and fan is a symbiotic relationship, fulfilling mutual needs and offering benefits to both. It builds on a deep and fundamental aspect of everyday interaction between people: when we engage with others, especially in public, it is a performance. We don’t often think of our interactions this way, as we like to think of ourselves as genuine, as not faking it or putting on a role. But in each culture there are rules about how to perform—in the classroom, at work, in a restaurant, even bumping into a friend on the street—that we learn in unspoken ways starting in childhood. And since most of us want to be liked, to be thought of as an admirable and attractive person, we try to conform to these rules and not violate them.
These rules form the foundation, the building blocks, of successful celebrity. So to understand what makes some stars admirable and others not, what makes some seem genuine and others fake and manufactured, we need to first review how performance in everyday life affects who we like, respect, even love, and who we don’t.
We all know that feeling of sitting in a restaurant or bar, say, and the person at the next table is talking too loud, bragging, acting like a know-it-all, and being obnoxious to the wait staff: we think right away, “what a jerk” (or something more unprintable). The person has transgressed the taken-for-granted mode of performance we have come to see as acceptable; the impression he gives off undermines the impression he is seeking to give. Anyone who has worked in retail, or a restaurant, knows there are often very specific rules about how to perform—what to say, how to say it—with the customers. Even walking across, say a campus, there are different modes of greeting for those you know only slightly versus those with whom you are very close, and if you mix them up, your performance seems odd.
So like us, but even more so, stars and their handlers need to devise and preserve a public persona that seems authentic and likeable. The increasing emphasis in our media-saturated culture and digital environments for all of us to craft effective, convincing performances, while stars seek to seem genuine and not manufactured, has led scholars analyzing celebrity culture to turn to the groundbreaking work of the sociologist Erving Goffman in his 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.5 Unpacking and revealing these often unspoken yet precise rules of how we present ourselves to others was at the core of his book. Goffman examined the sociology of how people present themselves, and the nature of interpersonal interaction and influence.6 This work has become foundational to our understanding of celebrity performance and culture.
To conduct his study, Goffman traveled to a most unlikely research locale, the remote Shetland Islands off the northeast coast of Scotland, and observed, often in minute detail, the face-to-face interactions of the people there. His major insight was to view human interactions in theatrical terms, through a dramaturgical lens, noting how all people must perform in everyday life, to present a convincing, idealized image of ourselves. People can either perform their identity sincerely or with cynicism (not truly meaning what we say), or flip back and forth between the two. And a person tends to “conceal or underplay those activities, facts, and motives which are incompatible with an idealized version of [self].”7
In one example, Goffman describes someone walking up to a friend’s house for a visit. Approaching the house, the person may be expressionless or even scowling, lost in thought. But as soon as she knocks on the door and hears the friend approaching, she will put on a big smile and become animated as she attempts to control the impression she is making. Of course, the person answering the door now must perform as well, as the two participate in what Goffman called the “definition of the situation,” the agreed upon roles they should each play given the nature of the interaction. Each one is an actor, even though they are friends, each managing the impression they give.
Various crucial rules operate in most interactions—meetings, dinner parties, job interviews. Goffman noted that there is the impression that we give (the one we seek to control) and the impression we give off (the one we might not control so well), and they might be quite different. Some of the worst things that can happen during an interaction are what Goffman called unintended, ungovernable acts, behaviors that can disrupt our performance and that we must control, like yawning, rolling our eyes, looking past the person you’re talking to (to someone else) at a party or conference, burping, sweating, or having your voice crack. We can’t lose muscular or facial control, or belch, trip, stutter, appear nervous, gulp, forget what we were saying, or, god forbid, fart. These can be especially disastrous for celebrities. Actors “lose face” when they fail to perform their roles in a way that meets social expectations.
Thus, the “front stage” self, the version of our identity that we perform for others and allow people to see, may conceal the work that we do “back stage,” behind the scenes, in order to maintain the version of self that we present to the world. This is true for private individuals, but especially salient for public persons, who may perform cynically, not meaning what they say or concealing certain facts in order to enhance their status, present a glorified version of self, or win admiration or sympathy. We are often especially suspicious of these “front stage” presentations of politicians.
Because we know that most people—and especially those in the public eye—seek to present themselves in the most favorable light, we often “use what are considered to be the ungovernable aspects” of a person’s expressive behavior “as a check upon the validity of what is conveyed by the governable aspects.”8 If a candidate for a job expresses enthusiasm for the position but then yawns during the interview, the ungovernable act will betray what the candidate is trying to convey. It is these unguarded actions or gestures, as opposed to the performance the person presents, that we feel are the true indices of what a person is really like.
We—and the paparazzi, gossip magazines, and bloggers—use similar observational strategies when watching celebrities to determine how genuine and likeable they are. In interviews, do their facial expressions, body language, and gestures match what they are saying? When they are out in public, can they be caught doing something they have failed to control or govern, something that suggests their public image is a lie? Hugh Grant, the charming, clean-cut, British boy-next-door actor who had shot to fame for his performance as a diffident and lovelorn patrician in Four Weddings and a Funeral, had his image seriously tarnished when, in 1995, he was caught in his car having sex with a prostitute: the opposite of clean cut. “When we discover that someone with whom we have dealings is an impostor and out-and-out fraud,” Goffman observed, “we are discovering that he did not have the right to play the part he played, that he was not an accredited incumbent of the relevant status.”9 It’s these unintentional moments, the impressions we give off, as opposed to the impression we deliberately seek to give, that seem to convey the true essence of who the person is.
Because we are performers and have to cultivate dramaturgical skill, we have what Goffman famously identified as a front region or front stage and a back region or back stage. These are often marked by physical and aural boundaries and blockades between us and our audience: the back stage of a kitchen in a restaurant versus the front stage of the dining area, for example. In the front region, we need to appear to believe in the part we’re playing, to appear sincere, and the setting, our appearance, and manner should all cohere. In a classroom, for example, the successful professor will appear to be enthusiastic about her topic, dedicated to student learning and in command of the class. She should also be dressed like “a professor” and not, say, like a nightclub performer. But students have to inhabit a front stage here too: whether they like the class or not, the successful students will take notes, appear respectful, not talk to others, text throughout the lecture, or fall asleep in class. The front must have “dramatic realization” and should display what Goffman called “sacred compatibility”: that there are ideal motives for acquiring the role we inhabit. The teacher does so because he loves to teach, the doctor chose her profession because she wants to save lives, or the actor chose her profession because she has loved acting since the age of three, for example. We as performers in life must constantly adjust to new settings—the workplace, a friend’s party, an interview—and modulate our performances accordingly to remain liked and even admired.
These regions
