Identity Crisis

Who Am I, Really?

This is the question people spend their whole lives trying to figure out, and sometimes I wonder if it is the right question to be asking. The episode entitled "Switcheroo" from NPR's series This American Life explores notions of identity and how in saying who we are, we are effectively saying who we are not. At the beginning of the episode, Ira gives an anecdote about the time he and his friend, Etgar, went to a Cindy Sherman exhibit at the MOMA and a lady approached them, claiming she was the artist herself. Because her exhibit was all about morphing into a multitude of identities, neither Ira nor Etgar could figure out if this lady was truly Sherman or not. Weeks after the incident, Ira finally decided to call Sherman and ask her whether or not she had approached him (or had even been) in the gallery that day. According to Sherman, the woman claiming to be her at the exhibit was decidedly not her, not a part of the exhibit, and not related to her in any way. What a strange and surreal encounter! I laughed so hard when Ira said, "If there is some Upper East Side 55, 60-year-old lady who just walks up to people in the Museum of Modern Art and claims to be Cindy Sherman, I love that lady. I love the balls on that lady. That is somebody embracing life." Embracing life indeed!

I looked up some of Sherman's work while listening to the podcast and immediately saw why it'd be tough to identify the real artist were she to be wandering around her exhibition. Her pieces are all about covering up the Self and making it into the Other. I relate to her work on a profound level because as someone who has always loved dressing up in costumes and "be myself" by not being myself, I know how powerful exploitation of one's identity is in revealing the many, many layers that make up who we are. While she might not outwardly appear a beauty queen, aging goth, or film noir star, those elements - however small, however broken - are inside of her somewhere. As cultural values, subversive practices, or the past, they're inside of all of us. 

I love this show and NPR in general, and am so glad this episode was assigned as preparation for our masked identity project. It brought me back to my dance days when my dad would come to pick up my sister and I on Monday nights, and we'd bet on whether it'd be WHOG classic rock or NPR that night. It also inspired me to really delve deeply into the creation of my mask and really make it mean something significant to myself and my identity. Like the random lady in the gallery, I want to embrace life and take every opportunity to show the world who I am (and am not), however scary that may be.