ThirstyFish

Artists: Meg Saligman, 2002


Please read the two posts introducing the Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program and The Mural Mile before you follow the photo tour. You can also begin the tour with the First Mural.

We play many roles in life. This mural depicts some of the roles we play that define who we are. The mural is a complex work that features many embedded elements and woven materials.

We are all actors according to the Social Role Theory. Each social role is a set of rights, duties, expectations, norms and behaviour a person has to face and to fulfill. This has the implication that we behave in predictable ways. Sometimes we experience "role conflict" or "role strain", when we take on roles with contradictory expectations or roles that we are socially pressured to take. We are lead to believe that we accumulate useful experience through the many roles we play and that this experience is transferable between roles. I tend to think that this may not be so true, and in some cases this transfer of experience may be limiting or even destructive. For example, we value the opinions of a medical doctor about the state of the economy more than that of a person who we perceive to have less of a social role. Life is truly a theater.

Song of the Day: Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead (1995)