Nishanta Ghatak
M. Phil Research Scholar in Gender Studies, Vidyasagar University
Abstract
Mask has always been a perennial motif, since, going by the historic-socio-politico-mythological tradition, it is subtly but intricately embedded in any country’s culture, daily life, multifarious literary repertoires; providing a gullible innocence before the hypocritical guises and camouflaged farces, in a sublime, aesthetic and culturally serviceable way. Rooted in Latin, Arabic and French language in different conundrums, the word ‘mask’ denotes something used as a false or dark face; subjected to ridicule, coveted buffoonery, critical and satirical of socio-political conventions in theatres, masses and carnivalesque1, and, sometimes simply as an idolatry ornamental accessory following the divine and folkloric hierarchical intervention. In India, mask is commonly taken as a symbol of its cultural and ethnographical diversities, ecological and linguistic differences, perennial prop to several dance forms, religious and ceremonial rituals; it is perceived in shapes, colours, purposes, different, across the states and communities, though currently changing in dimension at the invent of digital culture.Mask, in any form (for this paper, it will be chiefly referred to avatar, associal media puts it in referring to profile pictures, dominant and popular images circulated as memes and other graphic incarnations; dominos or vizards used in protests, political and religious rallies and meetings etc.) being an integral and widely accepted perk of popular mass culture, thus, insinuates a dilemma, duplicity and gullibility, in short, an indecisiveness about one’s identity, appearance, individuality etc., and blurs the ceiling between public and private, personal and collective; which is further propelled by the virtu-(re)al presence in digital media and cyberspace. As the concept of space is intricately related with identity formation, today’s social media successfully masks this authenticity of origin, and hence, disrupts the changelessness and continuity about the romance of identity, which has been perceived earlier by the hermeneutics of empiricism. The cyberspace identity is a veil of the real; being already altered, it thrives through the disruptive, disjointed, broken images of information; where the very source of signifying knowledge, itself gets lost in the meaning making process. These duped identities, masking of the traceable centre, thus, create an uncontrolled chaos in forming propaganda and manipulating the mass-mobilization; leading to a huge and violent impact in collective psyche, which ensures the prevalence of the hegemony in popular culture, society and politics through its performativity. Therefore, the way of unmasking here, is to deconstruct and then counter this remaking of identity, whether it’s true or false, pertinent or erroneous?
Keywords: Masked identity, social media, Cyberspace, Popular culture.
Introduction
The socio-cultural-linguistic usage of the word ‘mask’ had been started from c.1530, having its roots in several language groups across the world. The acculturation of mask in several literary, cultural and other social incarnations is not new; and, down the line of history, its traditional assimilation in several state-cultures with various variations is equally fascinating. The French masque or Italian maschera, have almost a similar and plainly hint to a face covering, to be in disguise or to hide or conceal something; while its Latin counterpart maskalludes to something spectre and nightmarish; hard to be sustained off. The Arabian tracing of the word: maskharah, meaning ‘buffoon or mockery’or some provincial region-specific term mascarer, meaning ‘black thy face to be concealed’; has a much closer affinity in meaning to its contemporary employment and consummation. The word, finally arrives at its present underpinnings approximately during the 1570’s, while England and other Renaissance Europe had been thoroughly experimental with theatres, drama and public performance in a much more organised and monetized way; rather than its previous existence in mediaeval plays of religion, morality, mass and adventure during different Christian festivals and masses: where the performer resembling deity often used to a wear a golden-lit mask. In different rituals and also during difference performances (here, it is being assumed that the socio-cultural space of today’s hyper-reality is just a simulation of both time and space of real existence of assigned characteristic roles played by performers in ancient drama and masquerades), wearing masks normally hide fully or partially a person’s individual physical or psychological being (HeideggerianDasein2) in the Real time, and through a non-linear dynamics, it, anticipates a re-orientation of numerous sets of accepted value-system, targeted for the mass and releases the discourse from the clutch of dominant elitist framework, which, will be explored in the due course of this paper.
