Theatre, Peacocks and Mobiles

Yesterday the spring semester has started and I spent the entire day at university. It was so great! The huge library (always gives me perspective…), the classes, the cafeteria and the so WEIRD people of the faculty of arts (especially the eccentric acting students)…

While changing classes and buying coffee I was talking with a new class mate. Naturally, conversations always reach topics like fields of interest and career. And you probably guessed right - I found myself talking about (mobiles and) the need for self-expression, which btw I thought is a basic term in the field of arts…

My classmate argued that the need to externalize one’s identity is only a male need. The purpose is to get mating partners. And it can be examined in theatrical terms. The spectacle is the display of male strength and quality, i.e. his manhood, i.e. his financial power and status. The audience is mixed and contains both genders - potential female mates and rival males. The stage is the stage of his life. The actor is a male playing himself on the role of his life. Instead of walking around with his bank account balance, the male has the best props to convey the same message: he carries (and displays to the audience) as often as possible (without loosing credibility and looking ridiculous) his electronic consumer goods (you name them…), expensive watches, tie pins, lucrative fountain pens or mobile phones. All of these are elements in a coherent message about himself, about who he is and about his male qualities. But this act isn’t put up together for the sake of art. There is no fashion statement either. It is merely a good ol’ animal like behavior, like the peacock displays his feathers to communicate, to declare his male quality.

A little note before continuing - even though the mobile is a mean of audio communication, its visual appearance is what communicates in the example here. Carrying a Nokia N-90, a Mobile ESPN or a Nokia 3100 says different things about the character on stage.

Nice observations, yet I argued… we all use different props to say something about our nature, taste, character, life-style and economic status. Yet we don’t need to treat this visual communication as “primitive”. That is the essence of visual communication, and it can be used to gather information and\ or to convey a message to a potential mate but not only; Think of all those circumstances in life where we gather visual information regarding the counterpart (selling\buying, job interviews…). And these “props” aren’t any different than other means of visual communication, like body language, or fashion statements etc. So, next time you're shopping for a mobile - think what it says about you! :)