Tina Bell
5870
Commentary 5
24 March 2009
Commentary 5
“You see how long he hesitated before answering? That’s a lie. When telling a lie, one hesitates longer before answering in order to think about the arrangement of the story.” The writers and producers of the new hit series Lie to Memust have read Erving Goffman’s article “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.” And if they did not, Goffman’s explanation of self must be so natural in our Anglos-American culture that we believe the separation between characters and performers can be determined by simply studying gestures, intonations in speech, and facial expressions. Goffman would absolutely agree.
Goffman believes that in each social situation the engaged participants create a definition. Each participant “can influence this definition by expressing himself in such a way to give them [other participants] a kind of impression that will lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with his own plan” (4). In-other-words, we try to convey an impression to others that is in our own best interests. During one episode the team of experts in Lie to Me tries to discover if the firemen of a particular company killed their fellow fireman, the team first had to discover the definition of the situation. The team’s job is to disrupt the performance and observe the consequences on the “personality, interaction, and social structure” (243). These fictional characters understand that when one member defines the situation incorrectly, the other “participants may come to feel ill at ease nonplussed, out of countenance, embarrassed, experiencing the kind of anomy that is generated when the minute social system of face-to-face interaction breaks down” (12). Although Goffman states the other participants will continue to play the game in an attempt to return to normalcy, the team from Lie to Me can always spot the performer. As humans, we often believe that we can tell the truth from a lie. Perhaps this is why this new T.V. show is so popular.
It is human nature to create judgments when in the presence of another. We “commonly seek to acquire information about him or to bring into play information about him already possessed” (1). We believe that we can determine the “character” from the “performer.” Goffman believes that “regardless of how many steps have occurred in the information game, the witness is likely to have the advantage over the actor…” (9). But, our own history proves this belief is false. Giambattista Vico states in his article, “On the Study Methods of Our Time,” that it is the job of a ruler to be seen as valid. For a government to work, its subjects must believe in the character of the leader. But as Lie to Me loves to point out, rulers are often performers. The subjects of the United States believed that President Clinton did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. The majority of the nation believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Jim Jones convinced an entire congregation to murder their children and commit suicide. These are just recent examples. Goffman is incorrect in his belief that performers are easy to spot.
Although I believe Goffman sincerely pointed out the differences in how one stages himself, the art of discovering this staging is extremely complex.
Tina, reluctantly I admit to watching that show even though it marks the end of the career for Tim Roth, one of my favorite and most underrated actors. And I agree it is the presentation of self. Another show that is along these lines is the show Dollhouse, where people are programed to play certain roles to be a certain kind of person. Many players in the show say that this makes them unhuman because they are simply characters and have no real identity. They become whatever person they are programmed to to be. Is this any different than real life? Aren’t we all programmed by society in a way?
Ned, yes we are, and Tina, to lie effectively one has to be able to do it with body language. Conmen (the best liars around generally) create a definition of the situation before they go into the situation and they know how they are going to act, and they have their stories straight. The best way to lie is to convince oneself of the truth of whatever it is that one wants to portray. That is why George W. was so good at it, by the time he had to speak about something, he truly believed it–so he was not lying, even though he was telling untruths.
The most obvious example of this sort of lie is of course various religious groups and cults (not that all religions are patently false, but that even the ones that are completely engineered with profit in mind have true believers as their spokespeople). Tina mentioned Jim Jones as a recent example, but I would guess that for many people in the program he is an old one, I was about twelve when that happened, since then we have had Waco, and those alien worshippers up in Montreal, and suicide bombers all over the place, and the Unabomber, and the list goes on.
An American philosopher of some note, Harry G. Frankfurt wrote a very interesting little book called “On Bullshit” a few years back, and I would reccomend it to anyone who is involved in teaching or research in the social sciences–which includes everyone in this class. Here is the introduction:
“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.
In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis. I shall not consider the rhetorical uses and misuses of bullshit. My aim is simply to give a rough account of what bullshit is and how it differs from what it is not–or (putting it somewhat differently) to articulate, more or less sketchily, the structure of its concept.”
He is an interesting thinker, and makes many useful points about the nature of lies truth and “bullshit” which is neither. He also wrote a follow-up book called “On Truth” that I also found most interesting, but not really as important of a work.
And the main point about bullshit is that it has no reall attachment to truth, yet it is not precisely a lie. It is using the “dramitistic perspective” to create realities, or “definitions of the situation” which are meant to accomplish certain ends.
Anyways, I strongly reccomend it.