Mask: General History and a Worldview
It is one of the greatest challenges to anthropology to trace the origin of mask, area of its activities and association of it with human culture; but precisely, according to the available knowledge coda, its origin has been dated some 9000 years ago and is now currently preserved by Israel Museum in Jerusalem and Musee Bible Et Terre Sainte in Paris. The practice of masking each other is even older for c. 30,000-40,000 years. Being made of war-paint, vegetative materials, wood and other perishable substances; ancient mask could not be retrieved due to its impossibility of preservation. Though, the existence of such, has been supported by the discovery of Palaeolithic and Neanderthal (Roche-Cotard site in France) cave drawings.Masks generally are worn with a costume or prop, often so complete that it entirely covers the body of the wearer. Fundamentally, thisbase costume completes and complements the new identity represented by the mask, and usually, thesetting or prevalent motifs prescribe its appearance and construction to the same extent as the mask itself. The morphological elements of the mask with few exceptions are correlated with and derived from several natural forms. Masks with human features are classified as anthropomorphic and those with animal characteristics as theriomorphic.
Use of mask is not a new and revamped phenomenon, that, to be found only after the renaissance;rather, Medieval English morality plays have also witnessed the figuration of mask in the sequence of ‘The Dance of Death’3. The ancient Greeks and Romans were also equipped in using mask as a trope in their public dramas and sometimes as false artistry and jewelleries, made of different ornaments and of different shapes; the mouth of the mask being open, used to contain a megaphone to project the voice as a rant in a large open-air theatrical space. In Rome, personaused to mean ‘mask’, so, any citizen might have used mask to indicate his or her lineage, heredity and familial background; being carried even after death, this ritual thus hints that, masks used to comprise a shrine for some aristocratic and prestigious families of the country. Theatre images using mask in Greek and Roman tradition, especially during the late Roman Empire, symbolized the power of Dionysus4, a deity in whose festivity dramas were performed insinuating in the transformation of an individual from the state of reservation to one of emotion through purgation.
During the reign of Elizabeth, England in particular, witnessed several courtly masque rituals with masked participants, as a part of ballet performance; or, often as an independent nuptial celebration. Commedia Dell’arte, some of the characters from Ben Jonson’s masques, dramatis personae from Shakespearean plays have made use of masks, literally or metaphorically for the progression of the plot, and thus, have been quite popularised in mass reception. Studying the anthropological and cultural advancement of masks, it is evident that this particular symbol, though initially vacant, becomes loaded with meaning through an organized cultural signification space. During the normalization of this tradition, the altered socio-cultural identity (for wearing masks), however temporary, assumes an accepted leadership (this institutional identity adhering to the shared basic modalities of a cultural group, then, recognizes their role of assimilating and proliferating the embedded values and also developing intentions) that serves and resists this very structure, as “culture becomes more of a cause than an effect….Because culture serves an important anxiety-reducing function, members cling to it even if it becomes dysfunctional in relationship to environmental opportunities and constraints” (Schein 377).
Mask in Society, Culture and Tradition
In some instances, the mask-form is a replication of natural features or closely follows the lineaments of reality, and in other instances it is an abstraction. Masks usually represent supernatural beings, ancestors, far-fetched or imagined figures and can also be portraits. The localization of a particular spirit in a specific mask must be considered a highly significant reason for its existence. The change in identity of the wearer for that of the mask is vital, for if the spirit represented does not reside in the image of the mask, the ritual petitions, supplications, and offerings made to it would be ineffectual and meaningless. The mask, therefore, most often functions as a means of contact with various spirit powers, thereby protecting against the unknown forces of the universe by prevailing upon their potential beneficence in all matters relative to life. From ancient time, people have been curious and devoted about expressing subtle nuances of their feelings and emotions and to act those through facial expressions (abhinaya5) they invented mask for all moods; varying from enlivening sadness, laughter, anger, frustration and so on which can be found among the masks discovered from various parts of the world. Greek masks are famous for comical effect, while the Sri Lankan masks are for laughter, Korean for sadness, and a typical North-East Indian mask made of Yak skin on a bamboo where two people are supposed to portray two contrary moods of our conscience.
