This may come as a surprise to some of you, but as of late I find myself strangely fascinated by Lady Gaga. I'm ambivalent about her music, and think she's rather full of herself, but I can't deny that she's made pop stars interesting again. For the sake of fairness and expressing an open mind, I listened to her most recent album and found that all of the songs featuring her "be yourself" message and heavy on bombastic self-empowerment were the worst songs on the album. It got me thinking.
Who we are is not the person we project to every person. You are not the same person to your mother that you are to your lover. You are not the same person to your boss that you are to your dog. There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself. The Japanese built their whole culture and society around the idea that there is reality as you perceive it and as how everyone else filters it. They even have unique words for this: honne and tatamae respectively. Neither one is inherently more true than the other, they're just two sides of the same coin.
Somewhere along the way, I began to see how these two concepts relate to one another. Some magicians are not in this to become working pros. It's just something they like to do. And that's fine, but there's still an interesting thing happening. Magician You and Regular You are not the same person. I consider myself an actor as magicians go. I portray a character. But I accept that reality. There are people I've seen who say they just want to be themselves, but around a pretty girl or as soon as you put a deck of cards in their hands, they start acting like a completely different person. It's weird. And more often than not, this other persona comes across as a bit uncanny. It doesn't feel like a person. Just the shadow of a person.
What do I think is happening? An unnecessary clash of honne and tatamae. These people are a lot like Lady Gaga who has actually fought to avoid being photographed out of her makeup and costumes. There is the reality that you perceive, your honne, and it is conflicting with the rest of the world's tatamae because you are trying to become more like the tatamae.
This is just a theory of course. I'm not an actual psychologist or sociologist. But ask yourself: Is the way I'm acting now a part of how a perceive myself? Or am I hiding parts of myself behind a different facade to avoid any negative social happenstances?
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From my experience I've always seen Tatemae as a theory of "do whatever is necessary to keep the peace and upset no one" Your description of tatemae is however not incorrect. I agree with that concept as well, it is most likely the same thing, just on a larger concept scale.
ReplyDeleteAbout a 2 years ago I used to think that I was just "me" when I was performing. Then I watched one of my performances and realized that (as you said) I am a different person. It was an enhancement of myself. Embellishing the attributes that find useful in a performer and diminishing points that would distract from the show.
At this point I came to the same conclusion you have. It was then that I was able to really focus on my character development and create a second reality (during performing) for myself.
I would say I'm not hiding to avoid things, but instead to create a better experience in the minds of my spectators.
You've made an important distinction, Brandon. You have consciously set about crafting a stage persona that communicates specific things to an audience.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, people tend to do this without noticing. You had the advantage that you acted like a magnifying glass was taken to your best qualities. More people though end up as some sort of caricature, a hodgepodge of indistinct personality traits trying to be as inoffensive as possible for fear of every "what if" the brain can cook up.