Throughout my study and discussion about the “the mask” I found that there is one thing that all masks do. Masks are ever present in different societies, in different times. They are worn by “healers, theatrical and carnival perfomers, wrestlers, ball guests, executioners, and their victims, burglars, and terrorists, the KKK, welders and surgeons, ice hockey players, and fencers” (Mack 1994). They are universal things, in the same way that the face is a human trait. In the way that every human has a face, every culture has some form of mask. And the reason is this: the mask acts as the ultimate mediator. The mask is a thing that goes between and transitions from back to front, inside and outside, concealing and creating, audience and actor, comedy and tragedy, acting on and being acted upon, friend and stranger, good and bad, expectation and reality, male and female, personal identity and the other, human and beast, death and life.
Masks are the ultimate mediator between human to self and human to human, transcending physical things.
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