Seventh Response

I recently heard the song “All The Right Moves” by OneRepublic, and it instantly made me think of the idea of keeping up appearances. The way individuals in society try to give off a certain impression to the public, whether these appearances are accurate or not, is mirrored in some of these lyrics. Many societal values revolve around wealth, entertainment, fame, beauty/looks, social status, and happiness. So we may strive to be happy, but that depends on a person’s definition of happiness. While some say money can’t buy you happiness, others may disagree. Material possessions and fame allow a person to appear happy, but outward appearances don’t always match inward beliefs. Relating more to the younger generation, popularity in middle school or high school represents success to some. This appearance can be kept up through photos and events posted on social networks, and always being surrounded by people. However, this does not mean the person is happier than someone with a few close friends who chooses not to broadcast every experience. On to the lyrics:

All the right friends in all the right places
So yeah, we’re going down, they got
All the right moves in all the right faces

These lyrics remind me of climbing the social ladder. When someone has all the right connections it’s easy for them to keep up appearances and improve his or her social status while the rest of us are “going down”.

Let’s paint the picture
Of the perfect place
They’ve got it better than when anyone’s told ya

This part of the song specifically relates to appearances in saying, “paint the picture of the perfect place” and because it’s saying that while some may live in this perfect state, it’s different from how it is described and talked about. It could also be interpreted as Hollywood being the “perfect place”.

I know we got it good, but they got it made,
And their grass is getting greener each day,
I know things are looking up, but soon they’ll take us down,
Before anybody’s knowing our name

The idea of the grass being greener on the other side has always been a part of our culture, in comparing what we have to what others have. Again these lyrics relate to the value of fame because they strive to be like the people that have it all but through the never-ending struggle, still no one knows their name. As I’ve written about before,  the problem with keeping up appearances is that it cannot end. There’s always something better to work towards or someone better that you can never live up to. Expectations are raised, not lowered. Perhaps the reason we try to keep up appearances is that we believe it to be a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words if I say I’ll be rich and famous, then it’ll be true. In a way I think people convince themselves by believing in the image they portray to others. They fake it till they make it.

Do you think I’m special?
Do you think I’m nice?
Am I bright enough to shine in your spaces?
Between the noise you hear, and the sounds you like
Are we just sinking in the ocean of faces?
It can’t be possible… the rain can fall
Only when it’s over our heads.
The sun is shining everyday, but it’s far away.
Over the world that’s dead.

These lyrics seem to question society saying, “Am I good enough for you?” But with the pressure and expectations they never will be good enough. Good is short-lived when more is always expected. Everyone is not themselves at some point, everyone is in the same boat, “sinking in the ocean of faces.. over the world that’s dead.” Instead of standing out, most of us choose to blend into the group of unknown faces.

It don’t matter what you see
I know I could never be
Someone that’ll look like you.
It don’t matter what you say
I know I could never fake
Someone that could sound like you.

Here the lyrics are saying that even if I seem to be a certain way, the real me isn’t what you’re seeing. They have no interest in faking or keeping up appearances to please others. This is most likely referring to their band and surviving the expectations of Hollywood, but of course it relates to regular people who keep up appearances as well. The rest of the lyrics can be viewed here.

Visually, parts of the music video for “All The Right Moves” relate to keeping up appearances. In the beginning of the clip, the judgmental crowd is watching the band, almost waiting for it to make a mistake. Also, everyone in the audience is wearing masks to cover up while the members of OneRepublic are exposed and vulnerable for all to see. Perfection is a theme in this music video, as everyone blends together as a group of similar social standing and appearance. The dance is also in unison with calculated, exact movements. If the people were to remove their masks, their true selves would show-but that’s not what keeping up appearances is about. In this case the people are literally “putting on a face”.

Lastly, another song that has similar lyrics is “Both Of Us” by B.O.B featuring Taylor Swift. It also makes an allusion to the grass being greener on the other side and climbing the social ladder. Basically it’s saying that we’re all the same, and the way we look shouldn’t matter. He also asks, “What’s the pattern to this madness?”, which is precisely what I’m trying to figure out.

