On a superficial look, Richard Sargent’s Anger Transference appears a bit ordinary, a cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post which was issued on March 20, 1954. Just from looking at its name, we understand that what happens in it is supposed to be viewed as a course or transference. Remarkably, it starts with the image of a man who is busy working, with the domestic situation, the presence of a child, the presence of a pet, and the pressure that is felt by all figures involved in the process.

In a chain of events described while discussing the image in question, a boss shouts at an employee, an employee comes home and starts yelling at his wife, she yells at her child, who then shouts at the cat.

The painting represents social anger. The individual pictures speak for themselves, but taken collectively, they do not stand alone. There is a connected syntax of the individuals; an action of one individual turns into a position of another, humiliation becomes annoyance, and control becomes submissiveness. When it gets to the weakest link of the chain (the cat), it illustrates a reality. Emotions are personal, migrate, settle down, and get transferred.

In comprehending reality, symbolic interactionism is one of the most significant sociological theories. Due to the fact is based on a relatively simple idea, society is not a coming entity to be ready-made but the constant being created in millions of interactions. Instead of viewing individuals as passive creations of the culture and actors whose behavior is determined by institutions, we create our own interpretation. Apiece smile, apology, insult, or irony we exchange between each other, look, and every single interaction carries certain meanings during interactions.

Although not biologically inherited, the reality depends on the meanings of the behaviors. For example, the nodding of the head could represent respect in one case and agreement in the other, and recognition of the individual’s existence.

The roots of symbolic interactionism can be traced back to the pragmatic school of thought in America, particularly the works of George Herbert Mead, before the formulation of the theory by Herbert Blumer in 1937. Both rejected the concept of instinctual explanation of behavior and the notion that society is an entity separate from individuals. Human beings have a unique ability to use symbols for communication purposes, such as words, gestures, expressions, objects, and performances. Socially, the meaning is acquired.

We create the image of what we think about a certain situation, anticipate our reactions, negotiate situations, and transform ourselves and the society we are living in. It is seen as a form of dialogue.

Later, Blumer distilled the perspective into three propositions, which became its defining principles:

“Human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them. The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows. These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters.”

With such propositions that go into revealing the reality of affairs, we respond to objective reality, and the reality meanings hold for us. Such meanings are social constructs. As far as meanings are concerned, they have been socially constructed through means of communication and repetition, and change where necessary.

To give it a larger frame, you can see it like a police uniform cannot exert its power without a general consensus about what it means, a wedding ring becomes meaningful when a whole society agrees and signifies the bond of matrimony, money loses its worth if no one believes that certain papers or coins have economic value, etc. Meaning lies neither in the existence nor in the appearance but in the interpretation.

In terms of emotions as well, there is no universal interpretation of an angry look or shout. One worker could take the comment by a manager as useful and constructive advice, while another would feel offended by it, while yet another would interpret it as a reflection of the manager’s bad day. The event is the same, but the results are not because we understand it in our own way.

Strongly, it is connected to what came to be called the “Rashomon effect,” deriving its name from the movie made by Akira Kurosawa called Rashomon. In the film, different witnesses of one event described it in different ways, observed the happening, and interpreted it as well.

Under the symbolic interactionist view, such contradictory perceptions are a distortion of the truth and an illustration of how meaning is created through interpretation. Automatically, emotions are triggered by an event and are heavily influenced by the meaning. We attach to a situation the meaning of the process of interaction.

Towards literature and visual arts, paintings, novels, and movies convey messages via open-to-interpretation symbols. For example, a closed door can stand for privacy, exclusion, fear, secrecy, or opportunity, depending on the context in which it appears.

In contrast, the broken mirror, despite not having any of the aforementioned features, can serve as a symbol of fragmentation, remorse, or ill fortune. As far as the case of the table as an ordinary object is concerned, its importance is due to the reason that these objects can symbolize understanding in the two images, since in one of them they can create harmony, while in the other one disharmony.