The power of wild animals is also a deciding motif in crafting masks. Mask, being the perfect recess of hidden human emotions, capture the fury and power of wild animals also, who are an integral part of the indigenous people. This, being the chief component of various myths and folktales, can be seen in action in areas like: mask for ‘Jangli Dance’ in Nepal, fiercely spirited animal mask in Bhutan and other parts of Himalayan terrain, ‘Lion-mask’ from Purulia, ‘Jackal-mask’ from Gambhira, mask named ‘Nypa’ and ‘Nyro’ among the North-Eastern tribal people, mask from Madhya Pradesh etc.
However, the mask remained an integral part of mankind’s’ eternal search for ‘macro and micro cosmos’ through the concept of ‘spirit’ and linkage is established between ‘seen and unseen’. The practice of sporting masks to invite spiritual powers namely ‘ancestors’ to cure an ailing, to evade ill effect of evil spirits or to bless an occasion or a newly born. Thus, invoking spirit through the mask is a continuous tradition world-wide.
Mask in Rituals, Theatres, Festivities, Literary Expressions and Popular Culture
Apart from the middle-English and renaissance culture, masks and puppetry shows were gradually gaining importance in the English literary and social scene over the years. Usage of Mask and puppets have become a common phenomenon at the turn of the 19th century, with the European avant-garde artists, artists from Bauhaus school, surrealists and Dadaists, such as: Alfred Jarry, Pablo Picasso, Oskar Schlemmer among others in their theatre and other artistic work forms. In the 20th century, theatre figures like: Meyerhold, Edward Gordon Craig, Jacques Copeau decided to move away from naturalism in actors’ appearance during performance, which, in turn makes Craig to write a monologue named, A Note on Mask (1910), where, being informed by the oriental theatre, especially the Japanese Noh theatre, he advocates for the use of mask in order to bring ritualistic manoeuvre if not religious overtone, to the modern drama. This theory later influenced a lot of modern and postmodern dramatists like Brecht, Eugene O’ Neill, Genet, Coteau, Arden, Grotowski, Brook and others. In America, this stride was slower to arrive, but the Guerrilla movement used the best of it, in the forms of San Francisco Mime Troupe and Bread and Puppet Theatre. In another form too, the tradition of mask and covetousness came alive in America and that is through dance and choreography; when Mary Wigman with her troop arrived America to flee the Nazi regime. In Europe largely, Schumann’s influence has been pivotal with other modern artists to include this in theatrical performances in troupes like IOU, Horse and Bamboo Theatre etc. Writers like Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm, Guy de Maupassant, Edgar Allan Poe, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and others.
The incorporation of mask in literary writings has many facades within itself, sometimes it is there in characterisation, often in literary tropes and often it is there as literary appearance. Walter Sorell thus justifies:
“We are puzzled by our own being, and thus preoccupied with ourselves. Our self-reflection, which we try to penetrate, understand, and love, never leaves us. This is why the mask, our attempt to formulate the image of ourself, is so fascinating to us. It is the artist in us that creates the mask. It has always been a basic desire to represent the various facets of our ego, to disguise or hide them. The world is full of masks, and we are all mask makers. It represents our desire to know who we are. Human face gives us an undeniably telling portrait of the character within. This power to communicate identity, along with thought and emotion, therefore makes the study of the face an engaging exploration for the artist”(Sorell 12).
This mystery, the uncertainty and uncanniness about one’s own identity have been making the writers fascinated with our unconscious adventures.
