If only looks could kill… January 30, 2008

Well, this week we learnt mostly about non-verbal communication and the various types of non-verbal communication technics that can be used.

One that particularly interesed me was oculesics (I hope the spelling is right!). Oculesics basically refers to the usage of one’s eyes to convey a particular message. Especially in my culture (I am Indian if anyone was wondering.), where we do not actually say much, our eyes serve a very important purpose. For example, if I were to spend a night out at the club with my friends, I would have to ask my mother for her approval first. Most of the time when this happens, although she nods her head in approval, her eyes tell a different story. I know that she is displeased as she never looks at me when I ask her for permisson. Basically, she is using reverse psychology by agreeing and disagreeing at the same time. It  is amazing isn’t it?

Furthermore, I used to learn classical dance when I was younger and the emphasis that they had on the eyes was extremely great. When one dances, all the emotions have to be shown through the eyes. You do not have to look at an advertisement or look at the television to know about occulemetics. You just have to observe the people around you.

Like for instance, there is this girl in a few classes of mine. She just stares at me everytime I walk in. Mind you, its not just any other normal stare. If only looks could kill, I would have been a pile of ashes by now.

However the thing about using your eyes right, one doesn’t know whether it is positive or negative. Let’s go back to the girl whom just stares at me. I mean I do not really know whether she is staring at me because she hates me or maybe I am staring at her too. I cannot possibly go up to her and outrightly ask her “Hey why are you staring at me for!”. Firstly, the Asian culture does not allow us to practise much of this without feeling embarrassment. Secondly, she is probably going to think I am out of my mind if she in the end has no problem with me at all. The usage of the eyes to convey a message is very subjective.

Moreover, if if the girl just looks like that at every single person, then I would be the one to blames for coming up with a subjective opinion. If you want to use your eyes to convey a message to someone you have to be sure that the person reading your eyes knows what you are really trying to say. That means you and the other person need to know each other really well. Furthermore, one has to ensure that the message sent is equal to messgae received. This means that both parties involved have to be getting the same message through the eyes. Another fault with the usage of the eyes that you cannot “privately” send a message. I mean its not just me who notices that this particular girl stares. There a lot of others as well. Hence, if u send a message through the eyes, it might up result in being sent to unintended parties and inicidentally they might misintepret the message one is sending and as a result miscommunication occurs.

Oculesics is useful in cases where only non-verbal cues are used and they are very revealing. For example, Indian classical dance which places a lot of emphasis on this shows simple emotions that are similar across cultures. For example happiness is revealed with the widening of the eyes and a smile on the face whereas anger is expressed by widening of the eyes, arching of the eyebrows and lips scorning. As it is seen, oculesics is best used with affect displays as it paints a clearer picture of what the communicator is trying to say.

Therefore, when you really come to think of it, usage of the eyes to convey a message might just lead to having one to have false assumptions, and information.

Boy, am I glad looks cannot kill!

The Mist January 25, 2008

Recently, I watched a movie entitled “The Mist”. It’s actually a book by Stephen King which was adapted for the screen. Initially, I did not really want to watch the movie since I was not a big fan of Stephen King’s books. The funny thing is I first read his book when I was in my primary school. Some of his phrases, and scenes were actually a little bit too intimate for me. Hence, the eventual disgust at his books.

However, the movie really surprised me a lot. It had all the right elements that a movie should have. Suspense, comedy, and a little pinch of romance were all main elements of the movie. I was just tightly gripping the edge of my seat during almost every minute.

Let me just give you guys a brief overview. It’s actually about this small town which gets engulfed in this mist that appears after a heavy thunderstorm. In the mist, are things that really can make your hair stand on its ends. Basically, its about this man who gets trapped with his son at the supermarket where everyone runs for shelter. The story evolves around the man, and the son, and whether they actually make it out of the supermarket alive. They have a major twist . I really want to say it, but I shall not spoil the surprise for those who are planning to watch it!

 As I was saying, the movie was really good. They knew the audience’s interests, and toyed with their feelings. For example, while trapped in the supermarket, there was this Jewish women*no offence* who tried to turn the remaining survivors against one another, and all of the audience were so irritated with the woman that when she finally got shot, nearly all clapped and cheered! Do you see what the director did? He actually managed to move us through pathos, and I think that is the true success of the director!

Furthermore, the non-verbal cues, especially paralinguistics definitely played a big role. I mean in any movie, the sound effects add a special touch to the atmosphere. The sound effects actually made me tear at the end. The movie ended off sad, if you guys know what I mean.  The actors were double as good. Their emotions were well acted through verbal, and non-verbal gestures. For example. there was once when the 9 year old boy was so scared that he went back to his childhood state, and started sucking his thumb. This showed us the intensity of the fear of the people in the supermarket.

Like what I was saying above, the director knew how to make use of pathos,logos and ethos. Ethos refers to the character’s personal appeal and he or she manages to convince the reader or the audience through that. The movie was unique in the sense that there were a variety of characters, each with their own individual character. There was the heroic figure who turned out to be not so heroic when he refused to accompany a woman outside of the supermarket at the beginning of the movie. The uniqueness lies in the director’s ability to portray the heroic figure as an ordinary man just like anyone else who was involved with his own emotions and interests. However, ethos also can dissuade an audience from liking that particular character. In this case of the Jewish woman, I doubt that anyone from the audience actually emphatised with her for any reason. She was full of herself and was intent on turning the remaining survivors against one another. Therefore, the director was smart enough to apply two different contexts for the usag of ethos.

