September Blog Post

A concept that we talked about in class this month that interested me is the idea of a stage metaphor. The concept of your front and back stage self, or your hidden and presenting self is a concept that really made me think about the application. I really enjoyed when Professor Ivey said that one is not wrong because you are the show in its entirety, even if you have both of those identities. I believe it is vital to not only understand this concept, but also apply this to your current life to reflect on who you allow to see which identity.

            I can apply this to my life because I have few people that I allow see my back stage self, allowing most people to see my front stage or presenting identity. I believe this can also relate to the idea of performance which is how we perform our identity on a day to day basis. Personally I believe how I perform my identity depends on what is salient at the time. I believe first and foremost I perform as a student at Boise State in order to show that main side of my identity in class, but when I am outside of class being a supportive friend, family member, and significant other is what I want to perform. Another term we discussed that relates to the situation of my performance is Fiske’s idea of ideological claw back which means people who police norms by bringing you back to the norms when you see alternate ways. I believe I can relate to this when I am in class because my student performance is what is most salient, but at times I make a connection or friend in the classroom which makes me want to perform my friendly identity. Although I want to do this during a small group discussion, there is normally an individual who is not open to sharing or connecting besides being similar as the student identity which feels as though they are pulling me back to that norm.

            Another place where I see an example of performance and the ideological claw back is in the realm of social media. I believe that people perform their identity in a particular way on social media for people to only view their presenting self, and very rarely their hidden self because they only want their audience to see the “best” sides. I have also seen social media as an ideological claw back because it enforces many norms. For example, some of the most famous people on the Instagram platform are beautiful men and women, who have created this success from social media itself. Many individuals begin to believe that they too can become “Instagram famous”, but when they try the claw back of society comes back to show that being “Instagram famous” is not a norm in our society. The people who police this norms are ones who choose to judge individuals by their looks or lifestyle to see if they are worthy, when there really should never be a place where you have to be worthy of anything in my opinion. Overall I believe performance is a concept that is very applicable and instilled in our society, which can be viewed as both a negative and positive thing.