How Are You Really Feeling?

In a world filled with emotion, people commonly view them as “natural,” i.e. everyone feels happy, sad, angry, frustrated, etc…  However, have you ever stopped to think how/why/what regulates your emotion in a variety of circumstances?  Most people experience several emotions throughout the day; however, they do not outwardly express all of them, and in some situations, one may feel required to exhibit an emotion that is the exact opposite of the emotion they are internally feeling.  This is emotion work, or “the act of trying to change in degree or quality an emotion or feeling” (Hochschild, 53).  In several situations, we feel compelled to manage or change our emotions because it is inappropriate to exhibit what we are currently feeling.  This need to feel a certain way in different situations demonstrates the concept of feeling rules.  Feeling rules are “the social guidelines that direct how we want to try to feel” (Hochschild, 54).   Although emotions may feel “natural” to us, it is society that regulates how and when to feel emotion; it is not our biological makeup that results in a need for us to regulate our emotions, but rather it is society that dictates which emotions are proper and improper.

All of us are subject to society’s regulation of our emotion, myself included.  Throughout high school, I was a hostess at a local country club, and thus had the job of greeting customers and always maintaining a polite and cheerful demeanor.  Although at times I may have been in a not-so-cheerful mood, I felt obligated to exhibit a certain outward appearance to customers, or as Hochschild states, “surface act”  (Hochschild, 52).  So, even though I wasn’t feeling cheerful, or was perhaps dealing with a customer who was unhappy himself or herself, I had to maintain a pleasant demeanor because it was expected of me, by myself and the customer, because society told us so.  

Making Sense of Our World

Have you ever stopped to think how, in a world with so many things surrounding us, you are able to organize it and make sense of it?  Or even on a much smaller scale, how when walking into a movie rental place (e.g. Blockbuster) you immediately know which section of the store to look at for the movie you wish to view?  When I was in Blockbuster the other day, I caught myself almost mindless walking to the comedy section and finding the movie I wanted.  Although I may want to believe that it was my own creative mental thinking that created this category of comedy and placed this movie under it, it is actually “society that underlies the way we generate meaningful mental entities” (Zerubavel, 25).  It is society that has come up with the categories of comedy, drama, family, action, romance etc…  Thus, when a movie has the primary intent of making the audience laugh, we immediately place it under comedy.

This societal categorization is how we make sense of the world; we organize it into schemas or “mental maps.”  So that even though “reality is not made up of insular chunks…but rather, of vague, blurred-edge essences that often ‘spill over' into one another” we are still able to have a fairly well defined map to follow in order to organize our world (Zerubavel, 25).  A movie may include both comedy and action, but despite this “blurred-edge” we are still able to limit our range of searching for this movie by lumping it into just two categories.  We know that if we cannot find it in the comedy section, it will be in the action section.  By creating these schemas we are able to eliminate searching for a single movie among thousands; likewise, we are able to organize our entire world into much smaller, more specified chunks.

Remembering 9/11

The view of 9/11 has changed drastically over the past ten years, especially in the way it has been portrayed through the media.  When this tragic event first struck America, scenes of the horrific crash into the World Trade Center were played repeatedly on news stations throughout the world.  However, ten years later, the light now shines on those who lost their lives, more than on the attack itself.  As Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz write in “Commemorating America’s Involvement in Vietnam,” the goal of the Vietnam War Memorial was to “promote unity by separating the event from its men;” I believe this is what the media is trying to do today with the 9/11 attack and its victims (395).

Even now, after ten years, I can still picture the footage of the attack and remember where I was at the exact moment of receiving the news.  Although I do believe 9/11 has revealed the true patriotism that America is capable of, I cannot help but remember it as a tragic attack that cost many innocent people their lives.  I think it is absolutely necessary to remember those that passed during the attack; however, I believe that by separating them from the attack itself, the media is romanticizing the true impact that 9/11 has had on American lives.

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the array of news media that I viewed spoke largely about the victims of 9/11 and the American bravery and patriotism that has been shown following the attack.   An article (below) in the New York Times, which includes several interviews from families of victims, portrays this shift in media from the attack itself to the victims of the attack.  This shift is exemplified by a family member who states in the article that, "Rather than attending  9/11 family hearings or ground zero rallies, she determinedly focused on honoring F.T.’s  puckish spirit" ("Living With Loss").  Although 9/11 resulted in the loss of innocent lives and has unified many Americans in our fight against terrorism, it has also sent several troops and civilians overseas.  Rarely was there a word spoken about the actual plane crashes or our current situation that has been the cause of these attacks.  In order to fully represent the event that was 9/11, I believe the media should speak of the victims, not separate from the attack, but connected to it, as well as speaking about the outcomes of the attack, including both positive and negative outcomes.  Until this happens, the sacrifice of those who have lost their lives, and the impact of 9/11 as a whole, will continue to be trivialized.

New York Times Article

Nature & Nurture -- the great debate.

In recent times, it has been decided that nature and nurture act together in one’s development.  I believe this statement to be true, not only from what has been discussed in classroom settings, but also from what I have experienced in my daily life.

A prime example of the interaction of nature & nurture is the use of our senses.  It is obvious that our biological framework creates the networks within our brain and body that allow us to use these senses in our everyday life; however, it is the social world we are raised in that establishes meaning within these senses.  In other words, “we do not react automatically to physical sensation but define & interpret them” (Waskul & Vannini, 42).

Society’s influence on the use of our senses is demonstrated in the commercial for Febreze.  In the commercial (video below) people are blindfolded and led into a room that is visually very uncleanly; however, it has been sprayed with Febreze, and thus smells clean.  

Those in the commercial associate this clean smell with things society has told us are hygienic and fresh: a beach, fresh linen, etc…  This event can be described as somatic escalation, or “conditions in which the denotation and connotation of an odor are blurred into one immediate ‘common-sense perception’” (Waskul & Vannini, 47).  That is to say, that we perceive our reaction to sensations as “natural;” however, they are actually created by society and the rules of society. We are told that it is proper to maintain a level of hygiene, and that anything that is unhygienic is “negative” and “dirty,” and thus, smells unpleasant.   Therefore, once the blindfold is removed, they are shocked to see that the room is actually covered in dirt.  If these participants had seen the room before smelling it, they would have most likely associated it with dirty and negative smelling things, because they were taught to by society.  Their shocked reactions prove that the reality and rules society has created for them has been challenged; a clean smell was applied to a dirty environment, instead of the typical clean environment. 

This idea of our senses being shaped by nature and nurture can be applied to our everyday life, not just in the media.  Although it is abnormal to do, if one thinks about why they picture “sweet” smells when seeing a strawberry, or “unappealing” smells when seeing rancid food, it will become apparent that it is because we were raised to do so.  We were born with the ability to use our senses; however we were not born with the innate ability to interpret them in a specific manner, this interpretation has been taught to us as we develop.