Extended by Mead to explain the process of formation, the self is constructed through our ability to imagine how we look in the eyes of others instead of thinking of the self as being innate or already present from birth. Identity is shaped via methods such as communication, role-taking, approval, criticism, embarrassment, and recognition. From the point of view of the “generalized other,” we learn to think of ourselves, the set of expectations imposed on us by society as a whole.

From this point of view, Anger Transference appears to be a commentary on the dynamics of meanings. Unlike a meteorite, which symbolizes a random act of anger from the blue, it illustrates the way anger gains its trajectory. The severity of the boss is a social action, an acquired sign of its meaning from the employee.

The employee’s reply is an interpretation of his status. In addition to suffering, he is subordinate, and the realization becomes a part of the subsequent. By the time it reaches the kid, the initial insult has been interpreted in the family context as a form of irritation and command. Finally, the cat receives the remaining element of the interaction regardless of whether it has no part at all.

“Transference” indicates a relationship. The anger cannot stay put where it started, getting transferred between individuals, contexts, and roles in society. According to Mead’s explanation of selfhood, the idea of self develops through communication, by being able to assume the position of the other and seeing oneself from the outside. At least to some extent, one’s sense of self will be defined by the way one gets addressed, responds, and recognizes oneself. It looks like the individuals in the Sargent’s painting have trouble with such a structure.

If we focus on the painting as a series of images, then the office, the home, the child’s world, and the world of the animal create a descending ladder of relations. First, there is the world of work and power. Second, there is the world of marriage and order. Third, there is the world of parenthood. Finally, there is the world of an animal that will never be able to respond. Every descent involves a status change.

There is no need to indicate a hierarchy in the painting. Simply, in such a way, hierarchy is immediately seen in the way anger moves around, and it is one of the symbolic interactions: power is created in little relations and responses to the objects.

Through the look, the turn of shoulders, the concentration, and the lack of taking it all, there are the everyday gestures of ranking. Symbolic interactionism studies such everyday gestures. In cues, our lives are interpreted by others. A glance may speak volumes, silence can be a punishment, yelling can denote authority, or fear, or both at the same time. In the painting, each figure is constructed of such cues. It has to be deciphered against the backdrop of the previous one.

When considering the chronological context, the work itself is from the middle of the 1950s, usually portrayed as an era of stability, economic prosperity, and a family-oriented lifestyle. However, such peace was always partially staged. Policy-makers, magazines, television, and advertising made an effort to present the idealized model of the nuclear family.

The husband would be working, while his wife would be running the household and raising children in the orderly private sphere. In spite of it, the reality for women, people of color, and the climate of the Cold War period added more complexity to the part in terms of showing its tensions.

While order was glorified during the 1950s, it depended on the need, making sure the pressure was invisible. The boss cannot be told off in response, so the employee must carry the shame. The wife cannot react to such rudeness with her aggression directed upward, so she directs it downward. The child, being more vulnerable, uses the same pattern with the cat.

The picture is about the price we pay for the inequality of speech. Who is permitted to be rude and towards whom, and who is free to speak without consequences, and who needs to transform our emotions into another form?

In a more subtle implication, each figure seems to be learning from the individual before it. Since symbolic interactionism views identity as an outcome of participation, children learn certain rule sets through repetition and what is acceptable or unacceptable in the particular. The concept of the self, and taking the role of others in our own experience as formulated by Mead, and the idea of the looking-glass self of Cooley, indicate about oneself through what other people might think about oneself.

In the painting, the child seems to have learned about an environment in which frustration has to be channeled elsewhere. Of course, the cat itself is not a moral entity in the same way, making it the most important point in it. It is a creature without the ability to negotiate its fate.

If the symbolic interaction was interpreted mechanically, then the action comes after the meaning linearly. However, processes are more complicated. According to Blumer’s theory, meanings should be processed and transformed by people and not transferred like a signal. We can negotiate, oppose, misinterpret, and transform signals altogether. Regardless of whether it is not predetermined, the chain of anger is clear, and there is always a possibility for each to end otherwise. The employee could behave in a different manner, the wife could choose a different tone, and the child could stop there.

