"I'm Ready For My Close-Up Now": Grey Gardens and the Presentation of Self
Abstract
The paper addresses the presentation of self in the documentary classic Grey Gardens (The Maysles, USA 1976). Drawing from the work of the American sociologist Erving Goffman and particularly from the Hungarian film theorist Béla Balázs and his outline of the facial close-up, the paper elaborates on the presentation of self on the axis of framing and performing. Instead of emphasizing the premises of authenticity and true character – as is customary in analyses of the film – the paper proposes to view Grey Gardens in terms of asymmetric communication. The paper argues that it is in the asymmetric disposition of framing and performing a self that the documentary carries out the making of the Beales of Grey Gardens into legends.
Author Biography
Ilona Hongisto
Ilona Hongisto is a PhD candidate at the department of Media Studies, University of Turku, Finland. Over the years, she has studied film and media at the Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3), College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and at the University of California Berkeley. Hongisto is currently finishing up her dissertation manuscript titled “The Soul of the Documentary. Expression and the Capture of the Real”. She enjoys the writings of Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze and Brian Massumi, and is fascinated with audiovisual documentary forms and the history of film theory.