All these "stages" are making my head spin.
According to Goffman, we're all a bunch of liars, who act out our daily interactions and hide our actual selves behind a smoke screen of fake smiles and misleading gestures. We haven't spoken a word of truth from the moment we learned how to speak.
Okay, so its a bit dramatic when you put it like that.
Some of the points stand, though. We're all actors when it comes to social interACTion, (see what I did?) and we play differing roles depending on the context and surroundings we're confronted with.
This leads us to split ourselves between two different stages, very similar to the idea of the "me" and the "I" in Representation of the Self. The backstage is where the puppetmaster resides, what may be seen as our true self pulling the strings of mediation and restriction to control the dummy which dances about on the front stage, being judged by all those who come in contact with it; attempting to uphold social conventions, and be accepted within the social norm.
It's important for us, as individuals, to be accepted in society. We like to have a culture we can relate ourselves to. Many see the idea of conformity as a negative in today's society, something that plagues individuals and forces them to meet the expectations of those around them- and I'm one to agree with (conform to) this point of view, there comes a point where we can conform too much, but Goffman's idea of the front/back stage, and our lives as performers is one that has been around for centuries. It's by no means a new idea, nor is it one that implies that the way we live our lives is wrong. The way I see it, this reading was merely an observation.
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