Masks: The Faces We Present the World
Since one person may display several faces to the would, it can be difficult to discern his or her true identity behind the mask. Commentator and anthropologist Meredith Small confronted such a dilemma quite literally.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Commentator and anthropologist Meredith Small has been thinking about some of the items she looks at every day at work.
MEREDITH SMALL:
A couple of interesting faces caught my eye the other day. They're a collection of Ndembu masks from Zambia, and they lay on a table just across the hall, one behind another, staring into space. The masks are made of some sort of brown, lumpy clay that has been shaped into the approximate features of a very large human face. Some have bulging eyes, others circular mouths pushed into a pout, and my favorite is crowned with white feathers. Each mask is painted with white stripes and dots.
I know that most people don't usually see such faces at work, but this is an anthropology department, where bits of human culture are lying around all the time. And masks are one bit of culture that seems to pop up all over the globe. People have a universal compulsion to cover their faces with some other face.
These Ndembu masks are used in traditional dances as part of a costume. In that context the masked dancer becomes an actor, inhabiting another person or creature or spirit. The purpose of the dance is to entertain or tell a story, sometimes to cure the sick or exorcise an evil. The mask is worn to put the actor into character and also bring the audience closer into the performance. The human face is so powerful, communicates so much without even trying, that sometimes it has to be obliterated for art's sake.
Masks are also used to hide, to become someone else. Think of the masks the children wear on Halloween or the masks used for Carnaval. The idea is to be someone else for a while, and this I fully understand. There was a period in my life where everything was falling apart, but I had to keep going about my business as if nothing were wrong. One day at a fair, I bought a paper mask on a stick. It was a happy face painted in purple and dusted with glitter. I hung it on the wall as a reminder to myself that I was living a lie, and I knew that I had finally retrieved my life and myself the day I tossed that mask into the trash. The face on top and the face underneath were once more back together.
But even today when I no longer need to hide, I have an urge to pick up one of those Ndembu masks and try it on. How would I look wearing that thing and, more important, who would I become?
NORRIS: Anthropologist Meredith Small lives in Ithaca, New York.
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