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.