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Staging Consent: Performance and Visibility in Social Media

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2026, 39(1), pp.165~192
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama
  • Received : March 25, 2026
  • Accepted : April 11, 2026
  • Published : April 30, 2026

Kim, Dasan 1

1국립한밭대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The essay examines the performativity of social media by understanding it as a theatrical space in which the self is curated, managed, and staged. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s ideas of “front region,” “backstage,” and “impression management,” this study considers how these notions re-work within digitally mediated environments. In particular, it explores the intersection of social media and performance by looking into the way Christine Quintana’s 2018 play, Selfie, deals with the matter of consent. The play dramatizes a case of non-consensual sex between two high school students and the subsequent circulation of the incident on social media. On the one hand, the play’s evasive depiction of the case makes the question of consent a matter of interpretation rather than verification, On the other hand, the viral spread of mediated narratives without consent troubles any stable distinction between private experience and public exposure through collective spectatorship and commentary. The characters’ online self-presentations are highly mediated performances targeted toward an audience. Characters communicate via posts, audience feedback loops, and subsequent self-responses. In doing so, the characters perceive the “real” or “authentic” as grounded in a real-fantasy binary that implicitly claims access to truth. Yet within the ontological conditions of social media, where mediation is constitutive, such a concept of “real” is almost impossible. The idea of the “unmediated” emphasizes the suspension of representational filtering. However, Selfie demonstrates that authenticity is inevitably compromised by the very processes that translate lived experience into images and narratives. Eventually, this study extends its inquiry beyond its immediate engagement with social media and addresses a broader ethical challenge in the AI era, where authenticity is no longer guaranteed and where algorithms influence individuals’ preferences, behaviors, and even the formation of identity.

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