And sometimes I wonder
Why we care so much about the way we look
And the way we talk, and the way we act
And the clothes we bought, how much that cost?
Does it even really matter?
Cuz if life is an uphill battle,
We all try to climb on the same old ladder
In the same boat with the same old paddle
Why so shallow, I’m just asking
What’s the pattern to the madness?
Everybody in a #1 draft pick
Most of us ain’t Hollywood actors

Sixth Response

Psychology shows that it’s not our personalities that change, but rather our behaviors based upon the situation, personal role, and audience (Myers 576). You could say this allows for one to be a different person to everyone, as was Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. The idea of person-situation controversy looks for traits that persevere through time and different situations. However, if a person is considered to be outgoing, it is unlikely that he or she will emanate this trait in every possible situation. There are certain expectations for each situation, and by changing our behaviors accordingly we are keeping up appearances. For example, there is a clear difference between the way one might act at a social gathering with a group of friends versus in a classroom setting. Our traits will persist, but they might need to be toned down or brought out to adapt to new situations. The social-cognitive perspective states that “behavior is influenced by the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social context” (Myers 576). According to the social aspect of this perspective, we learn many behaviors through conditioning as well as modeling others. The cognitive part refers to how we think about and interpret different situations, taking into account that our past experiences and expectations will influence behavior too.

Going off of the idea of personality and environment influencing behavior, economist Adriaan R. Soetevent studied the change in church donation patterns comparing open collection baskets with closed bags. In these churches, donations were collected in “a closed bag that was passed along from person to person, row to row”. Then Soetevent asked the churches to randomly substitute the closed bag with an open collection basket  over a period of several months. As expected, the “added scrutiny” meant that open collection baskets resulted in more money from churchgoers. Seeing the already collected money, neighbors’ donations, and the eyes of others pressured people to match donations if not give more money, simply for the sake of keeping up appearances. In this situation, people’s internal cognition and environment affected their resulting behaviors.

Making comparisons, competitiveness, and conformity are commonplace in day-to-day interactions, especially with the culture of suburbia and the idea of “keeping up with the Joneses”. People in society keep up a social status in order to avoid feelings of shame, embarrassment, and social exclusion. Psychology Today article by Sam Sommers analyzes a study that tested the effects of conformity. Statistics about energy usage were sent out to residents, comparing a household and its neighbors. Those who used more energy than their peers started to use less energy, while those whose energy usage was lower eventually used more energy because they felt better in comparison.
Those whose energy usage was higher were influenced to lower their usage because of surrounding statistics. Even though some residents’ level of energy usage was positive news, their behaviors were affected by the results of others. This study reinforces the idea of our need to keep up appearances and evaluate and change ourselves based on social and cognitive factors.

Myers, David G. Psychology. 9th ed. New York: Worth Publishers, 2010. Print.

Soetevent, Adriaan R. “Anonymity in Giving in a Natural Context – a Field Experiment in 30 Churches,” Journal of Public Economics 89 (2005).

Sommers, Sam . “Keeping Up With The Joneses.” Psychology Today. Science of Small Talk, 8 Apr. 2011. Web. 15 Mar. 2013. <www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201205/keeping-the-joneses/keeping-and-down- the-joneses>.

Fifth Response

Today’s post revolves mainly around a Convince and Convert article by social media and content strategist and speaker Jay Baer. The article talks about how instead of bringing us closer, technology is weakening our connections and creating shallow relationships. What you can learn about a person via an online account is very different from interacting with him or her in person. This relates again to the idea of keeping up appearances. Technology allows us to keep up appearances perhaps more than we could in our daily lives and routines. If someone were to post on Facebook or Twitter, for example, that they were really happy about something, who’s to say they weren’t? Why wouldn’t we believe what a person chooses to share? But there’s more to a person’s life than can be shown through social media sites, and maybe there’s an image or reputation they are choosing to uphold.

Baer writes about the shock that came upon hearing of his friend, Trey Pennington’s suicide. As it so happens, the two met online. There’s a pressure to know more people, according to Baer, because this seems to allow more opportunities. Baer states, “interacting with more people is inherently better than interacting with fewer people”. However, interacting with more people doesn’t necessarily translate to knowing more people. This is proven further by the fact that Baer had no idea what Trey Pennington was going through, despite considering him a friend. Baer makes a good point in saying, “Social media forces upon us a feeling of intimacy and closeness that doesn’t actually exist.” This quote struck me as a true and universal idea. It can be hard to tell how a person you know and see every day is feeling sometimes, and having the barrier of the Internet and possibly false information only makes it more difficult to be close to and understand people. Someone who seems relatively happy can portray themselves this way, without having to go through the trouble of faking smiles, etc. In a way, it’s possible to keep up appearances without actually being seen. It all has to do with what others expect of us.

