Audience is everything. They teach us that in our esteemed j-school,
and
it’s something that we struggle with when trying to figure out what
kind of
stories to write, what topics to address, and how much background info
to
put into stories.
This forum has an unknown and potentially dangerous — or maybe I mean
potentially conflicting — audience. To my staff, the community,
far-flung
friends and potential employers I have, I imagine different voices,
different tones and different messages.
Maybe that’s a warning sign for y’all to begin with. How many masks do
I
wear? Am I ever genuine?
I would argue that the two things — masks and authenticity — really
have
little to do with each other. (And that sentence is the first sign that
no
matter which audience you fall into, you are getting bored with this
blog
entry. I’m a philosophy major. Stop reading now.) Everyone wears masks
for
their roles in life. Some people — I would argue most people — do it
unconsciously, or at least with only a little notice to the effect
they’re
having through their speech, manner, dress and actions.
Masks are a necessary part of navigating the interwoven set of
competing
languages and contextualized semiotics that makes up our modern
culture.
You simply cannot be one thing to all people with only one set of
jargon,
references and knowledge on which to rely.
People are too fragmented; the culture has become a strange redundancy
of
reused jokes, self-referential nonsense and amazing buildups for only
small
payoff in actual meaning. Hollywood movies are a great example. The
thematic meaning of almost every studio picture in the past 10 years
can be
summed up in about six words:
Greed leads to excess and downfall.
Betrayal’s payoff is pain and retribution.
Heroes avenge murder of the “innocent.”
Etc., etc., etc. Snore, snore, snore.
The death of thematic meaning in our cultural literature got replaced
at
some point (after the Dada and surrealist movements began the bloody
killing and then the Pop Art phase tried to end it entirely) — perhaps
in
the late ’60s and early ’70s, after the cultural revolution had upended
the
authority of standard thematic arcs and tropes — with an almost
entirely
self-referencing basis for meaning, which bleeds history and humanity
out
and leaves in only a systematic reinforcement of the dominant paradigm
of
corporate economic republicanism as the ultimate answer and expression
of
human social organization.
(And with that sentence — yes, it was only one sentence, albeit with a
parenthetical — the full boredom has set in. I warned you, so
seriously,
stop reading now. I’m not just a blowhard; I actually like to think
about
these things in an intellectual manner AS entertainment, so “if you
stays
on this ride, you gets what you pays for.”)
As a result of the end of meaning, groups began to form to build their
own
meaning, almost in a tribal way, from the cultural debris. Over time,
these
groups have developed more and more of their own unique knowledge
(“knowledge” here being defined as a shared understanding of certain
sets
of experiences-as-truths), and the way one expresses himself or herself
culturally determines who understands that expression and what they
understand the expression to be.
So being at least a rudimentary cultural chameleon is now required for
any
degree of social success, but luckily, college prepares us in some
small
way for such nuances. Moving from one class to another throughout the
day
— and the specialized sets of knowledge we encounter and must
manipulate
therein — requires some of the same skills as does moving through the
social world.
And given that we know success requires multiple expressions of the
same
meaning based on audience, then how can any one of these expressions
not be
called authentic? Am I somehow less ME (am I not having real feelings
and
real beliefs, or am I not really expressing myself?) with one group
than
with another? It makes one wonder: Am I ever the real me? Or how could
I
NOT be the real me always, just in different shades?
Some of my friends tell me that I actually wear fewer masks than many
people they know or interact with on a regular basis. Maybe they just
notice the masks less in me, or maybe it’s that instead of changing
masks
constantly, I simply have modified my main mask to include some small
pieces of recognition for everyone. A little bit of film references
here,
some political joking here, a mention of fashion or TV or a popular
book —
and everyone feels served, no one is condescended to and no one feels
bored. (At least, that’s how a multipurpose social chameleon mask would
work in theory; it’s an open question whether I do that or, if I do it,
if
I’m very good at it.)
Maybe I just think I wear a lot of masks because I’m highly attuned to
them. I think a lot about my own outlook on the world, my basic
political,
social, moral, ethical and spiritual beliefs, and I think a lot about
how I
enact them in my daily life. Every compromise of my beliefs bears
psychic
weight, and I notice and struggle to reconcile it.
(With that I’m reminded, tangentially enough, of my favorite Stockard
Channing film, “Six Degrees of Separation,” and the final moments of
the
movie, when it has become clear that she and her husband, played by
Donald
Sutherland, are living with very different modes of operation in the
world:
“Can you account for everything in your life?” she asks. “No,” he says
emphatically. “We are a terrible match,” she says, and strides
confidently
away into the rest of her life.)
But I think the compromises I make are good, at their essence, because
they
fit in with my basic overriding principle of the constitutive nature of
reality: We are all creating and re-creating the world as we see fit —
in
our image, the way we want it — everyday, consciously or not, and
these
visions clash and compete and accommodate each other to form the fabric
of
material reality that we experience.
It’s OK to make some compromises, because through them I’m allowing
others
the freedom of their will, of their world, of their vision. And that
isn’t
actually a compromise of my basic principles at all — it’s a
requirement
of them.
(So now I’ve gotten to the end of where I thought I was going. And for
anyone who has stuck around this long, there is a proper conclusion, a
payoff that completes the arc and allows a meta-story to be made of my
analytic approach to how I operate in the world.)
Navigating the complexity of masks, authenticity and audience are
essentially what I do every day at the Emerald. Yes, the details of
story
ideas, missplaced commas, inaccurate photo captions and staff
management
are floating around in my mind somewhere during the day, but the
juggling
act of using different masks for different effects on different people,
while being authentic and staying true to my vision of journalism and
my
dreams for the newspaper, while also considering the audience, both in
front of me and out in the community, is the basis of my job as editor
in
chief.
Given that, it seemed an appropriate topic for my introductory blog
entry.
As always and ever, let me know what you think; I’m always eager to
tease
out
meaning and explanation for anything I do.