first off, just a quick word about the 'freeness' of this blog site. who is to pay when someone reads my words and decides to commit suicide out of a final resolve that the human race is incapable of generating something that approaches 'god'? my stuff is coarse, impulsive, pretentious at times, overly serious at other times, and possessing of the potential to make someone feel down on themselves. just a thought. these posts may go on here without a price--and hell, it better be free--but they aren't without their consequences--as with anything we do.
I would like to address something that occurred quite long ago, in late november of last year, my FYP year. it was in a lecture on "the island" which was inappropriately named "The Tempest" according to the lecturer, Elizabeth Edwards. she said something that interested me at the time and which had reverberations beyond that lecture hall, immediately of course in the tutorial room with beautiful Jeanette Vusich. it was a shot at actors. In one of her characteristically semi-relevant rants, an effusion in the vocabulary of Brandes, she said "acting--what is it? it's pretending to be someone else" then she shook her head, looking hilariously despondent at the lecturn, and said "I don't know how you guys do it".
It was in the second half of the lecture, so not many people were sharp. Usually when someone made a controversial comment in that room--whether it be the person paid to talk that day or someone from the audience (which happened painfully infrequently, we were a well-disciplined bunch that year, until Beth Mcneill ripped off the brim that was lying low on conformity's face with her great "that's what she said" remark that had prince hall buzzing for days)...ahh, finally to the end of the interjection--you could feel the audience's reaction, their (our) groan or mighty heave of laughter.
Well what Edwards said was not apparently that controversial given the audience response, which was strange because King's is practically an acting academy. Maybe that drama teacher from Central, Mrs. McMillan, had them at the grand that day, who knows. I found it to be controversial enough that 18 months later I recalled it here. Maybe controversial is not the right word, or the right approach to take when looking at this claim.
Because what is at stake here is more than a whimsical opinion about theatre, a medium which demands that its participants, those on stage, forget themselves, and become, for a short while, someone else. A similar assumption of role occurs in writing, though there the level of imitation is lower--the writer still remains himself to a great extent, perhaps even anonymous depending on who you ask. From Edwards' apparent disgust at the actor's strange, almost perverse assuming of another persona on the stage, we are given to assume that her persona stays roughly the same at all times--for herself and for others. Where actors have no problem disposing of their identities and becoming whomever they choose, Edwards does.
Is what we have here a version of Arendtian hypocrisy, a vice Arendt calls "rotten to the core"? Denying the fact that we assume roles when we appear in the public space, a place where everybody is on 'equal footing', does not at first seem to be an instance of hypocrisy (as we usually understand the term). I usually think of hypocrisy as committing an act that one has already denounced, such as throwing out a plastic bottle after condemning people who do the same, and after claiming to recycle everything that can be recycled. Having just searched hypocrisy on Google, I now have a better idea of what Arendt means. The word falseness jumped out in a few of the page results. Is one false when one thinks that he does not put on a mask, rather he approaches people the same as he approaches himself (firstly!!) and his family?
Arendt, in my limited exposure to her writings, seems to have political motivations when she condemns hypocrisy, her version of it. That is, she thinks it too great a risk for political man to go around, thinking there are no barriers between how he is in private, when he is alone or with loved ones, versus when he is outside, visible to everyone. What are the political risks this man, and this lecturer, run? why is it so important to know, to know, that one puts on a mask in the public sphere, and that in private life he takes it off? Do we lose the crucial 'equal footingness" that we must have in order to sustain a polis? a polity? a healthy place for people to come and talk about things that are of importance to all of them? a common ground? I'd love a german word here. these are questions.
One's Public identity
the falseness of this public identity
the cultivation/preservation of this public identity
the political necessity of this public identity
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