Read, and answer, Rhythm 0: Abramovic

I’d like you to think about the power of statuses and roles. 

Every day in our lives, we move in and out of a variety of social statuses and roles.  Maybe in any given day you’re a student, employee (or boss), son, mother, friend, and so on.  Right this very moment, you are being a role.  Your status/role of ‘student’ is having a significant impact on your behavior.  You’re sitting at the screen, reading these words, concentrating and focusing on what you need to learn in sociology.  These behaviors certainly aren’t your ‘personality’ or the ‘real you.’  These behaviors reflect the expectations of the student role; students are SUPPOSED to do the readings and study.  That’s why you’re doing these things now.  The student role (which you didn’t create, but society did) tells you that you need to do these things.  And so you do them.  Maybe earlier today, while at work, you acted a certain way in front of your co-workers or customers because your job EXPECTS that kind of behavior from you.  I remember working in retail and wanting to completely curse out an annoying customer or yell at my boss for being a jerk.  I didn’t do these things, though, even when I really wanted to.  I acted a way that was not reflective of me, my thoughts, or my desires.  All of us do this, probably much more often than we consciously realize.  I think about my role as ‘mother’ and how sometimes I act differently in front of my child than what my personality tells me.  Just a few months ago, my three-year-old daughter was chugging a glass of orange juice.  After she drank the whole cup, she emphatically placed it on the table and passionately declared, “That orange juice was fucking awesome!”  My husband and I couldn’t believe our ears.  My first inclination, and you may be shocked to hear this, was to laugh.  She didn’t mean anything bad by it – she just meant that the orange juice was really, really good.  She didn’t use the word in a mean or cruel way.  She used it in the perfect context.  But in the role of ‘mother,’ I knew that I probably shouldn’t laugh because my laughter might encourage her to say it all the time (and before you know it, she’d be running around preschool dropping f-bombs!).  So I *wanted* to laugh, but I didn’t.  The role (or social expectations) of ‘mother’ kind of overrode my personal reaction. Other times, I notice that the social role of ‘female’ can profoundly shape how I behave – how I cross my legs when I sit, hide my burps from others, smile more often at strangers, and so on.  Statuses and roles profoundly impact us all.

Sometimes (or maybe a lot of times) people do things as a result of their statuses or roles that they wouldn’t otherwise do, and sometimes this can have tragic results.  Researchers think that perhaps gang rapes are an example of this.  The seminar reading for this week is probably another an example of such a thing; it’s about a group of American soldiers who committed atrocities and massacres during the Vietnam War, in part because of their status/roles and group membership.  The Stanford Prison Experiment also looks at the power of a status or role to shape our behavior.  So this leads us to ask…if we are many different statuses and roles throughout any given day, are we living our lives being ‘ourselves’ or are we just being our statuses and roles?  Do our roles define who we are, or are we more than our roles? 

I’d like you to click on the link below, and watch the video provided for you there.  It’s about a piece of performance art that was done in Italy in 1974.  The artist is Marina Abramovic and the piece is called “Rhythm 0.”  While you watch this piece, please think about the statuses and roles that are at play here.  How are the statuses and roles of the people in this clip shaping their behavior?  How is the social context of the situation enabling people to do things that they might not otherwise do?  It is a powerful piece.  You have the option of doing an extra credit assignment about this video, so look for that in the module.  (And, by the way, the artist is referring to semen near the end of the clip when she talks about her hair.) 

https://vimeo.com/71952791 

• Were you surprised by the Abramovic “Rhythm 0” piece?  Why/why not?
• If this performance art were performed in modern day America, what do you think would happen?
• Consider the statuses and roles that are at play in “Rhythm 0.”  How are the statuses and roles of the people in the clip shaping their behavior?
• How is the social situation enabling people to do things that they might not otherwise do?  Explain.
• Can you think of any other social situations in which people might do things (even “bad” things) that they wouldn’t have otherwise done?  What does this teach us about the power of social groups and the pressure to conform?
• What have you learned about society this week?  What have you learned about yourself?