Let's approach the mask as a metaphor in the spirit of George Lakoff. We use a number of metaphors everyday to indicate that we are wearing masks. There was one I placed in my last post when I interpretatively reworded Nietzsche's quote "He who fights monsters" to "He who faces monsters." We use this metaphor frequently, that is facing something. From what I understand this idiom really just means "turn your face to the face of another," but I think in some regard it can be seen as "put on a new face (i.e. mask) when you present yourself to another person." And how perfect that idiom is for such a metaphor. Obviously, in the spirit of masks, when we present ourselves to other people we are putting on a new mask. They are a new audience, and we are the actors playing a new act for them on the world's stage.
And how much more do we use "face" and "mask" as equals in the metaphor of living our daily lives? Do women not refer to putting on makeup as "putting on my face?" Have I not used the metaphor of faces when I discuss fear (i.e. "the face of all your fears")? Do we not use this same metaphor when we say the face of evil, the face of God, the face of a building, et cetera? When we are not in the mood to do something we are told to "put on a smile," or "put on a cheerful face" and just do it. Or when we are smiling at someone's misfortune we are told to "wipe that grin off your face." Or again, there's the common idiom "turn that frown upside down," as if our facial features were pieces on a Mr. Potato Head that can be rearranged and swapped out for others. I could keep going, but it is quite clear that the image of the face is interchangeable with that of the mask in metaphors of our everyday speech. Are our faces not masks we wear when we're on the world's stage?
This is leading into some Epicurean philosophy, which I will briefly introduce, but will elaborate in a later posts. In the metaphor of our faces as masks that can be swapped out like a Mr. Potato Head, we are dealing with the difference in our emotions and how we express our emotions. This is the Epicurean idea of signified and signifier, or, as the Epicureans put it, what is said and what is meant (i.e. the word and the meaning of the word are two different things). And there is difference here when we are on the world's stage: we may be mad (the emotion, the signified), but we smile and act happy (the expression, the signifier).
Since this whole search into the issue of masks started with Michelangelo Buonarroti, I feel it would be ideal to present some of his depictions of masks in his art and writings to elaborate these ideas as I go. It has often been hypothesized that Master Buonarroti painted his self-portrait on the flayed skin of Saint Bartholomew in the Last Judgement of the Sistine Chapel. The accepted interpretation is that the flayed skin represents the shedding of the skin, like a snake, to be born again. We can take this interpretation here in our study as putting on new masks to be reborn (birth a new identity). We take off one face and put on another. The snake sheds its skin for some new skin. I was told a number of years ago by one of my art history professors that written in one of Michelangelo's sonnets is: "I am Saint Bartholomew's skin" (where this is written and if it is true I am not sure, because I've never been able to find it). It is, however, practically indisputable that the face of Saint Bart's flayed skin is also the face of Micky himself (pardon me if I use my endearing nickname for such a master of sculpture, painting, and architecture as Michelangelo). Master Buonarroti was fascinated by masks, and he did many studies of them and worked them into his works (e.g. masks on the capitals of the Ionic columns on the Palazzo dei Conservatori, the mask of Nix in the Sacristy of Lorenzo de Medici, the mask on Porta Pia, the hundreds of sketches at the Windsor Castle, et cetera). Would he not have placed some significance between the face and the mask? Micky may never have had these intentions, but there is a correlation between the skin of the face and a mask, both of which, when removed, birth a new identity.
What is a face anyway? It is a layer of skin, something that can be peeled off, just like a mask. It's sort of like Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs when he puts one of the guard's faces on his own (come to think of it, Hannibal Lecter's mask - to keep him from biting people - is probably one of the most recognized masks in movie history). And is not Lecter's human skin mask not fitting for a movie centered around Buffalo Bill? a man who wears other people's skin as his own? We see it time and time again: Ed Gein made masks from some of his victim's faces, and Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. To see how extensively human skin has been used as masks, it is highly plausible Michelangelo was making a connection between the faces we put on and the masks we wear as interchangeable analogues of each other.
So there is definitely a correspondence between the metaphor of persona (mask) and the faces we wear. Perhaps that other idiom "[such and such a person] wears their soul on their face" has some significance here. We wear our personas on our faces. I would venture a guess to say that our personas and our faces are mirrors of each other as signifiers, and they signify the same thing: whatever lies beneath the mask.
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