There is no visible symbol in the west that has been associated with another entire hemisphere such as the MASK. People stared at Japanese tourists politely had their masks on when they had symptoms of fever or the flu while traveling in the west. Japanese well known for their civic responsibility, wanted to protect the innocent westerners from any illness.
Whether masks protect the wearer from an illness is not the question but why such stigma against those who wear the mask? We are talking about the ordinary face mask now worn by nearly half the humanity during these difficult times of a pandemic.
I had earlier written a blog about the history of the face mask and the illustrious Chinese doctor from Penang, Dr. Wu who can be considered the father of the modern mask.
(Dr Wu Liande of Penang, who was in charge of controlling the Pneumonic Plague in Mongolia in 1910)
The use of the masks spread in the East, mainly in Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam and Hong Kong during the last SARS epidemic. Currently, it is those who DO NOT wear the mask that are stigmatized, in those countries, in harmony with their concepts of civic responsibility.
In the west at least, Mask has been associated with the OTHERNESS. History will tell us that the plague of the middle ages was associated with the OTHER of that time, the Jews. Right now, many people in the west link this virus to China and thus, by default, all of Asia. In all western countries there have been reactions against Chinese and “Chinese looking” people, let us hope that this is just sporadic and will disappear.
Being an anthropologist, I wanted to delve into the symbolism of the Masks and of course once you are outside the western purveyance, one encounters all sorts of ritual masks, in Mexico, in West Africa and in Asia.
There is another aspect I never thought of, which was brought to my attention by BS, from Wuhan City. She pointed out that the aspects of the face covered in China is very different from those parts of the face covered in the West.
She sent me two images, one of a Chinese hero, his distinct features of nose, mouth and chin covered with eyes open, whereas the western hero (Hollywood style) had his eyes covered, leaving the chiseled facial features visible. In the west, villains and robbers and murderers are featured with facial masks, covering their features.
So, in the west, the upper part is covered and in the east, the lower part of the face is covered. She explained that the Chinese hero does not wish to distinguish himself from the mass of the people, whereas the western hero is distinct from the common person.
That made me think, which part of the face did Robin Hood cover?
Robin hood had much symbolism but mask was not one of them. Few centuries later when Highway robbery was in vogue, the highwaymen did wear masks over their eyes.
My friend from Wuhan made me think of the upper and lower part of the face. I was reminded of the Russian linguist and philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin and his grotesque realism (his analysis of the 15th? Century epic Pantagruel). This could be seen clearly at the Carnival in Venice with its elegance and emphasis on the upper body and the lower body accent on the carnivals in the south. In both contexts, one uses the word, carnivalesque.
VENICE
(You should be able to guess which country this is from?)
During my early years in Havana, I would come across the grotesque but I did not like the word nor the concept.
At the time of Dr Wu, wearing a mask was seen as a sign of medical modernity, and as we do now, a joint statement for the welfare of the society.
This morning at the supermarket, everyone was wearing a mask and there was a sense of solidarity which was absent just a few weeks ago. This sense of civic solidarity has been an Asian characteristic for a long time and it would be a welcome addition to the Western characteristic.
I would also think of Mask as a Metaphor, especially in context of internationalisations of cultural identities. It is becoming more and more difficult to ascribe cultural identities to faces. Thus an “Indian” or an “Asian” face has become a mask. A Cambodian Chinese born in Paris, now identifies himself as French, while his face carries the vestiges of China, his mind has eradicated both China and Cambodia out of his face. But face is such a strong identification of cultural identity, perhaps that underlies the bullying of two Singaporean students in Melbourne, Australia on a tram, face identifying them with their ancestral homeland. On the other hand, as both Philipp Rossler in Germany and Fleur Pellerin in France has shown, the inner self can be, as “strong as a bamboo”, while the mask becomes just a nuisance. Both adopted at days and months of age, rose to very high political positions in Germany and France.
ex-Vice-Chancellor of Germany
There is another type of mask, which is much less healthy. All people living in the west are aware of the people wearing this mask, best enunciated by that Martinican Intellectual Franz Fanon in his 1952 book: Peau Noire, Masques Blancs.
"The divided self-perception of a Black Subject who has lost his native cultural origin, and embraced the culture of the Mother Country, produces an inferior sense of self in the "Black Man." They will try to appropriate and imitate the culture of the colonizer where such behaviour is more readily evident in upwardly mobile and educated Black people who can afford to acquire status symbols within the world of the colonial ecumene, such as an education abroad and mastery of the language of the colonizer, the white masks" 
Most of the masks I have come across are ritualistic ones, whether in Mexico or Kerala. In some there is a sense of liminality, a human has become a spirit or in the in between state, where he, the human is in the process of being transported as a spirit medium or hollow bone to heal the sick.
Tibetan Buddhist Mask in Bhutan
Yoruba in West Africa
Bling Masks, the new ritual masks of the celebrities?
Here is a quote from an anthropologic text:
As a consequence of the depolarization of boundaries separating self and other, conscious and unconscious, material and spirit that occurs in altered consciousness, ritual participants find themselves in a highly suggestive state in which they believe the shaman "is" the spirit or god represented in the ritual and that the ritual outcomes will be effective. The masking ritual, then, is the means by which performers and participants can, under the auspices of culturally accepted practices, safely step from behind their personae to reveal their essential self by immersing themselves in the mythic divine represented through the transforming power of the mask.
These days where time is carrying thought from Wuhan to Miami to American Indians and Europe at the speed of light, a great sense of satisfaction in the mind, that unites the world.
For Min.
One of the nicest masks I have seen in my travels belongs to Kathakali
a ritualistic dance performed in certain parts of Kerala, India.
As the first of the year was arriving by the Arabian Sea, we were seated in the lawn of Bristow Lighthouse Bungalow Hotel in Fort Cochin watching a Kathakali performance