Robert Louis Stevenson, being inspired attempted to sketch a vivid detail of double personality in a human being in his famous novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde; being a patient to Carl Gustav Jung, he himself confessed about his two-sided dreams many a times. In poetry, Walt Whitman “Out from Behind this Mask” talks about the masked living of us on this earth and amongst us, making the transition between the exterior and interior blurred only by a veil. Amy Lowell and Paul Lawrence Dunbar in their poems “Patterns” and “We Wear the Musk” respectively, talk about our dilemma and duality as a social being, anxiety out of it in Edwardian England and Post-slavery world. Nathaniel Hawthorne in his “The Minister’s Black Veil” talks about a character Reverend Hooper, who being a minister once voluntarily decides to wear a gory mask, which shocks his parishioners along with his fiancé. This parable narrative, thus, rightly talks about the sinfulness of our conscience and the fear associated with it, and are a lesion itself to the readers. Novelists too are not far away in using mask in varied ways. Alexander Dumas in his novel Man in the Iron Mask, talks about a masked wronged twin brother, which is set in prison, and this captive brother later receives a chance to overthrow his brother from manor with the help of soldiers. The incident alludes to the myth about Louis XIV in France. Chinua Achebe in his Things Fall Apart, discusses about the cultural and ritualistic implication of mask in a community, and, in turn hints at the declining heritage of Nigerian Igbo community in the postcolonial, modern Africa.
Apart from the literary and dramatic engagements, mask is also an inseparable and recurrent machinery in forms like Dance, religious and popular cultural manifestations. Native progenies like the Red Indians and Hispanic in America, Mauro in Australia and New Zealand, Tribal communities in India, Igbo, Oruba, Swahili in Africa, Ethnic religious communities in countries like Israel, Oriental ethnic groups in countries like China, Vietnam; all have their own version of masked tradition, sometimes it has also been used in war, during protest, any upheavals or usurpation: to support or to retort.
History and Tradition of Mask in India
India, being a house of multilingual and multi-ethnocultural, topographical and linguistic variations, boasts of its rich tradition and cultural heritage along the line of history. Standing in the 21st century too, it has been successfully maintaining its diversity and recently has paved way for its conservation too. The use of mask in various spheres of social and cultural existence is not new to this country as well as it can be dated back to the Aryan civilisation. An ancient mask, ‘shield-like’, with elaborate semi-circular, ornamental and feather like head-gear with a movement-oriented figure of ancient man, had been found in Bhimbetka rock sites. From the Mohenjo-Daro excavations, also,we are being familiarised with the androgyny in mask-making and reflecting in identities.
North-East India
As the quaint and idyllic Majuli has been declared as the largest river island on earth, the mukhosh craftsman, Hemchandra Goswami, who learnt the art from his father as early as when he was ten years old,came to the limelight of national media; and his words deeply illustrates the rich tradition of masked performances on this island and North-East India, a microcosm of the entire country. Assam holds a rich Vaishnava cultural heritage and being the ground of raasleela and other religious festivals accompanied with street theatre activities like ‘bhaona’, mukhota or masks here are of many types; but mainly comprised of several mythical characters and deities from Ramayana, Mahabharata and other indigenous folk tales and lotokai-mukha (masks used to move lips and mouth).
Eastern and Northern India
West Bengal and Odisha are two predominant states in this region to carry this legacy. While both the states having the history of partition and a considerable tribal living explore the ethnicity among seasonal performances, Chau(usually takes place in Chaitra or between March and April) is one of the many. Purulia Chau of West Bengal is the symbol of Sun God worship through masks. The central theme of this dance is to depict how evil is punished based on mythological stories. This is performed especially during the Chaitra Parva festival.This festival has three traditions in its name; the West Bengal variant takes place in the districts of Purulia and Bankura, while the Odisha has its roots in the Mayurbhanj district and Jharkhand in Seraikella variant.Seraikella Chau dance of Bihar is another powerful centre of modern Mask dance. Jatra-palas in Odisha and West Bengal also allow its performers (characters from epic and local folk tales) to show-case the variety of masks, adding to its rich heritage of cultural reservoir.