We are constantly trying to modify our appearances, striving to meet unrealistic expectations. When we’re younger we want to look older, and vice versa. This is magnified by media and advertising, from anti-aging makeup commercials to Hollywood stars looking perfect on the cover of every magazine. It seems we are always pretending to be something we’re not. There’s a push to one up ourselves in everything, and similarly we expect celebrities and other famous figures to continually be better. But what’s the limit? There’s an idea in psychology called the adaptation-level phenomenon, which describes the “tendency people have to quickly adapt to a new situation, until that situation becomes the norm”. For example, if a person gets a raise in salary, they will be content until this new salary is the norm, and they need another increase to feel happy. Or if a celebrity looks great at a red carpet event once, fans will expect her to look even better next time to be satisfied with her appearance again. The problem with keeping up appearances is that with ever-increasing expectations, we can’t reach an undefined potential.

Works Cited:
“Social Media, Pretend Friends, and the Lie of False Intimacy.” Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy — Social Media Strategy Social Media Consulting Content Marketing Strategy Content Marketing Consulting. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2013. .

Fourth Response

In an earlier post I mentioned the phrase “all that glitters is not gold”. These universal words were first heard in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Originally the phrase was “all that glisters is not gold”, however, this occurred in the 1596 edition of the play and “glitters” is now widely accepted and used.

The basic plot of The Merchant of Venice is a classic story of leaving love up to fate. Portia, a wealthy heiress from Belmont, is required by her father’s will to marry the suitor who correctly chooses one of three caskets, the one containing Portia’s picture. This scene takes place in Act II Scene 7. The rest of the play can be viewed here. The first man, the Prince of Morocco figures he will read the inscriptions of each casket to come to a conclusion. The lead casket says, “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath” (Line 1002). The Prince sees this as a threatening message and moves on to the silver casket. This next inscription reads: “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves” (Line 1009). The Prince feels that he deserves Portia, and so keeping this in mind he considers his last option, the golden casket. Its inscription says, “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire” (1023). He reasons that surely many men desire the lovely heiress, and of course gold is in many ways exceptional. This strategy does not work, because the Prince of Morocco misguidedly chooses the the gold casket. Next come the famous words from the Prince himself:

O hell! what have we here?
A carrion Death, within whose empty eye
There is a written scroll! I’ll read the writing.
Reads
All that glitters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscroll’d:
Fare you well; your suit is cold.
Cold, indeed; and labour lost:
Then, farewell, heat, and welcome, frost!
Portia, adieu. I have too grieved a heart
To take a tedious leave: thus losers part.

The point, or lesson to learn from the Prince’s mistaken judgment, is that shiny things aren’t necessarily precious things. What appears to be great may not be so nice upon taking a closer look. The sparkle of gold may be so blinding that it blocks out the so-called worms its hiding, while the simpler appearance of the lead casket bares all and is overlooked. It turns out the lead casket was the right choice, as Bassanio, Portia’s true love, comes to find. Another prince, the Prince of Arragon, chooses the silver casket and is left with no bride just like the Prince of Morocco. Relating more to the idea of keeping up appearances, a similar example comes to mind. Someone who seems to have it all together may simply be keeping up appearances. Their life seems golden, but as Shakespeare proved, all that glitters is not gold. I’ve also thought more about what it means to keep up appearances. As a working definition, I think it is to pretend to be alright or to pretend that everything is going well. It might also have to do more with keeping up with expectations of others. For example, in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Brad is a popular, secretly gay football player who is seeing a boy named Patrick outside of school. However, at school he keeps up appearances by dating the head cheerleader, Nancy, because it’s what’s expected of him. So when we keep up appearances, essentially we are lying. Whether more to ourselves or to others, we aren’t showing our true selves when we don’t feel great but we dress up and show up anyways, or when we frantically pick up the house to be presentable for guests.
Right now I feel like my ideas are a bit all over the place, but I’d like to incorporate more psychological and social aspects as well as take a look at specific cultures (British vs. American, suburbia, urban life?) when thinking about how and why we keep up appearances. Is there a time that we aren’t keeping up appearances? Maybe not. The elusive question now is: If in keeping up appearances we aren’t ourselves, who are we?

Works Cited:

“Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene 7 : Open Source Shakespeare.” Open Source Shakespeare: search Shakespeare’s works, read the texts. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Mar. 2013. <http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=merchantvenice&Act=2&Scene=7&Scope=scene&gt;.

