Eternal Clown: The Facets of a Persona

"I'm Pierrot. I'm Everyman. What I'm doing is theatre, and only theatre... What you see on stage isn't sinister. It's pure clown. I'm using myself as a canvas and trying to paint the truth of our time on it. The white face, the baggy pants— they're Pierrot, the eternal clown putting over the great sadness." - David Bowie, The Daily Express, 1976.

Not everybody is who they seem— whether performing on a stage or presenting to strangers in day-to-day life, there is a front almost everyone puts out for the world. Though seemingly deceptive by description, a persona can extend itself in a myriad of ways depending on who has curated it. There is no doubt that there is power in being your true self, but there is arguably even more in crafting a version of yourself that you’ve always wanted to be. Everyone has their reasons– confidence, selling a product, vanity, etc.– the possibilities are endless. However, whatever it may be, there are several factors that go into an effective persona and a number of pros and cons that follow suit.

A persona can typically be referred to as the mask we show others. Depending on the scenario, there are innumerable ways that these can manifest. While some personas are circumstantial, like an alter-ego situation, there is also a great deal of fixed personas that are life-long. The different people you interact with can even cause shifts in which facets of yourself that you present— how you act around your friends versus how you act around your family can serve as a blaring example of this theory. Even so, these can be grouped into a number of categories depending on how the user wishes to carry themself.

There are four titular personas in basic terms: goal-directed personas, role-based personas, engaging personas, and fictional personas. While used for social interactions, these four types were originally created with the design thinking process in mind. A goal-directed persona typically focuses on what the targeted audience can do with the created persona; like in business when a company is trying to market toward a certain demographic. As for role-based personas, they are not much different than goal-directed personas, save for a specific focus on behavior rather than a wider audience. Engaging personas combine both goal and role-based personas but are primarily focused on engaging an audience, hence the name. Lastly, a fictional persona is a master blend of all of the aforementioned persona types created as a front or character put out into the world. The four types aside, not all personas fit these guidelines exactly and can be casual projections of who someone may want to appear as in their public sphere.

Although it can be argued that everyone has their own personas, perhaps the most interesting ones were born from the minds of the world's greatest artists. Through writing, photography, music, and all other art forms, artists use personas as extensions of themselves to tell stories and express themselves in ways that using their true selves could not typically convey. Though alter egos most definitely used to be more apparent, they continue to live on in media in different ways. One of the most well-known examples of this is David Bowie’s quintessential character, Ziggy Stardust. Ziggy Stardust is an alien messiah bespoke in a menagerie of glitter and bright colors used to tell the narrative of the album Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, released in 1973. While this persona quickly became primarily associated with Bowie, throughout his entire career he was constantly inventing an assortment of different personas like Major Tom, the Thin White Duke, and The Blind Prophet, just to name just a few. David Bowie isn’t the only one who has created his own personas though— In the world of photography, American artist Cindy Sherman has also become renowned for her chameleon-like qualities. Unlike Bowie, Sherman shed her skin hundreds of times in order to create her iconic self-portraits that depicted her visual shapeshifting into various different characters throughout her career spanning several decades.

In the more present sphere, the study of personas within art continues to be observed popularly with the likes of Nicki Minaj, The Neighbourhood, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and countless others. One of the most interesting examples of this outside of the modern music realm is British visual artist Nadia Lee Cohen’s approach. In her remarkable new book, HELLO My Name Is, Cohen dreamed up an assortment of personas based on name tags she has collected over time and physically transformed herself using intense prosthetics, clothing, and accessories. Looks aside, Cohen paired these transformations with clips of dialogue for each persona, stating that they had helped her fully immerse herself in the several different roles. There is an enormous amount of effort that goes into carefully crafting an effective persona that can tell an audience a story unlike any other. Bowie, Sherman, Cohen, and the endless lists of persona-possessing artists alike, it is an opportunity to create an immersive and complex experience that adds layers to fully understanding and conceptualizing a piece of art. However, graces aside, this dedication and effort do not go without its struggles.

The art of persona runs far deeper than creating a character as a mode to showcase one’s art. At times, personas can prove to be detrimental to the mental health and well-being of an artist. Using David Bowie as an example again, his eponymous neo-Fascist persona, the Thin White Duke, became a parasite that slowly gnawed away at his psyche from late 1974 to early 1977. During this period, Bowie was self-described as, “A very Aryan, fascist type; a would-be romantic with absolutely no emotion at all but who spouted a lot of neo-romance”. Later in his career, he expressed deep regret for his actions and attributed the persona taking over due to his intense addiction to cocaine at the time. Persona and identity go hand in hand, and with certain factors (like an addiction) one can begin to champion another. While persona is an important facet to life, one must not lose themself in the process of showcasing themself as someone else. It’s crucial to find a balance in order to not succumb to a level of all-encompassing darkness that comes forth once you’ve lost your true identity. As for anything in the world, too much of anything can have its negative impacts.

Benefits and drawbacks aside, there is a power to persona unlike anything else. A persona is a mask we all show to the world, sensationalized or not, that helps us navigate through becoming more self-confident and assured during day-to-day life. Clown, performer, business, or an average person maneuvering through the trials and tribulations of life, personas have proved to be instrumental in curating an identity outside of who one is at the core. Although it's easy to get lost in keeping up a front for others or maintaining a character for a narrative, it’s critical to remain true to your values, interests, and life’s philosophy when crafting the persona that you showcase to the world.