Southern and Western India
The ‘Krishnattam’ the ritualistic dance-drama of Kerala is a great eye-catcher today. In Krishna temple of Guruvayoor, Kerala a cycle of eight plays tend to depict the Krishna-lore from his birth to death. This ‘Krishnattam’ is based on 17th century ‘Krishnageethi’6. The ‘Krishnattam’ troupe today belongs to the Guruvayoor temple.The sophisticated masks made of papier-Mache with awe inspiring headgear adds to the folk tune and stepping of mask dancers. The dance motifs and themes are interrelated with of myths and history covering animates and intimates as well to depict the sentiments. It is said the technique of this dance was evolved from the shield and sword dance of Pharikhanda (a martial-art based Chau dance popular in Bihar and adjacent areas).
The renowned scholar Balan Nambiar traced the ritualistic dance of Western coast of India from Gokarna to Kanyakumari. He said that that mask dances such as Patayani, Teyyam, Bhuta, Tira and Kummatti are in vogue. Amongst rural population there is a strong belief of ‘masks apparently to these souls of ancestors’ which is quite near to the African experience we have observed above.Theyyam7 and Kathakali dance in Kerala are also some of the insightful examples. Balan Nambiar said, “Mask dancers, who propitiate the spirit and in a state of trance give manifold blessings to the gathered devotees, both heal the sick and entertain the spectators. Within their context, mask-wearers are auxiliary spirits which, when aroused, lead in a trance to the world of spirits” (Ghosh and Banerjee 276).
Social Media and Masked Identity
India being a melting pot of different cultures, traditions and social hierarchies, as has been discussed earlier, also contains a vast array of identities with its multifarious presence. Selfhood in an Indian societal context by default participates at various levels of identity, performance and assigning roles. The recent advent by neo-liberal capitalism and its omnipresence in our psyche through numerous manifestations, has juxtaposed the old order of identity formation of any social performance and new order of its interpretation and acceptation among the mass media. The socio-cultural-political reality along with an ever-present virtual reality, in our country, is interactive and is never bestowed with a fixed spatial characteristic. Reactions and reciprocations on any issue be it affirmative or protestive, is accompanied by its subtle virtual presence. And this type of feedback and consumption of events in reality brings in many ontological questions and make this virtually masked presence acted as though they are real, but in totality it is merely assumptive, pre-conditioned, biased and adhered to the dominant cultural norms. The phenomenon is unlike the presence of masked identity in historical and anthropological events where the prop is used only as a metaphor and a rich resource of imageries. Thus, the continuity lies at the multiplicity of all possible identities and swiftly switching between real, Real and virtu(re)al. Along with the psychological and social complexity between the wearer and worn, Mask has now become a transcendental signifier, as James Shalleck points out, “… masks may begin as protective or decorative devices; but their psychological impact soon outweighs their practical or aesthetic considerations, and they become the badges of a calling, the tools of a trade” (54).
Identifying the Intermediate Space
So far, we have been deciphering the line of evolution of mask through the anthropological, historical and cultural domain, where, we have assumed each space containing a separate and secluded identity, which is linear, structured and not interfering to the transcendental living experiences and exchanges of different signs (as previously it has been claimed that mask is a symbol, a social one and hence is capable of generating different meanings through a signification process which is arbitrary) in a given governmentality. Following the monolithic western culture, in search of a finite signification, we have given privilege so far to history and time and thus the critical role of space in the society gets neglected.
Through the above discussion about the journey of mask across different territories, we have discovered this particular entity as a part of physical and material environment of our society which develops human consciousness through its psychological acceptance due to some socially accepted norms. This meaning making process finds its evidence in the discursive and productive space around the human body. Thus, an apparent innocent act of wearing mask only as a prop or as a part of costume becomes a fundamental instrument in exploring the opportunities of identity, consciousness, regimes of power and the corporeal importance of being in relation with different apparatus. Foucault thus claims, the relation between the space of governance (the symbolization which masks carry forward) and the person governed (both the person wearing the mask and the onlooker of it) is a transmission of personal agency to a political one. In terms of Pierre Bourdieu, our lived experiences generally take on the prevalent social practice and beliefs while our habitus7 tries hard to create a harmony between the self and the built space. The contemporary social media presence and expression of political identity is indeed a hard one to find a middle path between what is the conceived ‘real’ and what is the real ‘Real’, the breach of walls and a fleetingly blurred existence is always masked behind the veil of duplicity and a simulation of the original. It is possible because: firstly, the complementary relations between the temporal and spatial form of identity help people to build a convenient identity and articulate the social relations and secondly, the enduring capacity of virtu(re)al masks to sustain, protect and perpetuate those identities as firm and established norms.