“Merchant of Venice: Entire Play .” The Complete Works of William Shakespeare . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Mar. 2013. <http://shakespeare.mit.edu/merchant/full.html&gt;.

Third Response

In one of my first posts I talked about keeping up appearances and how it relates to teenagers and today’s technology. I recently found a great NPR article that reminded me of this original idea. Psychologist Sherry Turkle discusses how in this generation people, especially teenagers, live their lives through social networking, texting, etc. Nowadays teenagers define themselves by how they appear online. Turkle states, “…they feel as though if they’re not sharing online, they’re nobody. They get into a mode of being that I describe as: I share, therefore I am… There’s a sweet spot, because too much, you look anxious, and too little, you look like you don’t care.” Turkle also shares a story about how one teenage boy received 100 texts while his phone was turned off during a brief interview and the anxiety that comes along with that. Teenagers are attached to their phones to say the least, and I think most would agree that not having that connection to the outside world for an extended period of time can be a difficult thing. An almost disturbing feeling of emptiness comes with not having a cell phone at all times, a feeling that something is missing.
“They feel the pressure. They take vacations from Facebook because they feel the pressure of keeping up their profiles, of worrying whether or not if they say they like this band or that band, you know, if – how it makes them look, and keeping everything consistent and making themselves look thin in their photographs.” She gives the example of being judged by how many photos you share online. It seems very sociable, but it says nothing of how that person acts in an important, real life situation, like being there for a friend. Turkle goes on to say, “And another thing that’s happening is that when you start to get that many emails, when people start to get at mad you if you’re not immediately responding to them, you start to ask people questions that you know they can answer quickly, but you start to ask simpler questions. We start to give simpler answers. You kind of dumb down the questions. You dumb down the answers.” Going along with the idea of basing our actions off of other people, according to Turkle, “They go from I have a feeling, I’d like to make a call, to I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text. In other words, the constitution of a feeling becomes – in order to have the constitution of the feeling, you need to be texting someone about it. And that becomes a problem because they become dependent on other people even for knowing what they’re feeling.”
Another good point: “..you can perform on a text. You can compose it the way you want, on your Facebook status update, you can get it exactly the way you want it. And a generation has gotten used to performing themselves.” I can say from experience that teenagers prefer texting over face-to-face communication or even a phone call, simply because it’s easier. As Turkle points out, we can perfect what we want to show other people by hiding behind these forms of technology. We’re never forced to show our true selves because we only share as much or as little as we want to share on popular networks such as Facebook or Twitter. This not only enforces the keeping up of appearances, but it also affects the way we communicate and participate in life. Turkle explains, “It’s the fact that it happens as you’re feeling the feeling, instantly carrying it with you all the time. I mean, these are – these kids are literally texting as they’re walking, as they’re talking, in the middle of talking to other people, interrupting the life as it’s being lived in order to share with people who aren’t even there sometimes.” But kids aren’t the only ones guilty of getting caught up in technology. Parents are paying more and more attention to their phones and emails, which takes a toll on family relationships just as much as the stereotypical teenager texting at the dinner table. “I think they feel that they’re too busy communicating to think. They’re too busy communicating to be creative. They’re too busy communicating, really, to connect with the people that really most matter to them.”

Works Cited:
“Have We Grown Too Fond Of Technology? : NPR.” NPR : National Public Radio : News & Analysis, World, US, Music & Arts : NPR. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2013. <http://www.npr.org/2011/02/25/134059283/have-we-grown-too-fond-of-technology&gt;.

Second Response

In this week’s post I’ll be focusing on the theme of keeping up appearances in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

From the very first page, the reader is presented with appearances of characters. But as we learn throughout the book, just because something looks a certain way doesn’t mean that’s the way it is. The Director of Companies is first described as an exemplar figure: “We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified” (1). He looks nautical and resembles a pilot, but who’s to say that is his true character?
The next appearance that comes to mind is that of the chief accountant. Marlow states, “…I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of getup that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clear necktie, and varnished boots. No hat. Hair parted, brushed, and oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a big white hand. He was amazing, and had a penholder behind his ear” (15). The reoccurring whiteness shows the colonizers’ push for white supremacy. Kurtz also writes about the way the whites must seem to the natives, believing that they “appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings” (45). More specifically, the accountant’s impractical attire (to say the least) flaunts his wealth and superiority in contrast to the lifestyles of the natives. Marlow respects these “achievements of character”, admiring that above all else,”he kept up his appearance” (15). The colonials are also trying to keep up appearances by making it seem like some meaningful work is going on, when in reality they are spending their time unnecessarily blasting a cliff that isn’t in the way of anything. Lastly, Marlow carries on Kurtz’s reputation after his death, telling Kurtz’s intended that the last words he spoke were her name. Kurtz seems to have been a symbolic figure in many people’s lives, which makes Marlow question how well he knew Kurtz. Through his actual final words, “The horror!” Kurtz created a mystery that allowed his legacy to live on, while his true character in life was hidden by false appearances.

