My comment, in moderation at Hullabaloo

nt

I use the term "mediated role" as distinct from "role."

I have, as a parent, a role. I can assume the predominant cultural trappings associated with it, or remake it with my own interpretations. But, parenting a child is a role which meets the criteria of a definition of function.

We can observe a number of people performing parental functions, and in recording those observations, assign a range of behaviors to a definition, parent, which we then treat as a role. Most roles fall within this sort of accepted range.

If each generation completely re-invented human existence, and had no access to cultural or exo-somatic inheritance, it would still be possible for outside observers to describe repeated and repeatable functions as roles. People doing such and such (gathering food) would be performing a role. People doing this and that (raising children) would be performing a different role, but those roles would be repeated over time and place, because the needs in which they originate are relatively likely to occur with some universality. Everyday roles also overlap, in so much as a person can perform any number of roles during the same measurable period of time, in roughly the same range of places.

I don't think, so long as people exist, have awareness, have memory, and have mammalian children who are not born competent to provide for themselves, and have daily interaction, that roles are avoidable.

That doesn't mean they ought to be fixed, or mediated.

Where we have a real problem with fixed roles, one hopes, is obvious. Gender, sexuality and race mark historic boundaries over which disputes and blood fights about the division of fixed roles have repeatedly occurred. Fixed roles are those which are or have been assumed to be (a) more or less permanent, for those obligated to inhabit them (b) inherited according to outward appearance or physiological marker, ie, by birth as a supposed type, and (c) universal, as in applying to the people who "ought to" inhabit them, regardless of conformity to them.

There is some overlap between the common assumption of a role, and a social pressure to assume a fixed role, as measured by membership in class, where those from the lower classes are presumed to fulfill fixed roles befitting their class. In some regions, that fixity is more or less theoretical. In others, it is far more material.

What distinguishes a mediated role from an everyday role or a fixed role is intent. A mediated role is one which is created and maintained precisely to preserve a larger status quo.

There is a quality of passivity when it comes to how people treat with roles and fixed roles, generally (or, I believe this to be the case). We can observe repetitions of behavior over time, and reach or inherit conclusions about how people ought to act, according to their implied social functions. You can observe a number of people acting as body servants, and with relative ease reach the conclusion that (a) body servant is a more or less universal role, or (b) that some people ought to be body servants., especially if you are raised to believe the universality of either claim.

It takes someone in a mediated role, often enough, to preserve the illusions of permanence, or even more insidiously, necessity.

And that is the point of a mediated role. A person who occupies a mediated role understands, as a function of that role, that most roles are not in fact fixed, permanent, universal or even fair, just or otherwise tolerable. In fact, the point of occupying a mediated role is to mediate how people interact with each other, while in possession of facts which the job description of that role requires one to obfuscate.

An early example, and an obvious one, is priest. But, in our day and age, the type and kind of priest often includes commentator, reporter, spokesperson, banker or even politician, where the fixed role of oligarch often enough overlaps with the mediated role of deceiver.

The important distinction, regarding a mediated role, and that which separates it from the others, is that a person in the possession of one is often required to know that the lies he or she is telling are actually lies. The pythoness might be making drug induced utterances in good faith, but the priest who interprets them while playing with the mechanical god puppets, or mixing the intoxicants, or casting fireworks as a god sign likely knows that the gods have always needed a little helping getting their message to good believers.

One doesn't have to be a liar to be a "good" and domestic, obedient housewife. One doesn't have to be a liar to be a soldier, cop or prison guard. However troublesome those roles might be, a person can perform them and honestly believe that the role is a just, right and honorable one to assume.

There is little room in fulfilling a mediated role without knowing what the role requires.

Or something like that...

Except in some ways worse, because these guys don't even have the excuse of being bamboozled by a brilliant marketing campaign.

I'm never sure how to respond to these guys. Tit for tat doesn't work, really -- I guess the idea is always to write for other readers. Maybe this is an issue with mediated roles, as Jack Crow was talking about the other day.

What's nice about VL's cartoons is that they distill things down. Maybe just cite to them instead of responding....