Is Goffman's treatment of this and other social occasions revealing, or
disrespectful? http://profptj.blogspot.com/
---Goffman knows his stuff. For the family and the close friends of the loved one.... this play is real. But for everyone else at a funeral, this event is just a highly emotional play.
Players in this play dress in coustume- in this case black tends to be the norm. They drive in the car laughing and giggling, listen to the car radio and consider how terrible "Sally" (the wife of the deceased) must feel. They feel bad, but sad? Once they get out of the car and as Goffman describes it; their setting changes- "A setting tends to stay put, geographically speak, so that those who would use a paticular setting.... cannot do so until they have brought themselves to the scene." (Goffman 22). The main act begins.
The players fronts now change, eye contact tends to be avoided, faces fill with sorrow, and sadness looms in the air.
This narration is so well rehearsed that as Goffman describes even the hearse driver knows his role and knows he must act somber - he has no connection to this person, and atleast to me... he has no reason to be sad for this death more then any other death he reads about in the newspaper.
I attended one funeral when I was with the fire department at age 17. I went because a member's child had died. I remember the ride in the fire truck vividly. The men cursed at each other, joked about who was doing what job when it came time to clean up and laughed the whole way. But the second that firetruck came to rest, the men were as somber as can be.
Goffman's anylsis is perfect. Funerals are just one more type of social event that are played and acted out.
It migh be upsetting that even a funeral is an act in life, but.... The Truth is- All the world is a stage- even a funeral.
See song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXI6zIOvKS4&feature=related (number one... time is running out by apollo 4400)
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