Masks

At the beginning of this semester, when we read Ong’s “The Writer’s Audience is Always a Fiction,” I noticed particularly this quotation, which I liked very much but didn’t exactly know why or what to do with it: “…Every one of us puts on a mask to address himself. Such masks to relate ourselves to ourselves we also try to put aside, and with wisdom and grace we to some extent succeed in casting them off. When the last mask comes off, sainthood is achieved, and the vision of God. But this can only be with death” (Ong 20). My fascination with this bit of theology aside, this concept of wearing a “mask,” which is more than simply playing the role of a writer or reader, is worthy of attention. In Ong’s article, a “mask” is related to a “role,” but more complex, pervasive, and permanent. Also, the “mask” concept applies in daily life, outside the realm of reader-author roles in fiction (Ong 20). If a role is something that one plays, a mask seems to have more to do with who one is (or who one appears to be).

The concept of the “mask” came up again in McCloud’s “Vocabulary of Comics.” McCloud writes that our own face is a mask, and while we see other’s faces in detail, we only know ours as a sort of general outline – we tell our face to do things, like smile, and it obeys (34-37). This mask-ness explains in part why we respond to simplified faces of cartoons. Both McCloud and Ong write about how masks affect our interactions with ourselves and others, and with texts.

I see the concept of a “mask” at work – implicitly – in Anna Julia Cooper’s writing. Cooper’s writing calls into question how authors write about the unfamiliar and the familiar. Part of Cooper’s claim is most valid in its original context. She also writes that Caucasian barristers cannot put themselves in the place of Black men, who in turn cannot represent the voice of the Black woman. Cooper argues that one of these demographics cannot represent the voice of the other (380). I cannot accept the claim that people of a certain group cannot write well about people of another groups, be that group of a different race, gender, ethnicity, class, or anything else. During her life, I can see how the available portrayals of Black men and women were seriously lacking in complexity (among other things). However, Cooper’s writing still can inform our thinking about re/presentation. I think that Cooper’s writing can demonstrate that readers need to be aware of how a writer’s mask might impact their portrayal of another group, and can perhaps further develop this concept of a “mask.”

From Ong, Cooper, and McCloud, I think I can do a bit of theory building about the “mask.” Masks are controlled by the user (McCloud). One’s identity and the “masks” worn by the writer impact both how the writer can create works, how the writer represents those like and unlike him- or herself, and how the writing is read by both those with similar and different identities (Ong and Cooper). Ong writes that masks can be peeled away – and indeed, that people want to peel them away – in oral communication (though he doesn’t unpack exactly why this is so. I very much wish that he did!). The idea of peeling away masks is implicitly addressed in Cooper’s writing as well. She states that underneath form and behavior (what I call the mask) there is a great humanity, and so it seems that in her case the masks are taken off by trying on another's – “thinking oneself imaginatively into the experience of others” (381-382).

Understanding “masks” and their roles in written and spoken communication is important, because it reveals much about both the author, the discourse, and the author’s portrayals of others. The goal here is not to strip off all masks (Ong writes that, “It is hard to bare your soul in any literary genre” (21)), but to recognize and understand the complexity of the masks and the effects on discourse. If we can recognize the masks worn by narrators, authors, characters, others, and ourselves, it might be possible to notice with more nuances how communication works.