WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?

When you see someone wearing a mask in public, what do you think and feel?

We’re all well versed in the medical use of masks: to protect the patient, to protect the healthcare professional, to protect the family. When masks get worn we know that things are serious – that someone needs to be protected from something. In serious medical settings and they’re not being worn, you worry, too. The context seems to demand it.

Yet most of us are not used to wearing masks – medical or otherwise. Apart from those who love fancy dress.

When you see others wearing a mask in a public place, a certain level of anxiety is understandable. I’ve often found myself unnerved by seeing Chinese and Korean students at our local art school walking around Camden with masks on (in a number of asian cities, it’s long been necessary because of traffic pollution). Long before the COVID pandemic. Who are they and what do they know that we don’t?

Now, of course, we see people wearing masks in quotidian spaces a lot – the German government have today announced that it’s citizens should use them in public and the Mayor of London has advocated those essential workers using public transport in London should use masks to protect themselves as they commute. Maybe the asian students were right.

Mixed in with this very functional role of masks – and all its associations – I think there’s something else involved: masks and the wearing of masks are an interesting nexus of all kinds of psychological, social and cultural tensions.

Masks and masking have long been associated with intentional disguise.

I grew up on schlock TV and radio of the 50s and 60s. One of my faves was the Lone Ranger   , for me the original Masked Man. 

Who was he? A Texas ranger – the sole survivor of an ambushed patrol,  now travels a mythical Texas and the Old West, righting wrongs and fighting wrong ‘uns , with  his ‘trusty’ Native American (‘indian’), Tonto, his horse Silver and his trademark silver bullets. When they’ve cleaned something up, some or other townsfolk asks (on cue),

Who was that Masked Man? 

“Hi ho, Silver Away” comes the reply as two horsemen gallop off into the night.

Being masked protects the Lone Ranger’s identity from those around him: helps him disappear when he wants to so he can live to fight another day.

In Ancient Greek theatre, the actors wore masks for a very different reason: to exaggerate the audience’s response to the dread and the terror embodied on stage.

In many African cultures, masks enable the wearer to embody the spirit or power of spirits and deities, to bring back to life ancestors and to add drama to religious and cultural rituals (clearly there are many African cultures with different beliefs, cultures and practices and design uses and functions vary widely)

Venice’s baroque masked balls are supposed to create more glamour and more intrigue –who was that girl?

Bank robbers wear masks to hide their identity for more nefarious reasons (though Hollywood took a while in getting jiggy with mask design).

In all these cases, a mask is temporary and once it is removed (as the bankrobbers reach their getaway car), the real human is revealed. One notable exception of course is the Joker’s clown face: a permanent mask to ensure the disappearance of his original self and to mark his new fiendish identity.

At a psychological level masks can create doubt: the point of wearing a mask to cover your face is that it makes it harder for others to read your intentions (in this case, from the tics and tells of your physiognomy).  As noted yesterday, it’s this kind of thing that our minds and bodies have evolved to do –  a core skill of the Super Social Ape  (of course, some cultures have created etiquettes and ways around the problems with face-covering but go with me here…)

Trust in others’ good intentions is such an important part of our ability to live together – to rub along with strangers and not feel threatened. To live in our cities and parks and towns and villages. To live in a world that is largely populated by others.

For many of us, masks are artefacts that can signal doubt. And fear.

And this is the heart of it: when you see someone wearing a medical mask in a public place, you’re not just seeing the medical protection and the dangers to you and yours that the need for that protection signals (things are serious, after all!).

You’re also seeing a flag that questions intentions of the other person.