I’ve spoken before about dramaturgy and the fact that we represent ourselves the way we want to be seen. I mentioned the NFL owners and unions who wanted to make sure that the other person is seen as the bad guy. But what about players? What kind of impression management do they participate in? Masculinity seems to be a big one. I was surprised by the number of stories that came out, one after another, about players not seeming tough or hard or participating in some kind of behavior that is deemed not manly enough. But there are other things. What about Jay Cutler not seeming upset when he couldn’t get back into the game? Or all the times announcers say that they can tell when the team or players aren’t into it? The most recent example was last night’s game. I heard on the radio that some people felt that LeBron’s pregame speech was faked, that he was playing to the cameras. Is this something else that athletes have to do? Do they have to take each game as life and death because we fans see it that way and we want to know that they do too? And when they don’t, when they seem tired or don’t play as we expected, do we decide that they don’t take the game seriously and will therefore not have success? I wonder if this encourages them to pretend and play their role so they audience will come to their games and buy their jerseys. And if it doesn’t, why not?
Tiger Trials
The M
asters this weekend seemed to bring up a lot people’s feelings about Tiger Woods. His up and down play ended up in discussions on many a sports radio show about whether people were rooting for him or rooting against him. I recall one radio personality saying that since so many golfers have extra-marital affairs, why should Tiger be the person who is not forgiven. There are a couple of potential reasons for this. First, there is the racial aspect. Is it easier to forgive someone who is more like you? Who you can relate to? Assuming that most golf fans are not African Americans (or that the African Americans who do watch golf are more likely to forgive Tiger), those who cannot let him back in to their fandoms may have done so because of that difference.
For others, it may be the persona he created and the long fall from that to where he ended up. What we saw, in viewing Tiger’s “front stage”, was this perfect icon. Unfortunately, his “back” and “off stage” were less forgiving. He did such a good job at impression management that his acts shocked us so much more than anyone whose back stage we had seen peaks of over the course of their careers.
Finally, it is the idea of deviance in general. Deviance is not absolute. Every society defines what is deviant through the lens of the culture of that society. There are several factors which define deviance and separate Tiger, to some extent, from people who have done similar deviant things. To begin with, there is the degree. Cheating on your wife with one woman is a particular level of deviance, cheating on your wife with 10, 11 or 12 women is another level of deviance, juggling many of those mistresses at the same time is still another level. Similarly, the size and the power of the group deciding what is deviant is important. While much of the population (and apparently many golfers) may have had dalliances, the fact that we think of Tiger’s many indiscretions to be representative of a minority of people, and, despite his fame, coming from a member of a minority population, what he does becomes deviant because it is different from what the power majority do. Finally, we often think of deviance as part of a socially patterned process. Someone who cheats once and crashes their car has committed a deviant act (or two) but is not necessarily a deviant. Someone who shows us that cheating is a pattern, an insanely complex pattern, makes us see him as a deviant.
So, that makes him different, and for many, more difficult to forgive. Not being much of a golf fan myself, I cheer for him because I’m tired of the story and I just want golf to go back to normal and stop interrupting my other sports stories.
All the Field is a Stage…
For months, we’ve been waiting for the shoe to drop on the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement. Each side has been trying to get us to believe that they are the good guys–they are each practicing impression management.
Erving Goffman tells us that in every interaction we are playing a role. We have a particular audience, a costume, props and a script and we play that role in order to have control over the way that others see us. This is what the NFL owners and the NFL PA have been doing for months. They both want to wear the cape of the hero and place the mustache and evil monocle on their opponent. Every piece of information that is shared or “leaked” allows us to complete the impression of these groups.
When we hear the representatives of the NFLPA tell us of the lack of long term health insurance, the possible injuries as a result of the shorter preseason and longer regular season, and the injustices of changing the profit sharing, the owners become monopoly men, maniacally tapping their fingers on the edges of their over-sized desks.
Goodell promises that he will work for $1 if there is a work stoppage and he becomes a sacrificial lamb. The owners tell us how they are being bled dry and how the NFL PA are presenting “illustrations” instead of “proposals.”
Someone has got to be the hero and someone has to be the villain. Which group is doing the best job of managing your impression of them?