Interpersonal Communication and the Twilight Zone - Essay Example

? Interpersonal Communication and the Twilight Zone - “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” Brief Overview of the Story In the episode “Number 12 Looks Just Like You,” Marilyn is a young girl, just turned 18, and is living in a world where everybody is, quite literally, perfect. At the age of 18, every girl must choose to be beautiful. In fact, they are required to choose one of two different bodies and faces. What is more, their personalities also become just as blended as their outside images. This is not made perfectly clear – the episode centers around Marilyn's “decision” to choose her outside body and face, but it is not made absolutely clear that the personalities of everybody who choose to transform are also transformed. However, this is made clear in the end, as Marilyn, a girl who has her own mind, and who does not want the transformation, is nonetheless forced to transform, and her personality becomes exactly the same as her friend, Val, who had made the transformation earlier. The goal is to make everybody exactly the same. Why is this the reality in this universe? Professor Sig explains it. He states that the world suffered from a great deal of inequality, so the leaders of the world decided to do something about this. What they decided upon doing was that they would make everybody the same, and they would eliminate ugliness. The theory was that ugliness makes men hate, so, if nobody was ugly, then nobody would hate one another anymore. The unfortunate side effect is that the world becomes the same, and there is therefore not a place to dissent. As Marilyn pointed out, Dostoyevsky was an ugly man, yet he wrote about beautiful things. The implication is that Dostoyevsky could not exist in the present world, because he wrote about things that would be abhorrent to the people in this sanitized world. The irony is that Marilyn, herself, appeared to be a girl who might have great ideas – she was intelligent and strong-willed. However, when she was made to become like everybody else, this intelligence and strength disappeared, as she became, literally, like everybody else. We All Need to Communicate This is the most important thing to Marilyn, that she be able to communicate. It was clear that she felt that, if she were transformed, as she was being pressured into doing, she would not be able to communicate her real feelings. Marilyn had good feelings about her father, and she looked up to him. She told her uncle that she and her father used to talk about things that mattered in life. They used to talk about things that did not have to do with superficiality, which is what everybody is literally interested in after transformation. Their ideas transcended this, and the implication was that this kind of communication was only possible between people who had not transformed. So, this is what Marilyn feared, most of all - that she would lose the ability to coherently communicate after her transformation, because she understood that, after transformation, she would no longer have the ideas that she currently had. Her head would be filled with nothing but positivity and “liquid smiles,” and she apparently found this abhorrent. Not only was the ability to communicate important to Marilyn, the communication itself was important to her. She felt close to her father because she communicated with him. She wanted to feel the same closeness with her mother, Lana, and her best friend, Val. She tried to communicate, in vain, with them about how she was feeling and why she was feeling the way that she was. However, it was clear that her communication with them, and all the others, including Dr. Rex, Dr. Sig, and Uncle Rick, that her communication with them was falling on deaf ears. None of them heard her – they were only hearing what they wanted to hear, and that was that transformation was good. Therefore, when she tried to communicate the idea that, for her, transformation was bad, they couldn't understand this, and they didn't hear her reasoning. While her need to communicate fulfilled her desire to communicate, her communication was frustrated because she did not have any receptive listeners around her. Define Culture, and The Challenges To Communication Culture is the way in which we approach the world, and it explains the humanness in us that is not attributed to genetics. Culture is the way that we classify our experiences, and the way that we create our experiences. It encompasses tangibles, such as physical artifacts, and intangibles, such as language and customs. One challenge that a communicator might face when he or she is communicating with somebody from a different culture is the simple language barrier – as language itself is a part of culture, speaking different languages would be a barrier to communication. Moreover, culture encompasses such non-verbal cues as customs. For instance, a culture of a Middle Easterner might dictate that one is never to shake hands with one's right hand. If somebody who is from a different culture extends his right hand to shake the other person's hand, this might cause offense. In the case of “Number 12 Looks Just Like You,” the culture of the people around Marilyn causes friction, because she was not yet of that culture. Specifically, the customs of the people in this world was that everybody was obedient, nobody questioned anything, everybody was happy and positive, and if you did not fit in with this society, then you were literally nobody. Marilyn had a hard time communicating with everybody because the culture of everybody around her was so different from her own internal ethos. It was in her nature to question, and to not be automatically obedient, and this put her at odds with the culture. Also, it made the people around her question her sanity, as the culture was literally that everybody was beautiful and perfect. When Marilyn expressed a desire to remain just as she was, nobody could understand it. Marilyn was essentially part of the counterculture, in that she was rebelling against the dominant culture, but, since apparently nobody ever rebelled in this way, she was an anomaly, and nobody knew how to adequately communicate with her. Therefore, the communication broke down on both ends, because the dominant culture could not handle Marilyn's counterculture ideas. What Are the Primary Influences on Self-Concept? It depends upon the sex. Men form their self-concept primarily through social comparisons – how do they stack up against other males in society? Women form their self-concept primarily through reflected appraisals – how do people view me? While both sexes rely upon reflected appraisals – men secondarily rely upon this, while women primarily rely upon this – to men, parental reflected appraisals are more important than peers; for women, their peer reflected appraisals are more important than the parents. Moreover, women place more importance on connections and attachments. Men place more importance upon achievements. In this case, the self-concept of Marilyn appeared to be her relationship with her father, which is consistent with the view that girls tend to gain their sense of self from connections and attachments. Also, how her father saw her greatly influenced her, which is also consistent with the view that women form their self-concept through reflected appraisals. Marilyn also valued the opinion of Val, which is consistent with the view that girls seek out the appraisals of their peers. What her specific self-concept was, that she gained from her father, was that she, Marilyn, was good enough just the way that she was. She