actress (robert greene, 2014)
“I’m amazed at how many roles there are, and how we all agree to them. Even when we don’t”
When we say ‘façade’ we usually mean the exterior of a building, and when we say that we’re generally talking about one particular exterior wall: the frontage. Sometimes these facades are the actual front of the building, they’re attached to the rest of the building, part of it. And then at other times the façade is little more than a thin make-up job. Something to set the tone, but which can be easily removed without affecting the structural integrity of the building, so that the entire construction can be modernised (on the outside at least) at a later date.
Then there are other times that we say the word façade and we don’t mean any of the above things, although if you were to read between the lines carefully, you could see that actually that’s exactly what we mean.
People will tear down and rebuild the outward facing part of themselves depending on the requirements: formal, friendly, professional, caring, etc. They’ll pull in a team of builders and restructure everything at a moment’s notice. Sometimes it’s tricky, because you’ll find yourself in the presence of people who require different facades (such as everyone’s favourite part of life: introducing a significant other to family), and in those cases workmen are required to move at double-speed, making alterations and refittings at a dizzying rate.
And when the room is empty, when no one is looking… what then? What façade do you construct for yourself? Or are these moments when you can finally be yourself? Do you even know who 'yourself' is? And if so, how do you feel about the person that you really are? That's something to consider very carefully.
Anyway. Let’s create an imaginary person, we’ll call them Person A:
Person A is unhappy. Perhaps not clinically depressed, but definitely not as happy as they’d like to be. When they are with other people they put on the façade of a cheery person, and this fools everyone into thinking that Person A is actually happy. What Person A gains from all this is a protection from shame. If other people were to look at Person A and recognise that they were unhappy that would be a negative (as far as Person A is concerned) so this plan of action is winning for Person A.
Now that’s the kind of person that we normally think of when we talk about facades. We think of someone who lacks something, and then pretends they have it.
That’s all good and well, but facades can be more interesting than that. Not only can they be used to make a building look nicer, they can be used to disguise/mislead what the function of the building is.
If you think of an Opera House you make a particular picture in your head. You may go old, classical, with columns everywhere. They’re probably Corinthian, but what do I know, maybe you’re going with Ionic, or even Doric. Some of you may go with the Sydney Opera House, or even the Oslo Opera House. Here's a facade that looks like it belongs somewhere else, it changes what we think of that type of building. Anyway, if you did put forward this kind of example, stand up, because you’re going straight to the front of the class. I’m going to guess that more people know the Sydney Opera House than the Oslo one, so let’s continue with that one as an example.
Everyone knows what the Sydney Opera House looks like. You can draw it in seconds on a napkin, and even if you lack artistic skills it’s a design that will be recognised in seconds by almost anyone. Some of us know the story too, Jørn Utzon, sitting there, peeling an orange, and making shapes with the peel. It’s good stuff. But let me ask you this: what does the interior of the Sydney Opera House look like? If you said “I’m sorry Ben, I have no idea.” Then you go even further to the front. Look, I’m going to get some extra chairs from another room for you to sit on.
Most people don’t know what the interior of the Sydney Opera House looks like. Is that because most people don’t give a damn, or because we’re more interested in exteriors? I can name a large number of buildings from looking at the outside, but far fewer from pictures of the interior. Hell, I don’t even know what the interior to Buckingham Palace looks like. But I'm not sure why I'm more generally familiar with the outside than the inside.
One building that (in my opinion) has an equally famous interior and exterior is St. Paul’s Cathedral (please excuse the London-centric nature of these examples). St. Paul’s is famous for its dome, both inside and out, but the inside dome is actually kind of a cheat. It was based on St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, but Christopher Wren (the architect for St. Paul’s) ran into difficulty with the dome. His final fix was to create two domes, one exterior, and the other interior. These two domes aren’t connected. When you’re inside looking up you’re not looking at the dome that everyone can see from the outside, and vice versa for when you’re looking at the exterior. Does that bother anyone? Well it kind of bothered Christopher Wren. And it kind of bothers people who care.
So now let’s imagine a different person, Person B:
Person B knows exactly who they are, and exactly what they want. Person B loves life, and all the little things that come with it. But Person B also destroys themselves, every day, in every thing they do. Person B is unaware that they are putting on different facades with different people (as are many of us), and Person B is also unaware that they, like a tide against a cliff face, are grinding away at themselves, slowly eroding any chance they have to do the things they want to do. For Person B the concept of designing a dome like Wren’s in St. Paul’s is absolutely abhorrent. Person B works on a ‘what you see is what you get’ philosophy. Person B is hiding nothing. Except, of course, for absolutely everything.
One element of St. Paul’s Cathedral that Person B might like is The Whispering Gallery. Everyone loves this. You go up into the dome on the inside and there’s a walkway. The dome is filled with small holes. You stand by a hole, and a friend stands on the opposite side of the dome, and then you take turns to whisper into the holes. You can hear your friend, clear as a bell, from the other side. Person B might even enjoy going to the Whispering Gallery alone, then they could creep over to one of the holes and whisper into it, and find themselves talking to another them from another time, one who was handed on a plate everything that they now have to fight for, and who threw it all to the wind, dancing, singing, twirling, holding a drink aloft, triumphant, and watching their future hopes and dreams carried off on the breeze.