As you have been learning, communication is not always straightforward. Everyone, at some time or another, makes assumptions based on messages communicated through body language and facial expressions.
For this assignment, again consider what you have been learning about communication skills and styles. Then record an episode of a television show you do not normally watch. Watch the show with the sound turned off.
- What do you think the characters’ relationships are based on the ways in which they are communicating?
- What are they feeling and expressing based on the nonverbal behavior you are observing?
Now, watch the show with the sound turned on.
- What assumptions did you make about the characters and plot based on the ways in which you interpreted the communication you observed?
- Would your assumptions have been more correct if you had been watching a show you know well?
I have done half of this assignment in the past when I have turned on the Spanish language channels and tried to follow the story line. Usually when I turn this channel on it is either a Spanish soap opera or a talk show, the latter of which is much more difficult to try to imagine what is really happening.
For this assignment, I turned on an episode of “Mob Wives.” I had always been intrigued with the name of the show because my favorite movies are about the Mob including the Godfather Series, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco, etc. , but haven actually taken the time to watch it.
Without the sound turned on, I could follow that it was a show about women married to men with power based on the fact that all of the women seemed to be married. I also got the sense that though they were married to men with power of some sort, these women were powerful themselves and within their groups of friends. In the episode I watched, it seemed as though two of the women were each planning costume parties. In parts of the episode, there were captions when the women were talking on the phone to each other about the dates of their parties. One of the women seemed upset as her eyes changed shape, and she used her hands to talk even though she was on the phone.
I assumed since they were talking about dates that there was some conflict concerning the women’s parties they were each planning. The woman who used her hands when she spoke hung up the phone first and with a disgruntled look on her fact, almost as if she was hung up on by the other woman. When I thought about getting into this show and even as I watched it in silence, I assumed that it would be more about the women’s relationships with their criminal husbands, and their families, and less about how the women relate with each other.
When I watched the episode with the sound turned on, I learned that two of the wives were each planning a Halloween party. Since the actually holiday was on a Monday, the two wives were arguing via phone about the dates each would host a party as well as the fact that if they chose the same day, it may cause friction between their “families,” including between their husbands and their employees. Instead of my assumptions that the Mob Wives’ husbands and their relationships with each other, the show focuses on what it’s like to be in a circle of friends whom all are married to mobsters…
Though I think this was a good exercise to test our assumption-making, and for self-reflection purposes. The only thing I could focus on when I was selecting TV show to watch was that there is SO much “trash TV” on these days. I thought about what it would be like to watch a cartoon episode and practice the same exercise, or maybe having my 4 year old Godson try an activity like this, to get a child’s perspective and see his imagination at work.
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