Week 5: The Sting”: Performance, Deception, and Goffman’s Dramaturgy

1. What I Watched – A Con Game That’s Really a Social Performance

For this post, I watched The Sting (1973), a classic film starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Set during the 1930s in Chicago, the story follows two professional con men, Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker, as they execute an elaborate plan to trick a powerful mob boss named Doyle Lonnegan. The film is structured like a play, divided into “acts” with vintage-style title cards, making it feel theatrical from the start. The entire plot revolves around deception — fake identities, rehearsed interactions, and staged environments — which made it the perfect movie to analyze through Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical lens. As I watched, I began to realize that The Sting is not just a crime film — it’s a masterclass in impression management, role-playing, and team performance, all core elements of Goffman’s theory of everyday life as performance. The characters don’t just commit a con — they stage a complex performance, and like Goffman says, they carefully control every detail to shape what their audience (Lonnegan) sees and believes.

2. Goffman’s Theory in Action – The Con as Social Theater

Goffman argues that everyday life is like a stage where people play roles depending on the situation, audience, and desired impression. In The Sting, this theory is literalized: the con men construct an elaborate front stage — a fake betting shop, phony workers, rehearsed routines — to sell the illusion to Lonnegan. Let’s break down some key Goffman concepts as they appear in the film:

• Front Stage vs. Back Stage:

The front stage is the fake world the con men build for Lonnegan — the betting parlor, the scripted conversations, the formal outfits. Everything is controlled. The back stage is where the crew practices lines, gets dressed, laughs, or panics when something goes wrong. It’s Goffman’s classic setup: the place where the “actors” can drop the performance and be themselves.

• Impression Management:

Every interaction is carefully designed to produce a specific impression. For example, when Hooker pretends to accidentally meet Lonnegan in a poker game on the train, he adopts a new accent, new body language, and even makes a few intentional mistakes to appear believable. Goffman would call this “managing the definition of the situation.”

• Teams and Scripts:

Goffman says performers often work in teams to maintain a shared illusion. In The Sting, Gondorff and Hooker rely on a whole ensemble of actors — from fake bookies to telephone operators to corrupt-looking FBI agents. They all have to remember their roles, stay in character, and cover for each other if anything goes wrong — just like a theater troupe.

• Disruptions and Repairs:

There are moments when the performance almost falls apart — like when an actual FBI agent shows up, or when Lonnegan becomes suspicious. In Goffman’s terms, these are “performance threats.” The team must quickly adjust the script or improvise to keep the illusion alive. One example is when Hooker pretends to be arrested — a fake arrest used to reinforce the false reality for Lonnegan.

Even the film’s title, The Sting, suggests Goffman’s world: a sting is a performance so convincing that the “audience” (victim) never realizes they’ve been manipulated. It’s a perfect metaphor for the fragile but powerful social performances we carry out every day.

3. Reflection – Why “The Sting” Still Matters (and Why Goffman Does Too)

What I loved about The Sting is that it made Goffman’s theory feel alive — not abstract or academic, but real, exciting, and dramatic. Watching the con unfold, I started to see how much of my own life is also about performance. Of course, I’m not running a scam, but I still play roles: as a student, as a classmate, as a daughter. I choose my words, clothes, expressions — just like Hooker or Gondorff do — to make the right impression depending on the situation. It also made me think about the ethics of performance. In The Sting, the deception is for a “good” cause — tricking a corrupt man. But in real life, our performances aren’t always so clear-cut. When do performances become manipulations? When are they just social expectations? Goffman doesn’t judge; he just describes. But the film makes us ask: How real is any identity, if it can be staged so well? Another lesson I took from the film is that performance is collaborative. No one pulls off the sting alone — it requires trust, practice, and coordination. That’s true in life too. Our roles only work because other people play along. A teacher is only a “teacher” if students accept that role. A cashier, a politician, a friend — all these roles exist because we all agree, unconsciously, to follow the script. In 2025, this feels more relevant than ever. With social media, Zoom calls, and curated online profiles, we’re constantly managing impressions — just like the characters in The Sting. But unlike in the movie, there’s no final scene where the curtain drops and everything goes back to normal. In real life, the performance never ends.