Posted by Jay Livingston
The previous post used a disastrous performance of Peter Pan as an instance wher the “definition of the situation” breaks down irreparably. That kind of total breakdown is rare. Any social situation can go wrong, but it’s a usually a matter of embarrassment, not a complete fiasco, and the encounter can continue though perhaps not as smoothly as before.
As Goffman says in his classic essay “Embarrassment and Social Organization”*
| The elements of a social encounter, then, consist of effectively projected claims to an acceptable self and the confirmation of like claims on the part of the others. The contributions of all are oriented to these and built up on the basis of them. When an event throws doubt upon or discredits these claims, then the encounter finds itself lodged in assumptions which no longer hold. The responses the parties have made ready are now out of place and must be choked back, and the interaction must be reconstructed. |
The Peter Pan that went wrong as described on This American Life wasn’t “restructured.” Instead, at least for the audience, it became something else entirely — a sequence of hilarious sight gags for them to laugh at.
These breakdowns don’t always end badly, though they usually do. Sometimes the moment of embarrassment can lead to the “creative destruction” of a definition of the situation that was not working and its replacement with something better.
In the final story of the episode of This American Life, the encounter that goes wrong involves a journalist Margy Rochlin in 1982 interviewing Moon Unit Zappa, whose “Valley Girls” was climbing the charts. Moon was 14. The interview took place in her living. Her mother was also present.
The interview was not going well. As Rochlin, tells it, “I’m sort of that rock bottom level that everyone can get at in an interview, where you’re just saying, like, what's your favorite color?” The cup of coffee that Moon’s mother has given Rochlin has gotten cold. And then. . .
| And so what happened was Moon told me a joke. And I didn’t see the joke coming. And right before she told me the joke, I had taken a big swig of the coffee, which was now cold. And when she told me the joke, I burst out laughing. And I started to choke. And so I pressed my lips together, so I didn't spit it out. I didn't want to do a spit-take. And the coffee came shooting out my nose. . . . I was really embarrassed, but simultaneously, I couldn't breathe. At the same time, I was choking. And I jumped up. And I sort of started running around the room, knocking things over. |
It gets worse. The mother chases Rochlin around the room trying to give her the Heimlich manoeuvre. (you can hear Rochlin’s full account here).
| Ira Glass: Now, what happened after that? Margy Rochlin: It was sort of like we’d all been in an earthquake together. And all of nervousness left the room. And suddenly we were three gals, just chatting. And I remember that I sort of hugged them both when I left. They were now my friends. Ira Glass: It’s interesting, because one of our criteria for a fiasco is that all social order, the normal social structure breaks down. And literally, that’s what happens here. The normal interview stops. And the social structure of the moment completely changes. The mom gives you the Heimlich maneuver. And then, suddenly, it stops feeling like an interview. |
Ira Glass calls it “the social structure of the moment.” Sociology instructors call it the “definition of the situation.”
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*American Journal of Sociology, Volume 62, Issue 3 (Nov., 1956), 264-271.
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