Interactions in the T.V. show “Two and A Half Men”
The television show that I do not normally watch is “Two and a Half Men.” For this assignment, I “DVRed” an episode with the sound off. Based on the ways that I saw the characters on the show interact with one another, I made an assumption of who had close relationships and how the characters were feeling throughout the episode based on their non-verbal cues.
For this show, there is a lot of intimacy throughout some of the episodes. Based on the nonverbal behavior, I noticed a lot of sexual attraction between Charlie and the females he interacts with. I also noticed the woman who takes care of the house to look angry or upset throughout the entire episode. I notice the smirks on Jake’s face, which had me thinking he was getting into mischief. I also noticed the awkwardness and nervousness of Alan from his facial expressions and overall demeanor.
The assumptions that I made about the character and plot based on the ways I interpreted the communication that I observed was that there are close relationships between some of the characters in the plot, Charlie has many interactions with females, Berta is unhappy, Jake is mischievous, and Alan is awkward.
I think that if this was a show that I normally watched, I would have been more accurate. Even though that I did have a good idea of the characters throughout the show, I would have been able to describe why the characters felt the way that they did or why they had one facial expression but felt a whole different way.
I also chose to watch a comedy that I had not seen before. I think it is more difficult to interpret the nonverbal cues during a comedy than a drama. In comedies, the actor's nonverbal cues are often deceptive with people using sarcasm and such.
ReplyDeleteCharacters in comedies often do display contradicting nonverbal behaviour which conveys the opposite meaning of their verbal language (O'Hair & Wiemann, 2011). This makes it harder to tease out what is happening in the situation. Your point that sarcasm was easily missed is an important one. Quite often in a situation, the individual making the sarcastic comment has a smirk on their face yet their message can be quite hurtful or insulting. Unless you know their personality and can read their nonverbal cues, you may miss out on the fact that they are being humorous.
ReplyDeleteCarolyn
O'Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2012). Real communication: An introduction. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.
It's very interesting to consider how people put out so many strong intimate and sexual cues. Much can be said without ever speaking a word. More of a reason that we need to be careful of our nonverbal language.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing. I can only imagine what it was like to watch that show with no sound. It is interesting that through body language you understood the sexual content even though you may have been a little off on your assumptions.
ReplyDeleteJosie
Josie
What a show to watch with no sound. I think it takes more to pick up on nonverbal cues with a comedy than when watching a drama. It is something for us to put our assumptions into play when just watching and then when we have sound the exact assumptions come to play. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteSarcasm is s way many of my friends and I get along. I know all of us have experienced moments where someone was not familiar with our way of interacting, and may have interpreted things in the wrong way. Thanks for sharing.
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