See notes on “Whose reality” for numerous examples about different perspectives. Here’s a few more that I’ve been collecting.
Fake personas: According to psychologist Graham Long we are all constructs to one degree or another. “You build what you need to build to justify the path you’re on”. Whilst Willy constructs the ideal image of the salesman, with the help of Dave Singleman, Sally Belling, interviewed by Stephanie Wood in the Good Weekend also invented a story about a poverty-stricken and abused child – one of 13 – who was abused by a step-father. Whilst her sister Rachel acknowledges that the parents’ divorce was sad and difficult, she said the rest was invented by Sally who slipped into a destructive cycle of drugs and sex. As Long suggests, it is easier to construct a persona, then face the consequences of some very foolish and unfortunate decisions. In Sally’s case, her anger and resentment led to decisions that led to a cycle of lies, deceit and chaos.
Different opinions
In the wake of the Hurricane Katrina natural disaster tragedy in New Orleans in 2005, there were varying responses to the event. These responses differed depending on the role of the person, and their degree of disadvantage.
“I think we have a clean sheet to start again. And with that clean sheet we have some very big opportunities” (Joseph Canizaro, one of New Orleans’s wealthiest developers)
The story of the victim: “I really don’t see it as cleaning up the city. What I see is that a lot of people got killed up down. This isn’t an opportunity. It’s a goddamned tragedy. Are they blind? (Jamar Perry)
It is not just parents who try to influence a child’s upbringing in many different ways.
Political leaders and media owners and writers also have a big influence on the reality of a country’s citizens. Leaders of a country, or those in a position of political and social power, also try to influence the realities of its citizens.
Just as Willy constructs a fictional image of an idealised salesman, so too does Kim Jon Il construct an idealised version of North Korea, the “Hermit Kingdom” through the clever tactics of its propaganda department.
One of the tactics used by the propaganda department is to create false personas that promote an idealistic image of North Korea. Citizens are encouraged to believe that they, like Voltaire’s Candide, live in the “best of all possible worlds”.
In his book, Dear Leader, former North Korean poet, Jang Jin-sun writes, that as a worker in the Party’s Propaganda Department, he took on the persona of a South Korean poet, and wrote poetry in support of Kim Jong-Il from the perspective of an outsider. This was a clever propaganda tool. The poems gave the impression that outsiders admired the North Korean leaders and believed that the army was mighty and powerful. It made the North Koreans feel as if their country was special, and influential and that it was a desirable place to live.
Does this mean that the North Koreans are encouraged by the cultural “phony” leaders to imagine that they are sharing a lifestyle and reality with the South Koreans?
In many ways, the North Koreans are encouraged by their “phony” leaders to imagine that they are living a better lifestyle than those in South Korea.
Discarding a phony reality: parallel with Biff: Jang Jin-sung who wrote “Dear Leader” (2013) says he rejected a promising career and the reality constructed by the Commander in Chief because he soon realised that it was a fake reality. After he saw a woman in the market in Dongdaewon trying to sell her child for just 10 cents, he realized just how desperate the lives were of so many North Koreans. He realised that the glowing paradise of North Korea was a myth. Eventually, he swam across the frozen river on the border with China and sought asylum in the South Korean Embassy in Beijing.
Misrepresenting reality” / fear: and manipulating the public’s trust can lead to a betrayal of trust.
After school, I often go for a stroll in the parklands at the back of our estate. It is lonely, peaceful and serene and I can think, unwind and listen to the chirping of the honeyeaters and the …. However, after the murder of 17-year-old school girl, Masa Vukotic, in the park in Doncaster my mother has forbidden me to go for a walk alone. She says that I must either go with my brother or just keep to the streets near the shops. She keeps telling me what the chief Detective Inspector Mick Hughes told ABC Radio National, that parks are not safe for females. He said: “I suggest to people, particularly females, they shouldn’t be alone in parks”.
Link to prompt: It makes me really angry that such psychotic and unstable people can influence where I can and where I cannot walk. As Dr Lauren Rosewarne, a Melbourne university academic, says, such comments place an emphasis on women’s activities and not the men’s criminal activities. This is an absurd situation.
One detective said that we are ignoring known threats to investigate potential ones. He said in the past three years, known “urban terrorists” have raped three innocent girls. “We have got it wrong with the allocation of resources.”
Different versions of reality often depend upon our role in the group – insider (those who determine the dominant views and values) or outsider (those who are marginalised because of personality, skin, appearance, gender, social status or age).
People’s views often differ once they have had first-hand experience of life’s challenges and tragedies. For example, those who have the misfortune of witnessing some of nature’s most horrific disasters, will change their perspective on life. Becoming less secure, and more in tune with the vagaries of life, they are often become emotionally dislocated (do not process fear and guilt). (Think about the survivors of “Black Saturday”.)
A physical or mental disability informs a different perspective. Generally our physical and mental realities are linked, one influencing the other.
For example, Tim Sharp is an autistic artist whose most popular drawings are those that challenge the viewer to see reality from Tim’s autistic or rather very literal perspective. (In autism, language has a literal meaning.) Eschewing a metaphoric or symbolic take on reality, Tim’s “the Barbie Queue” relating to the family’s outing to a barbecue, features a line of Barbies in a queue waiting for a barbecue. As mother Judy Sharp states, “no one looks at a barbecue the same way any more.”
Compare the cubists’ view of reality as artists such as Picasso and Matisse challenge us to see objects in obscure three-dimensional shapes. Or Dali’s desire to obscure his paintings through visual ambiguity. (See notes on Whose Reality) asking us to consider how multiple perspectives can exist simultaneously.
Return to Revision Notes for Whose Reality/Death of a Salesman