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Masks and Meanings
| Article
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11623 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1986 |
5,409 Words |
| Author
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Olivia Vlahos
Olivia Vlahos is professor of social and behavioral sciences
at Norwalk Community College, Norwalk, Connecticut, and the
author of, among other books, the widely acclaimed African
Beginnings and New World Beginnings. Reprinted by permission,
this article originally appeared as a chapter, "Saving Face,"
in her book Body: The Ultimate Symbol (J.B.Lippincott Company,
1979). |
Every day of our lives the masks go off and on, donned, discarded, exchanged, as we move from obligation to obligation and from friend to friend. Never mind that the masks are invisible, being the facial expressions, the stances, the vocabulary, attitudes, even the tone of voice appropriate to each position, each condition of life. We wear them all the same.
"Good morning, Dr. Cureall," we say, pleating our faces into the proper "patient" folds while he assumes his professional mien, purring confidence and concern.
"Two hours of preparation should precede each class meeting. That is the rule of thumb," lectures the professor, radiating stern righteousness for erring student, suitably downcast.
Parent-child, lover-lover, husband-wife, boss-secretary, foreman-laborer: our days are studded with such mini-dramas, their dialogue long since learned by heart. The oft-repeated exhortation "Why can't you be yourself?" was and is the theme song of adolescence. But who knows, who ever knew, exactly what that was?
We can hardly think of ourselves as beings separate from our social identities. For whatever is uniquely ours - personality, inner-self is inevitably shaped by the parts we play, by the invisible masks. The very word for "person" derives from persona, the Latin word for mask, and through it to the Greek prosopon, which is both mask and face. As Shakespeare wrote:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
Of the changing nature of role and of the mask, none knows better than the actor who performs not merely the varied scripts of his own life-drama but those of other men as well. It has been said that Sir Laurence Olivier, the great English actor, achieved his sensitive characterizations from the outside in, from mask to soul. His Mahdi in the film Khartoum, for example, came by way of dark-painted skin and red mouth, by way of stance consciously assumed, by the stride of legs enveloped in long robes, by the tense gestures of the religious zealot, by exotically accented English. These shaped the Patten of thought, directed the actor's search for motivation and the inner
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