didn't feel the need to change, because her father reaffirmed for her that she was pretty and smart, and that she did not need to conform to what society was trying to force upon her. Unfortunately for Marilyn, this view was not reinforced by anybody else around her. Her friend Val didn't understand why Marilyn would not want to change. Neither did her mother. These two connections were, at the time, the most important to Marilyn, as her father had recently died. Both Val and Lana communicated to Marilyn that Marilyn was not good enough for society, and that she must change. Yet, Marilyn's self-concept was very strong. This would imply that her connection with her father was the most strong influence upon her self-concept, must stronger than her mother or her friend. How Does Perception Cause Us To Interpret Behavior? One of the ways that perception causes us to interpret behavior of others is that we approach the world through psychological sets. This allows us to expect and anticipate another person's behavior. In other words, everybody has a set of learned categories, and new experiences are fit into these learned categories as they come in. How one looks at the world impacts this psychological set. How one views the world and communicates has everything to do with how one views oneself, and this is another factor in how one perceives the world. Somebody who has a weak self-concept, or low self-esteem may assume that people do not like him or her, so that is how they perceive others, with the automatic negative thought that he or she is not liked. Why that person may think that has to do with experience, and this is where the learned categories come in. They may have experience that certain people do not like them – such as, say, a homeless person may have experience with rich people who disdain them, therefore they perceive that every rich person will automatically not like them. An vice-versa. And the rich person may perceive himself as being above the poor person, so this would make the rich person automatically disdain the poor person, and this is where self-concept comes into play. Moreover, one's gender also influences perception. Women see the world differently than men, therefore they will perceive different things from different actions than men. Because of the fact that gender, categorization and self-concept have such profound influences upon perception, this affected how Marilyn saw the interactions with her father. She had experience that her father loved her, and engaged her in meaningful conversation, so this is how she perceived him – as somebody who found her worthy. She found him worthy for the same reason. Her self-concept aided this perception, because she felt that she was an intelligent person who had much to give the world, and this also gave her a good perception of her father. Her gender also played into this, as her gender is what made her close to her father. The Four Components of Emotion The four components of emotion are physiological, which means that the body changes physically during periods of emotions; cognitive, which means that thoughts, beliefs and expectations determine the type and intensity of emotion; behavioral, which means that emotions may be shown by behavior (smiling, bodily postures, gestures, tone of voice); and subjective, which means that one person may find something pleasurable, and another person may find the same thing very boring. In this case, the ability to communicate with others had everything to do with Marilyn's emotions. Most of the time, during the episode, the emotion that Marilyn was feeling was frustration. She couldn't communicate with others, simply because nobody was interested in what she had to say, and this caused great frustration in young Marilyn. This showed in her exasperated tone of voice, and her facial expressions. She had very specific thoughts and beliefs, and this determined the kind of emotion that she would experience when everybody was behaving as if her transformation was something that she would be forced into doing, whether she liked it or not. Her emotions were also subjective, in that nobody could understand why she was feeling the emotions that she was feeling. The thought was that Marilyn should feel as all others feel, which is that the transformation was a positive thing, and that she should want to be beautiful like everybody else. She couldn't communicate that this was not how she was, that she was different, so this gave way to her constant frustration. She also had another strong and powerful emotion, and this was fear. She needed to communicate this as well, for she feared, more than anything, that she would no longer be herself. That she would change, inside and outside, and this would mean that she would cease to be an individual. She needed to communicate this powerful emotion, as well, but she couldn't do so. Therefore, communication was essential, but it didn't really help. Conflict The components of conflict are disagreement, action, confrontation and resolution. In this case, Marilyn had a disagreement with everybody else around her – her doctors, her mother, and her best friend. The root of her disagreement is her desire not to change, and their desire for her to change. The action component of conflict, as embodied in this episode, was that Marilyn took action in that she tried to convince everybody of the reasons why she did not want to transform – she did not want to be like everybody else, she wanted to retain her individuality, she felt that she was good enough just the way that she was, and her father convinced her that transforming would, literally, be death, as her father committed suicide because he felt so ashamed of his own transformation. She tried to be persuasive with everybody, but nobody was listening. The disagreement finally gave way to confrontation. Marilyn was not going to have the transformation, and talking with others was not getting her anywhere. So she decided to run away. She attempted to run from the hospital, because they were threatening to keep her there, and this was her way of confronting the situation, because the best way to confront a conflict, talking, was not getting her the desired results. Marilyn was actively trying to block everybody else's goal for her by running away. Unfortunately for Marilyn, the resolution came in the very end. She literally became trapped in the room where they do the transformation, and held there and presumably forced to go through the transformation. The conflict experienced in this episode, in the point of view of Marilyn, was dysfunctional. Conflict resolution should include talking, communicating and compromising. Unfortunately, because none of the characters were listening to what she had to say, communication was futile. And, because only one side was trying to communicate, this side being Marilyn, compromise would have been impossible. In order for there to be a compromise, one side must admit that they do not have all the answers. This was not the case here, as Marilyn's adversaries felt that they were completely right, and Marilyn was completely wrong. Therefore, there could be only one resolution, and that would be that Marilyn would completely bend to the will of the others. This is exactly what happened, but this was not a functional way of resolving this conflict. Sources Used Adler, Robert, Lawrence Rosenfeld & Russell Proctor. Interplay. New York, NY: Harcourt College Publishing, 2001. Book. “Number 12 Looks Just Like You.” The Twilight Zone. Dir. Abner Biberman. Perf. Suzy Parker, Pam Austin, Richard Long and Collin Wilcox. 1964. CBS Broadcasting Inc., 2002. DVD. Read More