How I Still Play Pretend
The myth of the academic life, and other feats of imagination
I was unintentionally eavesdropping the other day. That is to say, it wasn’t my intention to listen. But I did hear things. “I can finally stop pretending,” is what I heard one woman say to another. “Yes,” her friend spoke back assuringly, “that’s so good.” And I found myself momentarily caught up in their sudden, cool, mutual affirmation of realism.
I hadn’t heard enough to know what game of pretend this woman had been liberated from. But I could sense her palpable relief, and it felt a little infectious. Almost as if by reflex, I was totally distracted from the conversation by a rush of shame and discomfort. I was suddenly awash with a vision of all the various forms pretending that I am constantly caught up in. How wrong, I thought to myself. What a pretender I am. And I began to ponder what form of pretending it is that I myself need liberation from. Then, just as suddenly, I was a little angry at myself for devaluing these games of pretend. Playing pretend is one of the few forms of play I allow myself anymore.
Pretend is a wonderful word. Let’s pretend is such a lovely invitation, full of whimsy and camaraderie. It’s also such a terrible word. Just pretending makes a cruel illusion of something that we need, for sustenance. Pretending is something that I always want to do, and yet at the same time never want to do. It just depends on who I’m playing the game with, and what the stakes of the game are. But there is one game of pretend I’ve been playing for a long time that feels like it’s coming to an end, of sorts.
Child’s Play
One way to think about pretending—about games in which we play pretend—is that it’s a phenomenon of childhood we outgrow. What children often think of as games of pretend simply involve rehearsals for whatever it is that will become their real life. Children are taught to play with baby dolls, as they practice becoming mothers. They play with Barbie dolls, as they practice becoming boss ladies. They play with trucks, as they practice becoming workers whose labor just barely surfaces above the manual. They play with cops and soldiers, as they practice making social warfare. They play with stethoscopes, as they practice taking on the mystical authority of the healthcare professional.
As they grow, the theory goes, this play allows children to adjust to life as it is: life in the world of the real. Their games of pretend have given them—through play—imaginative practice. Pretending allows them to become who they are. As adults, the pretending ends and reality begins. Those games of pretend are what we lose, as the innocence of our childhood fades away in the world of the real.
What happens to our imagination, as these games of pretend die?
I suppose we could say that what adults do with their desire to play pretend is they sublimate their hunger to imagine the world otherwise into various entertainments: novels, movies, TV series, Broadway shows, celebrity culture, drag shows, drag races, TikTok. I could go on and on. We try to sustain ourselves on the regurgitated games of pretend that only a select crew of grown ups are allowed to play anymore. And we pay them (some of them, at least) for the privilege.
But we do ourselves a disservice, when we pretend as if we’re not actually pretending most of the time, even as grown ups. Most of us, most adults, live our lives in service to a series of interlocking big stories or big games—let’s call them myths, just for fun—and this calls for many repeated games and acts of pretending. We play these games so seriously, and for so long, that we think of them as the only thing that’s real. The only reality that matters.
But pretending is the underworld of most social interactions. All along, as we think we’re just being real, we’ve also been pretending. We play pretend long enough to make it feel real. We fake it till we make it.
I’ve explained to my daughter (who is seven, and watches me put on makeup with envy and fascination) that it’s a game of dress up just for grown ups, and it’s part of a bigger game of pretend that I will explain when she’s a little older. I’m sure there are many people who would question this parenting choice (there’s always someone.) Just as there are inevitably people who question my decision to wear makeup in the first place. But makeup is one of the games that I really like to play. I like to use colorful paint to both disguise and illuminate different parts of my actual face, until it’s unclear how real it looks anymore. I like the way that makeup can be both totally false and totally authentic at the same time. It’s a delicious paradox. But makeup isn’t the only game I like to play, so I tend to temper this game of pretend and play it carefully. I never have quite as much fun with it as I’d really like to.
One of the other games that I have loved to play, and have played for what feels like a long time now is the game of professor—one who inhabits and emulates an academic life.
The Myth of the Academic Life
Let me be clear: I understand that my actual job title is “associate professor”. I really am, in the very real world, a professor. I am paid to do the labor of a professor, and the students I teach treat me like a person who does this labor. I am under no illusions about this, and my intention is not to minimize the work that I do alongside my many real colleagues. But I’ve suggested that pretending is the underworld of most of our social interactions, and if this is true I simply mean there are dimensions of pretending that have deeply shaped my work as an academic and a professor.