These examples beg the question, why do we feel the need to keep up appearances? Who do we put on a show for, ourselves or others, or perhaps both? Why do we feel the need to perform “monkey tricks” as Marlow calls them? How and why do reputations form? The idea of keeping up appearances also reminds me of the saying, “All that glitters is not gold”, but more on that later!

Change of Topic/First Response

After some deliberation, I’ve decided to change my senior exit topic. I’ve found that keeping up appearances is an omnipresent theme in many works of literature, and I’d like to explore the implication and relevance of this idea on today’s society. As teenagers, most of us spend entirely too much time on social media networks in order to keep up appearances.  Whether it be through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. we are able to stay up to date with everyone’s daily happenings as well as broadcast our own. When looking back on a mediocre party, we can fool ourselves and others into thinking that it was a crazy, unforgettable night through photos and comments, when in reality it wasn’t all that great. It is also possible to connect the idea of keeping up appearances to memory in psychology, with terms such as rosy retrospection and the misinformation effect. Rosy retrospection refers to remembering events more positively than how they felt when they were actually taking place, while the misinformation effect involves incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event.

New sources that I’m considering for this topic are:

• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

For right now I’d like to touch on Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Old New York, in the 1870s, is described by Wharton as a society determined to maintain a constant stability. Members of this elite class are expected to live by a set of unspoken rules and keep up with the latest fashions, proper etiquette, and appropriate behaviors and conversations. The novel’s opening scene at the opera places the characters in their natural social environment, introducing the reader to the style and entertainment preferences of this exclusive group of families and individuals that thinks and acts upon the same beliefs. However, the sole purpose of such an extravagant event is not to enjoy one another’s company or to enjoy fine art, but rather to observe and scrutinize others. Besides gathering to gossip, those attending the opera must appear up to standards to avoid scandal. Unlike Countess Ellen Olenska, the always proper protagonist Newland Archer does just that. He arrives to the opera with his hair deliberately parted by “two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in blue enamel” and a flower in his buttonhole for good measure. “Poor Ellen”, on the other hand, arrives unexpected and uninvited wearing a revealing dress and speaking of divorce.  In other words, she is the black sheep of her family and an embarrassment to New York’s elite. Her disregard for society’s expectations in fashion and manners, as well as rumors of adultery do not bode well to the rigid social code of her surroundings. It comes as no surprise that Newland’s current good standing among society is put at risk upon meeting Ellen in a society that goes out mainly to see and be seen, to judge and be judged. To Newland, Ellen represents the freedom missing from the suffocating environment of the New York aristocracy, but in the end conforming to society’s conventions and keeping up appearances triumphs.
That’s all for now, but I’m interested to see where this project will go and how I can connect the modern causes/effects of keeping up appearances with examples in literature.
Ps. Shout out to Rebecca Liu for helping me with this idea! : )

Declaration of Intention for Graduation

The idea of royalty has always been intriguing to me, considering how much power and responsibility is handed to individuals based simply upon royal blood. I associate royalty with words like regal, proper, and untouchable… But whether positive or negative, a dynamic forms between the ruled and the rulers, and each side has its own untold stories. I’d like to study the evolution of royalty, especially focusing on England’s royal history ranging from the Anglo-Saxons to the Tudors, to present-day Windsors. I’m not entirely sure yet how I’ll connect these rulers from different times, but I think it’d be interesting to explore the link not only between individual royals but also the public’s opinion and expectations of royals during these times. Some of the sources I’m considering are Macbeth (Shakespeare in general), The Three Musketeers, Beowulf, Mrs. Brown (looking into Queen Victoria and Albert), and The Madness of King George (play to film). If possible I might also tie in King Arthur and Princess Diana.  Hopefully more specific ideas to come soon!