Politics of Mask, social media and Unmasking the Identity
In recent days, masks are being worn for different purposes, in political rallies it is used to show support for the hypnotic entities, magnetic to populist belief, in sports and other cultural and aesthetic fields it is used for showing loyalty and support to a definite agitprop, for socialisation and participation in public spheres, festivals and other performative incarnations, it is worn for protruding a typical impression of cultural capital, while, in other places of social interactions (like in social media appearances and party gatherings), it is providing metaphorical if not literal veil, either to guise and be presentable and performing or to ascribe to assemblage opinion to be camouflaged and beneficiary of this system. To illustrate this, we can cite the example of state offenders or protesters wearing masks with a strong message about the social issues, people in a rally wearing mask to mobilise the mass support in favour of an enigmatic leadership, in theatrical performances it is used to ignite the sentiments, in religious and regional festivities with these masks collective identity carry forward the hierarchy, while so far being diverse; masked identity becomes uniform and typified in our virtu(re)al presence. Social media, unlike the conventional media, gives us an infinite scope of disseminating ideas through interaction, impregnating the ‘real’ self and showcasing the living experiences through a hyper-reality of algorithm. Taking part in its fulcrum thus means manipulating one’s existence as it is generally perceived. It creates an expectant bias, where masked identity stands for a particular normative behaviour, which through validation, through breaching and altering the boundaries among real, imagined and hyper-real; finds authenticity in collective propaganda than in individual perception. Lack of opportunities in granting the differences and the desire of staying at the centre, forces people to compromise their ethnicity for a masked ego (here it is in Freudian sense, as a primal drive of our existence), actually superego, culture-specific, state-ordered and socially constrained. Possibly so, now-a-days, social media pictures act like a mask of branding (integration and dilution of mask in wardrobe and fashion capital is also notable here), stands for what is community transmittable, while the masks of idols, eminent personalities, leaders, supporting a cause or trend or issue are themed and curated according to the prevalent capital and prepotent ideology than a stand-alone unique upholder of distinctive characteristics with that its shares its affinity. In a country like India, where the ethnic identity often gets blurred among the vivacity of multilingualism, multi-ethnics, multiculturalism, multi-religious enterprises along with regional and sectarian identity politics, and the absence of any absolute identity makes it even complicated, this study needs to be approached both from outside and inside of the framework to understand how it is getting its inheritance of making a convincing meaning.
Exploring the anthropological and historical tracings of mask in social, political and cultural fields covers a plethora of active-passive symbolic representations, while, the study of functionality and semiotics of mask tradition may answer the question related to the identity and thus will open up other varied identity formation mechanisms in society. The identity of a Foucauldian subject8, is generally shaped by mythical, politico-historical and cultural apparatuses already available in the governmentality. Thus, when this identity play demands its acceptance upon this social body, the later, readily acquires intonations of social status through any available mode like decoration, somatization, mutilation, marginalisation, abjection etc. to adjust itself, to disfigure, to reconfigure, to transform itself according to the hierarchical normative iconoclassicism. Now, according to C. S. Peirce, the arbitrary materialism of mask alters, when it enters to the ethnographical hegemony, momentarily, it evolves to a signifier in a semiotic framework and by taking up the social conventions, it alters the signified identity of the wearer. Here, it is not intending rigidly to the Saussurean framework of semiotics, but its hint is to the much more general framework of sign in any cultural or anthropological field (proposed first by Levi-Strauss and later elaborated by Peirce), where it is widely accepted that the available signs in this perspective are expected to bear a non-arbitrary relation to which they refer. Thus, such socio-cultural props or indexes like masks have a special kind of similarity to which they confer meaning (as now-a-days, any kind of sanitizer or disinfectant readily associates itself to the available COVID-19 safety protocols, absence of which makes the person violator of the norms and hence must be scrutinized for).
