice of art. 

And all is philosophical—until blood flows.

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*See the previous post, “A Night at the Opera.”

**Except in certain murder mystery novels in which the author diabolically has an actor-character done in during the course of a play. (Cf. Simon Brett and Caroline Graham)

***The vital text on this is Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.