Hochschild Deep Acting Analysis

In this situation, the young man was not really thinking about acting. In fact, he does not even have an external audience to witness his presentation of feeling, because he is in complete privacy. Nevertheless, feeling vaguely troubled because he was not upset enough, the young man tried to imagine the feeling he ‘should’ have, by evoking an ‘as if it is real’ condition. This might seem like fakery but was in fact his way of making his relationship real to him: he is actually trying to present his emotional respect to his friend via the currency of deep acting.
What Hochschild reveals here is that sometimes we routinely stir up a feeling we wish we had, and at other times we block or weaken a feeling we wish we did not have. This is a form
Hochschild (2003, p. 48) argues that when we look back at our past, we often alternate between two understandings of ‘what really happened?’ According to one, our feeling was genuine and spontaneous. According to the other, it seemed genuine and spontaneous, but in fact it was secretly managed. To understand which will ultimately make more sense, we are led to ask about our present feelings: ‘Am I acting now? How do I know?’ Through these reflections we try to ascertain which of our feelings is an illusion, and, thereby, also try to know our true feelings and, thus, our true self. So by managing our feeling through surface and deep acting, we get to know or produce a sense of our inner self. With this knowledge we can tell whether or not we compromised our real self in the course of managing our
According to Hochschild (2003, p. 56), we have seen, feeling is a pre-script or moral stance which, reflected upon, is used for directing action. We have seen how Hochschild argues that we often manipulate our emotions through surface and deep acting before we are able to display them. However before any of that can materialize, Hochschild believes we must ensure that our emotions and actions are parallel with the norms and expectations that are found in every social setting. The question she asks is this: how do we ensure that our emotions and actions stay parallel with the norms and expectations of that particular social setting? Her answer refers to the use of feeling rules. Feeling rules are the guide and the pre-script to action that we use to manage our feeling in deep acting. We use them when we intervene in feelings, in order to shape and influence them (Hochschild, 2003, p.