As has been discussed comprehensively before, the evolution of mask (representational, emotive, indexical and disguise, according to Urban and Hendricks) and its ability to construct, alter and manipulate one’s identity is manifold. At the incept, it arrives at the socio-historical and mythological plain and then as the state complexes its mechanism of manufacturing its consumer subject; it incessantly deters and defers its positionality creating an ever-lasting slippage and hence can contextualise its relevance time and again. The dualism about human psyche and self has been getting manipulated as the society is heading towards a more propagandist and surveillance machineries, when the duplicity of identity is not only liable for mask, in fact, during this postmodern media-centric cyber matrix, its authenticity is always fleeting and tangible, a flux like dogma. Harris has cleared this confusion as she has made a distinction between ‘person’, ‘self’ and ‘individual’. According to her, a ‘person’ gives indulge to meaningful action circumscribed by the societal standards, while the abjected identity of a subject between ‘self’ and ‘individual’ gets diluted among the socially attributed role-playing and someone’s true individuality inherited from this structure; and thus, the dilemma and conflict arise. Fortes states the fact more elaborately, as he claims that imitating of persona, one of the motifs of using mask in theatre and other public performances, is because, personality always needs not to be attributed to a human, but to any social being of this order. Tooker explains that, the appropriation of mythology and anthropological history, hence transforms wearing mask, from a mere accessory to a ritualistic manoeuvre. After Levi-Strauss’s expression ‘a deeper and more fundamental splitting’, Bourguignon admits that this possession trance of social behaviour due to a specific, desired and conditioned homogenous identity makes difference between the dumb biological individual and the embodied social self.
From the hay-day of mass-media proliferation and its influence on manufacturing propaganda for the populace, it always serves to the dominant ideologies and hence pushes from individualism to populism. Prominence of masked effect on identity creation, for such reasons, adjusts itself from promoting ritualistic and historical repertories to a more intricate model of producing consent about the accepted identical performances for its subject. This, in turn, snatches away the identity space and makes it alienated for a self in a society. Again, Foucault in his concept of heterotopia, claims, that at a distinct liminal space in an assigned governmentality, social structures and differentiations are always challenged through transgressions in performances deviating from assigned roles. But, as with the rise of capitalism, government also needs to take control over its human resources for a continuous supply of workforce, and, in such condition, through hegemony and state apparatuses (collectively Foucault calls these measures as ‘bio-politics’) it stratifies and homogenises its subject. Media, through proliferating and normalizing propaganda and manufacturing consent, obliterates the space remained for individualistic enterprises and in a monopolistic control appropriated by the state bureaucracy, compels the subjects to co-construct his or her role of individualistic personalised functions among an apparent liberal nexus, which though is basically tailored as an imagined community, where the question of anonymity and subjectivity of the self is erased ubiquitously.
The, present scenario of disseminating state-sponsored ideologies through mass media (for this paper the emphasis will be on social media) has a surmounting implication on the formation and mobilization of collective identity, and, as social media is deliberately decreasing the ethnographical differences in selective social behaviour of its political citizen, it is also curtailing down the individual space and function of heterogeneous identity. What is the difference between use of mask as an identity modifier or a generalised prop in literary characters, theatre, public performances, rituals, historical and mythological entrapments and use of mask in a much more accepted, performative and democratized accessory? What is the point of contextualisation? The glorification of mass ideologies, propaganda and projectable enigma of charismatic human personality, pushes the population to subscribe to a mass-hysteria, where a set of identities are domineering over others.
