Erving Goffman's Dramaturgy Analysis

It is no wonder why many people struggle with self-image issues, when we live in a world where we are continuously faced with images of how we should look, act and feel. In addition, anyone can struggle with self-image issues. Often time’s women are most vulnerable to the pressures in society to be a certain clothing size, have a certain personal style and seemingly having un-lady like mannerisms. The media plays a huge role in giving attention to self-image and now social media networks instant streaming connections all over the world allow many to conceive a right, good or perfect image we should all try to live up to in order to be accepted by society. We all have multiple personas and aspects of our personalities we use to survive …show more content…
Through dramaturgy a sociological perspective Sociologist Erving Goffman developed, which starts from symbolic interactionism. Goffman argues when we are born, we become actors in a play called life. The dramaturgy analysis is the idea that people 's day-to-day lives can be understood as resembling performers in action on a theater stage through social …show more content…
Our identity (self) performs roles and as we present ourselves in various situations, our performance are either performed on what Goffman refers to as the front and back stages. Our front stage performances is visible for everyone to see, but our backstage performances are the ones unseen. The dramaturgical approach makes us realize how when we act, we worry about our “audience” and how they will judge our performance to see if we will make a mistake, which in turn will allow them to see what we are like behind closed doors. Furthermore, like any good theater productions there are directors who tell the actors what to do and how to do it, under the dramaturgy theory this is how this entity create and maintain social control. It is sometimes fortunate as the actors, that the roles we have and participate in our everyday life, we can