Deviation Actions
Description
In making the series Emotional Self-Portrait (After Arlie Hocschild) I intended to make a self-portrait through the emotions regulated by feeling rules (as described by A. Hocschild in her essay Feeling Rules) that is the rules that society puts up around the acceptability of expressing, the means of expression or even the feeling of certain emotions in certain situations, or even at all. I chose to portray six emotions which are regulated by these feeling rules; anger, fear, infatuation, jealousy, lust and sadness.
Anger is regulated by feeling rules especially in its means of expression, that is how angry people can get before someone tells them to calm down, however even being angry can be seen as bad or an inability laugh at one’s self and one can easily be discouraged from feeling anger. Fear is more of a masculine regulation thinks to the moderate sexism still present in our society; men who show fear, especially a lot, are called pussies, or fags to discourage feeling fear, or at least showing that the feel it. Infatuation is a more subtle one, it tends to put down more as a “cute puppy love” which might no seem to discourage from it, but the message of unimportance is clear, and essentially says that the boy or girl should not be infatuated. Jealousy is a much more obvious regulated emotion, even classified as a deadly sin. However it is an all to common occurrence, especially in our consumer society, although it is still seen as petty and even wrong to feel jealousy. Lust is seen as more acceptable in men, but generally it is understood as wrong, just as in the seven deadly sins. It is very often discouraged as objectifying and rude. Finally sadness is seen as a temporary emotion, it is allowed in certain situations, like death, but sadness and crying are still seen as signs of weakness in men for example. And when people are depressed and suffer a great sadness, they are told to suck it up, to move on, and people dismiss their emotions as socially unfit.
Each diptych in the series show one negative of a pose, and a positive of the same with a drape over it. This refers to feeling rules, the expression of the emotion being negative, and it concealing being a positive thing. Each pose is based on common gestures that express the emotions that I attempt to put across in the photos.