Pathos lies in the emotional context of the speech or in this case movie. Pathos is most regarded by Aristotle and other famous philosphers to be the most influential and therefore the most “dangerous”. Dangerous here means in the sense that one should be aware of the various pathos strategies used in speeches and then should critically evaluate the content of the speech. However, The Mist had a lot of speeches appealing to the pathos of the audience. For example, the director tried to move the audience by using the sound effects to create a gloomy atmosphere providing a sense of foreboding. In this case, I feel that the audience were well-knowledged about the usage of pathos and were able to critically evaluate the speeches that were spoken there. This provided a platform to gauge the evaluation of the movie as a whole. 

Lastly, logos refers to the logical content of the movie itself. I feel this is the director’s weakest point. He claims that in the mist there are creatures from other planets whom have slipped through this “window” during a military operation. It seems to me be almost like an utopian dream. It does not really try to  appeal to the logic of the audience since the subject matter is not very viable. The director assumes that everyone in the audience will just be forced to dream along with him a period where aliens from other planets try to conquer Earth. We can forgive the director for the rest of the story really appeals .

Therefore, The Mist is the movie with a nice twist, not the movie with the nice story.  

Weird or Real? January 23, 2008

I never have really thought much about communication. Therefore, when I had to take the module this semester, I did not realise that it had so much to with psychology. It was surprising that, communication, just like psychology, had different perspectives, and theories. What I thought would be a boring module has actually turned out to be very interesting, and informative.

When we talk about communication, its basically about individuals creating communication, communication creating individuals, communication as a partnered process or communication as something deeply rooted with culture which is almost tied hand-in-hand with some of the psychology theories I have learnt last semester.

One advertisement that has always interested me is the one about smoking. This particular ad has been pasted in bustops , and has even appeared in newspapers, and televisions. The advertisement tries to discourage smokers from (obviously!) smoking by showing a picture of a woman with tongue cancer, making her look very hideous. What interested me were the comments of the people.

It seemed that non-smokers actually found the advertisement to be utterly revoulting while the smokers could not care less! (How ironic is this!) In a survey posted online by the Health Promotion Board, it seems that only 47% of smokers acually stopped smoking after seeing that particular advertisement. For some, the statistics shown here might be alright, but we are in a country where almost 70% of the population are smokers and it is increasing as the years go by. In my opinion, I feel that more effort could have been put for the advertisement. One smoker even said that he knew that such a thing will NEVER occur to him; therefore, he could not care less. Even though this is an advertisement that appeared last year, when I took up this module, the first thing that popped into my mind was this advertisement since it created such a stir among the public.

Since one part of communication is persuasion, I doubt that this advertisement actually achieved its original purpose. Smokers seemed uninterested, and non-smokers were increasingly agitated. They complained that the children were getting affected, and scared unnecessarily. Hence, the media development authority of Singapore actually shifting the screening of the advertisement on the televison to after 10 pm so that the children will not see it. Instead of creating a persuasive technic to dissuage reluctant smokers, all the advertisement did was to increase the worries of the general public.

Furthermore, when the New Paper revealed that the woman posing for the advertisement was actually a non-smoking model, the little persuasion that the advertisement had was totally gone. I feel that such advertisements are just simply attracting people without achieving their main objective. I doubt that majority of smokers actually stopped smoking after seeing the advertisement. Moreover, I feel that if the advertisement actually sets out to persuade a certain group of people, den it should not straight away stop after one advertisement. Instead, they should continue releasing similar advertisements in the same format so that the public will be constantly reminded. Of course, this will be a strain economically on the sponsers.

However, it is evident that if u want certain people to stop a certain habit, they have to be continually reminded of its negative effects, if not they will just be without any apathy for that particular issue.  

Since one of the theories I have explained above talks about 4 processes, one might be wondering where these processes fit in together with this advertisement. I think this advertisement should fall under the pragmatic perspective as it is about interdependent moves that become patterned over time. For instance, the media interacted with the public by publishing the advertisement. This might be called a 2-act sequence which is known as an interact. Afterwhich, the public responded by giving negative comments to the advertisment and creating unnecessary publicity which had nothing to do with smokers stopping their smoking. Lastly, the media reacts to the public by stopping the advertisements slowly and then completely stopping the publication and airing of the advertisement.

The pragmatic perspective likes communication to a game. Likewise, the relationship the media has with the public is also like a game; each party waits for the other to respond so that eventually both parties will have patterns of interaction that satisfy them both. Furthermore, silence in this case is also considered an important part of communication. When the public keeps quiet after the advertisements are no longer being published, the media understood that the problem was solved; therefore, they no longer had to worry about the negative publicity that they would get further.

The downside to this is that the pragmatic perspective states that only the moves that the parties engage in are important, the game itself is not important. For example, the media stops publishing the advertisement after it receives negative publicity. However, it does not know whether there were any other social factors that could have affected the public’s decisions. In this manner, the pragmatic perspective dissaproves the individuality of an individual and makes creativity utterly useless.

Therefore I feel strongly that for the case of the smoking advertisement, the pragmatic perspective could be very much put into use. There are many similarities seen between the pragmatic perspective and the relationship between the media and the public. Just like this, all other communication theories can be applied to real-life situations as well.:)