Erving Goffman's Theories

Erving Goffman is a contemporary theorist whose work on understanding society through ‘Stage’, explains human behavior within different societal settings. Stage is a metaphor used to describe the self, which is defined as an individual’s performance that is created according to a specific impression or situation that is occuring. Presenting an image of oneself is necessary to establish social order, by manipulating the perceptions of other people on how we want them to see us and can become very conflicting. According to Goffman, we conflict ourselves when we constantly want to play a role to appear ‘normal’—he calls this passing. Passing disguises the stigmas that a person has, as a way to avoid the shame we feel about our imperfections. The …show more content…
The identity an individual expresses is a manipulation of how they want to appear by their own personal satisfaction(s). Usually when we meet someone new, we want to give a good impression of our self so we end up faceting an image to the person we are trying to impress as a way to please society as well as us. However, this all depends on the situations that are occurring when giving face—a positive social value that we claim when expressing an identity that we choose to portray under the way we perceive a situation (Allan, 2014). According to Goffman (1956), when a person is performing a part (an identity) they expect their audience to believe the character they are playing are the actual attributes that they possess is actually who they are. When Dexter gives face towards his family and co-workers, he is performing a self that he made up to avoid his identity (serial killer) from being discovered, as a way of making them believe that he is a good father, husband, brother and employee to meet or keep up with society’s standards. The front Dexter presents is that of a ‘family man’ and a Blood Splatter Specialist for the police department, to give an impression that he is ‘normal’ and has nothing to hide. In “Remains to be Seen”, Dexter manipulates the perceptions of others about himself when (1) he tells his wife that the doctor said he was okay to go back to work, (2) he also explains that he doesn’t like hospitals since they gave him the “creeps”, to justify why he looked so sick/pale and wanted to leave immediately—but in reality the doctor told him he needed to rest and take care of his concussion, including that Dexter wanted to find the body he misplaced before anyone else does. Again, after his wife Rita finds out that the car accident wasn’t a “fender bender” like he had