Conclusion
Thus, to conclude with, it is important to say, that the implication of wearing mask or mukhosh or mukhota, has different implications and layers; both literal and metaphorical. At one side, the tradition of wearing mask, instantly attaches a human individual to his or her tradition and cultural heritage and offers him or her a wide array of history, religion, rituals, mythology and other ethnographical underpinnings. The art of making mask in a country like India, at once, upholds the identity of a dying craftsmanship and a minority section, and on the other hand, it conditions an individual identity or subject to be always at a signified position of this social play. The mobilization of mass-media, state-politics driven consent and propaganda certainly opens up the democratic and heterogeneous usage of mask, but the censorship, the bio-political drive, the normalisation, erasure of the differences among the subjects creates a crisis of self, identity and personhood. If wearing mask is wearing the individual essence, then from historical past to present, our social identity has witnessed an enormous shift, from consumer it has become consumable; from wearer of camouflage, it has become a sinister of fleeting persona with no real self.
End Notes
- This term has been used by Mikhail Bakhtin, which refers to the literary mode that subverts and liberates the assumptions of the dominant mode through humour and chaos. The term gets originated from the word ‘carnival’ as used by Bakhtin in his Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics and developed in Rabelais and His World; it refers to a sudden upheaval of the prevalent order and a challenge to the dominant ideological system through free interaction among the people during the time of festivity. Through this word, this paper wants to refer to the anonymity of today’s masked identity in social media and how it upturns and uproots the conventional structure.
- This refers to Martin Heidegger’s existential philosophy of being which is peculiar to the human being. This German word in English means ‘being there’. It is the fundamental concept and it is a form of being which is absolutely aware of its ‘being’ and it must thus confront with other surrounding human beings on the issues of morality, identity etc., while completely being alone on himself or herself.
- A medieval allegorical representation, in which, personified death leads all the human beings to the grave, symbolising the equality before death. The use of mask on the personified Death, implicates the binary and duality of our life, i.e., the transience and temporality of our identity.
- God of winemaking, fertility, festivity, rituals, insanity, religious madness, theatre in ancient Greek. In Rome, he stands for liberation and freedom also. During the festivity, dramas were meant to be written to please him and to provide the opportunity to repent about the sins, for the people. In ancient Greek and Rome, the use of mask in public theatres, becomes normalised from this time. It also stands for the heritage, hierarchy of different social classes during that time. Actors used to wear to bring out the multifariousness of myths, human characteristics etc.
- The concept, derived from Bharat Muni’s Natya Shastra, means is to guide the audience through the art of expression, so that, they can experience different sentiments (rasa).While talking about the beguiling effect of mask on one’s appearance and its use in dramatic performances, it is important to know that, human beings hold two contrasting natures of good and evil in their psyche. The imbalance of sentiments due to the absence or excess of these two qualities are responsible for different expressions of us. Mask, according to different usages, is also capable to capture the infinite tone of human presence.
- King Manavedan wrote this particular type of dance-drama, accompanied by songs (based on the poetry written as Jayadeva’s Geetagovinda) in Kozhikode. The public performance demands of wearing mask (modelled on numerous incarnations of Lord Krishna) and hence associated the history of mask to religiosity and mythology. Such kind of usage later anticipates the idolisation of masked performer in search of the divine spirit’s ascendency.
- French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu suggests that habitus is consisted of both hexis (the habit to preserve, observe and use one’s body either free or conditioned from the societal effects) and our mental habits to perceive, interpret and critically involve towards the surrounding phenomenon. Mask being a prop is already pre-ordained with socio-historical-cultural symbols and thus it influences the wearer’s posture and reflects upon his or her identity; and on another level, the onlooker, specially due to the duplicable identities in today’s social media, interprets and classifies it momentarily but not permanently in a continuous process of engagement.
- Foucauldian subject that in turn imitates the Butlerian subject also. A person in a society or state or at large governmentality, who is already objectified, as his or her construction is always normative, hegemonical and political. The subject position is ever denied as the choices are not free-produced but already conditioned and tailored for. Foucault from this concept later advances to the state of reason and the art of bio-politics, while, Butler advances from here to bring out the difference between gender and sex. While the first one is politically constructed, the second one is a fluid identity. This ‘subject’ differ from what is the Rousseau or Kantian subject, the man of reason.
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