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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Theater Facebook, Theater, and the Surveillance State: People Wanting to Look at Each Other and Wanting to Be Looked At

Posted by Brendan Kiley on Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 3:54 PM

This short article in the NYT about Rousseau, happiness, and the awareness of being watched gets at a bunch of stuff I've been wondering about over the past couple of years: theater, the pleasures and pains of watching and knowing you're being watched, and the surveillance state. (Which is linked to theater: When a government is secretly watching its citizens all of the time, or has at least convinced its citizens that it's secretly watching them all the time, then all the world really is a stage. Every word and deed becomes a performance, at least in the mind of the citizen—which might please actor-types, but terrifies those of us with stage fright.)

But my favorite part is about how much Rousseau hated the idea of theater:

These passions tore us from our thoughtless and anxiety-free selves. Suddenly, “each one began to look at the others and to want to be looked at himself.” No longer content with mere being, we now had to be seen. Today that means clinging to our iPhones; originally, it meant crowding around the communal fire; in Rousseau’s day, there was the theater.

“You have ruined Geneva,” Rousseau wrote to Voltaire in 1760, after the Enlightenment dramatist sought to introduce a theater there. “I hate you.”

Sometimes, I feel the same way. And now I'm off to see some shows!

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Posted by yelahneb

on June 17, 2012 at 5:36 PM

We are but poor players.

Posted by TVDinner

on June 17, 2012 at 10:01 PM

I like the idea of the letter being composed only of those two sentences

Posted by Christampa on June 17, 2012 at 10:12 PM

One of my favorites is what Voltaire said after a visit by Diderot:

"The man is clever, assuredly; but he lacks one talent, and an essential talent—that of dialogue."

Posted by VelhoSorriso on June 18, 2012 at 7:50 AM

Christians believe that all of humanity is essentially a surveillance state. God is watching everything, even listening to your thoughts.

Posted by David Nixon on June 18, 2012 at 9:21 AM