Whereas Mead’s emphasis is on the source of the self and how identity results from communication and role-playing, Blumer’s focus is on reinterpretation, which helps construct the meanings in the process of action. Cooley would call our attention to how we see ourselves in the responses of others and construct our self-concepts, just complementary ones. In Anger Transference, we can see all three aspects. Every individual both watches others and is being watched altogether, interprets a previous situation, and becomes, through the process of reaction, a little bit of a different person than before.

Usually, symbolic interactionism starts where abstractions stop in habits of response, repetitive acts, and everydayness. Sargent’s picture is all about the routines of office, family, child, and animal, yet it is the routine that makes the anger so powerful. It is culturally understandable. We know how it feels when we criticize each other professionally. However, nobody does it in the domestic one. We know how different criticism looks from the perspective of a child. The picture uses the social language that we all understand. In other words, it relies on recognition.

To determine if the artist risks turning a cycle into natural law, then, after all, is to argue about the transferred anger from one person to another. While it does not necessarily mean it, you cannot help but attend the term in the manner that makes anger sound like a neutral substance flowing through a pipeline.

In structure, symbolic interactionism puts the emphasis on agency. Meaning gets interpreted by people blindly and can be interpreted as a criticism of reality. The boss’s position, the husband’s irritation, the mother’s vexation, and the child’s cruelty towards the cat are learned forms of behavior.

By being a Saturday Evening Post cover illustration, the painting was designed to be seen by a mass who were not confined to the circles of the fine arts world. At its core, symbolic interactionism focuses on the discourse of communication and language. Thus, the painting is twice as public since it is both an illustration for a magazine and a reflection of exchange.

The class is very accessible and, nevertheless, morally sound. Since successful art directed at the public always manages to allow us to think afterwards, Anger Transference manages the feat well, causing us to smile, grimace and recognize our smile as premature.

In my opinion, the fundamental issue with the particular lies in how we are influenced by the process of how the events are supposed to shape us. In other words, the employee is supposed to interpret and internalize the insult, and express his identity lightly. Similarly, the wife is supposed to translate it using the language of domestic power relations. And the child did it with the cat as well.

There is enough space for the invisibility of interpreting in symbolic interactionism. Indeed, the self is a proceeding conversation with the outside world. Tragically, the anger exists, but the tragedy is in the way we learn to arrange our relations in terms of it.

At the same time, the painting is an illustration of intelligence paradoxically. No matter how inadequately, each individual perceives the space of actions. There, each reads the room and reacts to the operating powers. We are interpretive creatures, and the feeling of frustration and silence is social. The action of attacking a weak person reflects how we have gained by positioning ourselves in relation to the available hierarchy of responses. In other words, the painting shows the existence of certain literacy, which is used by the characters, understanding exactly what position we hold and reflecting it through our behavior.

Necessarily, violence does not have to start out as it turns into it. A tone might do it, a look of power might improve it, and a provocation might make it look for another, more secure target. Domination operates in sequences, and there is no one explosion that makes sense of all. Not imposed, reality is constructed in interaction. The office scene establishes the conditions under which the home scene is possible, and the home scene establishes the conditions under which the child’s reaction is thinkable.

Maybe because it shows us how easy it is to mix up moral life and social standing. In symbolic interactionism, there is no need to decide between individual and society. The reciprocal is how a man is reproved and turns into a reprover, a woman is turned into the next pressure point, a child turns into the next interpreter of pain, a cat is turned into the last witness, and an apparently simple family joke begins to appear as an image of legacy. We see a pattern of meaning, which is repeated until it is normal.

What we repeatedly do can seem to become destiny.

How do we respond to what is done to us? Oftentimes, the response is to pass it on. But if meaning is generated in communication, so, too, can meaning be altered in the same way. The cycle may be broken, or at the very least disrupted. There may be an act of waiting before speaking, a refusal to pick off an easier mark, or the realization of a simple acquired gesture.

Regardless of not being an inviolable rule of nature, it makes sense of its spread. We are fragile enough to be injured by a look, but malleable enough to be transformed by it as well.

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