There is, on the one hand, the unglamorous actual work that I do (the time I spend reading, preparing, grading, sitting in meetings). On the other hand, there are the glittering myths of academic life that operate in the background like a program conditioning the particular way that I work. The pretending enters into my academic life in that ethereal space where the myths hit my imagination and shape the way I think about my labor.
There are certainly insidious and oppressive elements to these myths of the academic life. One of these, for instance, is the myth that the essence of professorial authority is a kind of warm, yet distant, form of masculinity. For a visual, imagine the professor as a middle-aged white man in a natty tweed blazer (perhaps with a couple of elbow patches, if you like). He’s bearded, and might hide a cordial smile under that hair somewhere. At the end of the day he likes to recline in a cozy but stiff-backed chair, (free of any real care-taking duties) to enjoy a pipe, or a whiskey, and a good long read.
I don’t actually know any people like this, though I have a couple of white male colleagues who might come close. I don’t buy into this myth, myself. I despise it, and I understand authority quite differently. And yet, in my teaching career, I have been reminded over and over in various ways of how I fall short of this mythic ideal. I’ve heard similar reports from my colleagues who aren’t white men. Because of this, I’ve spent more time than I care to admit trying to hide my presentational immediacy behind a nice crisp blazer, as I try to play the game of being warm and distant. I don’t really wear blazers much anymore, for this very reason. It’s a game of pretend I’m trying not to play. And I’m happy to let this myth die.
There are other myths, however, that I cling to with a tighter grip. One of these is the myth of the perfectly, passionately engaged classroom. Maybe the best (or, some argue, worst) cultural image we have of this is Robin Williams, in the 1989 “Dead Poets Society” standing (along with his students) on the desk. I understand why so many teachers hate this image, and the kind of false expectations it can create for most of us. I understand why the expectation that we generate this kind of engagement and participation can lead to nothing but burnout. It’s the image of something unrealistic. And yet I nevertheless cling to the myth that there is something really electric that can happen in a classroom, that it’s possible for all of the students to suddenly turn their minds on and burn brightly together for a few brief moments.
I think, on some level, that I need this myth in order to play one of my most important games of pretend. I’ve come to realize that, every time I walk into the classroom to teach, I am psyching myself up with a little game of pretend. Let’s pretend like these ideas can be interesting not just to me, but to everyone in the room. Let’s pretend like we might suddenly break into the kind of conversation that everyone wants to contribute to at once. Let’s pretend like all of the students secretly want to put away their laptops or phones, and just wade into the debate. I’ve noticed that when I don’t play this game of pretend with myself, the discussions are flatter. My own affect is flatter. I am less potentially electric. The game changes me just enough to change my classroom. No one stands on the desk. But we often have pretty good conversations.
There are, perhaps, hundreds of little images like this—little visions that have been fed to me by culture, that have created the myth of the academic life. I won’t belabor you with more of them here. But perhaps you have some to share, in the comments?
I’m only mentioning them now because it feels to me, more and more frequently, like the whole game of pretend is falling apart. The big myth of academic life (the one containing the little myths that sustain the many games of pretend) is falling apart because it feels like academic life itself is falling apart. It’s the constant news of school closures and program cuts, the death of the humanities discourse, the deep anxieties of so many in the field, the long meetings about institutional financial problems, the disappearing colleagues, the many economic cuts that we can feel in a million different ways. The myth of the academic life feels more and more distant, and while I’m sure that this is good for so many reasons I notice that it has its negative consequences, too. It makes these games of pretend less and less easy (or fun) to play.
I worry about what will happen when the game of being a professor doesn’t feel playful anymore. I feel bone-deep exhausted, already, on those days when the playfulness feels impossible. There are other games of pretend. It’s certainly not the end of my games of pretend. I know that it’s always possible for me to put my imagination to use differently, and elsewhere. And maybe that’s better for everyone. I know many people who have been liberated from what had become an academic game of pretend that was only dragging them down. They’ve stopped playing pretend, and stopped feeling that endemic burnout. But I also worry, when I think about it, that realigning my imagination will make a palpable difference in how I do my work, and how I experience it. I worry about what will happen when the horizons of possibility that the myth opened up just disappear. I still can’t tell how much my work has always been fueled by these games of pretend.