Reconsidering Masks

I usually don't read inflight magazines.  In my experience, all of them have been boring, with very little interesting content.  To make it worse, the writing is terrible, barely passable for a typical introductory writing class at any self-respecting college.  Nothing to really amuse the mind that's already drying out in the very dry environment of the aircraft cabin.

But the exception came with the inflight magazine of All Nippon Airways.  The December 2012 edition of the Wingspan had an article on Noh masks.  Having once written a quick blog post on Noh masks, I thought I'd take a look.  According to the author, the exact method of making the masks was lost to the vicissitudes of history.  It was almost extinguished during the 17th century Meiji Restoration, as the samurai class (and patrons of the arts) was banned.  Then World War II destroyed what's left of mask-making tradition.  Some artistic stalwarts, nonetheless, were trying to recover them by using modern methodology and "reverse engineering" existing masks.  Based on what I could understand, the masks must be made of wood, but not just any wood!  They must be made from hinoki wood from the Kiso Valley.  The Japanese government, it should be noted, maintains a strict limit of how many hinoki trees could be cut down since the hinoki of the Kiso Valley are considered sacred (they are used for the construction of Shinto shrines).  The mask maker uses a pencil and traces the general outline of the mask before slowly shaving off excess wood.  He/she must be ginger; one errant shave is equivalent to wasting several dollars!

The maker carves the face first before shaping eyes, nose, and mouth.  However, he/she doesn't cut a hole into them until the mask is virtually finished.  There can be no variation of eye, nose, or mouth sizes - all Noh masks have the same dimensions with regards to those three facial features.  A rich white lacquer is then applied, finishing the mask.  Now, there is an ethic to this mask-making; you can't be utilitarian and finish the eyes, nose, or mouth last (considering that if you mess up, you forfeit the entire mask!).  In finishing the eyes, nose, and mouth last, the maker hints at what makes the face a Face. Indeed, Lévinas' reflection on the "Face of the Other" is a philosophical meditation on how the Other can be "en-Faced."  The traditional Japanese response is sublime and understated - look at the eyes, the nose, the mouth.  Because you have eyes that see, nose to smell, mouth to speak, you have a face and a Face.  You live!

Noh, in Chinese characters, is 能.  This is one of those words that is so heavily contextual that, by itself, it becomes a philosophical concept.  能, by itself, means literally "to able."  Paired with a verb, it renders the verb possible.  Likewise, in Noh, the actor makes able the Noh character.  He dresses himself up extravagantly not to draw the attention to himself, but to draw attention to the character.  Can you imagine watching The Hobbit and not knowing that Ian McKellen played Gandalf the Gray?  But the point of Noh is just that - for the actor to play a character without the audience coming for the actor.  In doing so, they come not to be titillated by "entertainment" but to be enrobed in the narrative of the story.

Now I've always grown up in the church being suspicious of the notion of "masks."  We are always encouraged to be "authentic," to be who we really are.  I suspect part of the reason is ministerial - as leaders in ministry, it allows us to diagnose the problem and find solutions to them.  I suppose the logic is similar to aerospace engineering (or any sorts of engineering, for the matter); you'd want the problems to show up, preferably as soon as possible, so that solutions can be quickly found.  The last thing you want is for a new aircraft to be in service for a few decades with hundreds of them flying every day, only to find that some serious design flaw exists.  But this assumes that human beings are like machines; find the flaw early, fix it, watch it go in service for years to come.

What if we thought of masks differently?  What if, instead of living behind the masks, we live "into" the masks?  What if our masks were something so perfect, so sublime, that it is a joy to live into it?  I am reminded of the movie The Avatar, where Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington), a lame man, adopts a Na'vi-Human avatar and ends up finding more joy and fulfillment as a Na'vi than a human.  The movie ends with Jake's soul being transferred permanently into his avatar; he essentially lives into the avatar.

Now, the theological problem with this is that it suggests that our bodies, our present selves, are somehow a per se evil.  The human body, to be sure, is not that.  Christian identity is not a yearning for an identity that is not us.  It is not some "leaving out of your body" experience.  Quite to the contrary, it is some tensive liminality whereby we are living towards an identity that our original sinfulness makes impossible; yet we are not eschewing the totality of who we are.  Somehow, by loving Jesus, I know how to love myself.  This paradoxical nature of Christian existence is hard to pinpoint and understand.  Nonetheless, it is this ambiguity that makes Christian existence compelling.  We'll never get it right, but the long journey is worth it.