Arlie Russell Hochschild discusses emotional work and deep acting in the article "Emotion Work and Feeling Rules". Emotion work, according to Hochschild is "the act of trying to change in degree or quality an emotion of feeling." Let me tell you about a woman who is a stellar example of emotional work. Her name is Betty Draper. Betty is a fictional character on a completely ridiculous television show. Betty Draper is a a horrible shrew on the inside and as the show goes on more and more of her inner wicked witch starts to come out. On this particular occasion Betty has found herself unable to deal with her multitudes of problems. (Children who act out, a cheating husband who also secretly conspires with her therapist about what Betty is saying, and neighbors with loud birds.) Betty's attempts to deep act, or force herself to feel as if she is happy in her soul-sucking role as a housewife, have failed. Despite how hard Betty worked at her emotional work of keeping up with the way people expect her to feel and behave, she's going to just lose it and start shooting the neighbor's stupid stinkin' birds.
Some days I want to be like Betty Draper, even though she's a miserable woman. Betty Draper is a character who is so genuinely unable to continue the emotional work of being a standard housewife that she does things like, oh, shooting the neighbor's stupid birds. Betty Draper has been deep acting for so long that her brain just can't take it anymore. All the times she's tried to convince herself that she should feel a certain way has just eaten away at her little brain.
While this may seem like an unstable thing to aspire to, I envy her in this moment. I think everyone has the deep desire, every now and then, to pull a Betty Draper and just do exactly what their urges tell them to do, even though the consequences could be dire. I mean, wouldn't it be just fantastic to just unleash your inner "crazy"? Wouldn't it be nice to just shoot the neighbor's stupid birds?
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