Portrait of a Thriller

Our visit to the National Portrait Gallery and subsequent discussion in class made me realize just how much portraits allow people to present their desired front. Then when I was sitting through a particularly boring economics lecture, I realized that being a lecture hall professor allowed something similar. With such a large class, the professor is essentially a fixture posed at the front of the class, permitted to portray himself in whatever way he sees fit.

My economics professor, who will go unnamed, paints a particularly interesting portrait of himself when presenting to our early-morning drone. Giving little personal information and having minimal back-and-forth with the students, he can be whoever he wants to. He (or maybe she) begins every class with "good morning" in some new and exotic language. Subsequently, he proceeds with the day's humdrum lecture with such fantastic inflection that it appears as if he is not the economics teacher that would be his job description, but a world traveller (as his affinity for language would imply) who has come to our class to recount the epic adventures of economists long passed and from faraway lands.

Is this a front? Who knows. Is it simply corkiness and a well-meant attempt to liven up a dry introductory class? Probably. But my inability to discern what exactly this professor is trying to pull makes the front (or lack of one) all the more perplexing and effective. This is real world Goffman.