All the World's a Stage (SumBlog9)

William Shakespeare penned the famous phrase "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players..." Sociologist Erving Goffman would agree with to an extent, but he would expand it. We're always performing. Each new situation brings on a new performance. Goffman believed that everyone has numerous statuses that they fulfill, or different positions in society. Each status has an accompanying role, or expected set of behavior. These statuses and roles are socially constructed, meaning that people are creating them and imposing them on one another. We all have a self-label, or an identity that we wish to present to others around us. We desire others to see the way that we present ourselves as positive, and not the negatives. However, sometimes what we present and what is reality are not the same. Statuses and roles do not necessarily always match up. Since we all have so many, sometimes they conflict and we're not sure how to act.

 If a status and a role do not match up, we often feel conflicted about it. It feels uncomfortable, awkward, or strange. We expect certain things from people, and when they step outside of that, something feels amiss. Often, when we see someone in a context that we don't expect them to be, you might not even recognize them. I remember when I was a kid, I thought that my teachers lived at school. I could only visualize them as a teacher, and not in any other role. It was a bizarre experience to see a teacher in another role besides teacher. 

This video clip from Mean Girls displays this. The three kids in the video aren't sure how to react when they see their teacher outside of school. The role that they see her in as teacher is breached and they're not sure how to react. They are visibly uncomfortable and aren't sure what to say to her. It is easy to see Goffman's work in everyday life, even to something as simple as Mean Girls.