COVID Masks as Semiotic Expressions of Hate

Abstract

In April 2021, as COVID briefly appeared to recede in the United States, Fox News host Tucker Carlson went on a lengthy rant against mask wearers. It appeared as if, to paraphrase Hegel, the owl of Minerva was flying at dusk. Why complain about masks at the very time mask mandates were being rolled back and society was—or so it seemed—returning to normal? The answer must lie in the mask itself, and what it represents. In anti-masking discourse, the mask has had two symbolic meanings—mask wearers as sheep, and the masks as burqas. Sheep are obedient, while burqas are instruments of social control. At a deeper level, the very act of mask wearing becomes seen as oppressive, while revealing one’s face is freedom itself. This view of masking (and revealing one’s face) is not new, rather it dates back in Europe to a “revolutionary transparency” that emerged in the wake of the French Revolution that has been appropriated by anti-maskers. While the sheep and burqa images have some play in anti-masking discourse, the connection between freedom and showing one’s face is the most durable message anti-maskers see conveyed by the COVID face mask.

Masking and meaning during the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…An emergent sociology of masking during the COVID‐19 pandemic suggests that these themes continue to be relevant frameworks for studying the ostensibly practical, typically non‐representational masks worn during the pandemic to prevent the spread of disease (Leone, 2020). Past research illustrates how COVID masks obtained multiple, contradictory definitions, from being portrayed in public health campaigns as an enactment of social responsibility (Lupton et al., 2021; MTA, 2020), to being equated with “muzzles” or charged with turning people into blindly obedient “sheep” (Kahn, 2022; Leone, 2020). The findings presented here contribute to the sociology of masking literature by documenting other meanings of masking related to trust and loyalty, and further, by illustrating how people negotiated masking's multiple, contradictory meanings during interaction.…”

“…However, facemasks worn in COVID times also obtained complex semiotic status (Leone, 2020), as evidenced by their entanglement with political identity and notions of collective responsibility. Masking emerged as a highly politicized topic early in the pandemic, with partisans and elected officials on the political left in the U.S. expressing support for masking and mask mandates, while for many conservatives, masking became a symbol of “unfreedom”, oppression, and social control (Kahn, 2022). Masks and the practice of masking soon became “a symbol of partisan animosity enrolled into larger patterns of affective polarization” (Scoville et al., 2022), serving not only to reflect existing divisions but also to reinforce them.…”