Concept of Self-Disclosure in Stuck in Love - Movie Review Example

The Concept of Self-Disclosure in “Stuck in Love” by The concept of self-disclosure is central for communication and media studies because it explains the way how people interact and develop relationships with each other. But what makes it extraordinary is its application to human mundane life in all the aspects: it turns out that it is literally impossible to communicate with anyone including the shop assistant in the supermarket without disclosing some private information. Human beings are bound to share feelings, opinions, ideas, facts about life, and it is crucial to know how this sharing can affect both participants. It is also important to understand what the mechanisms, the benefits and the losses of self-disclosure are. Self-disclosure is voluntary sharing with personal information that can include a number of things from family history and childhood memories to present emotions and tastes. Most often personal information presupposes also moral values, interests, previous life experience, and dreams, homes. The information that one chooses to share can be highly valuable and intimate and thus risky and it also can also be not as valuable and more general such as the information about job or hobbies. One of the most important moments of self-disclosure is the person to whom self-disclosure is addressed. Many people feel puzzled and awkward disclosing personal information to anyone however this process is impossible to avoid being in relationships. Family members and close friends are among those chosen with whom self-disclosure is rather simple. More experienced people know that they must be very selective with self-disclosure because excessive self-disclosure can be harmful for their image. They also consider to what extent the person they communicate with is receptive and responsive to their personal information and whether he/she is ready to mutual self-disclosure (Tolstedt & Stokes, 1984). Self-disclosure is always about intimacy, it is one of the most important acts in communication and it the basis of social penetration theory elaborated by Altman and Taylor in 1987. According to their assumptions self-disclosure can have two dimensions: it can develop in depth and in breadth. The first characterizes the quantity of topics that are discussed and the last characterizes the degree of personality of information. When two people are getting familiar with each other they first concentrate on breadth of social disclosure because firstly it is easier to understand which topics are more favorable for discussion and which are less important for both (Altman & Taylor, 1987). Rewards and Costs of Self-Disclosure Self-disclosure is inevitable in communication as it is supposed to perform the number of functions. First of all when people just get acquainted with each other they feel uncertainty and stress. They worry about their personal image and the distance that is natural on the first stages of friendship and intimate relationships with the opposite sex. As soon as this stressful situation is successively resolved with the help of self-disclosure people can feel rewarded for being honest. Any self-disclosure with the person who is not close yet shortens the distance on the one hand and makes the person more vulnerable on the other (Self-Disclosure). Another important function of any self-disclosure is emotional support in painful and controversial situations and the desire to unburden oneself. Self-disclosure can even serve as a catharsis for a person who has been keeping some unpleasant information for a long time. In this case finding a thankful listener and disclosing to him can become a certain emotional breakthrough. However, there are certainly certain costs of self-disclosure which are still are not avoidable in relationships. First of all, the person disclosing very personal information can lose respect in the eyes of interlocutor. Often, self-disclosure involves emotional burden to the relationships itself because it may create extraordinary requirements for the people. That is why self-disclosure must be well thought and reasonable. Self-Disclosure as a Dialectical Development Later the concept of self-disclosure was elaborated and started being regarded as a dialectical process, the one that presupposes gradual change and development. It is also noticeable that self-disclosure can serve as the indicator of relationships. If the relationships develop in a right way the breadth and the depth of self-disclosure must increase while in the relationships that face the decline partners feel less and less need to disclose personal information to each other. DeVito also created a model according to which relationships appear, gain strength and shape gradually. However, there can appear problems and relationships will dissolve eventually (DeVito, 1993). However, later studies of Wellman and Altman demonstrated that the dialectical development of the relationships can take rather unexpected form: people can move from closeness to detachment during some periods in life. Thus, during some periods people penetrate into each other by revealing personal information and during others there appears a distance before the next disclosure (Brown et al., 2009). The Interpretation of the Message in Self-Disclosure It also important to understand that the message that can be communicated during self-disclosure can be much more important to the relationships than the actual information. For example, when one person shares with another with information about his/her previous experience which sometimes can be very frustrating it often has an implicit and an important message that the mutual penetration became deep and the person is trusted. In this case it is important to understand that trust and respect are the values that are sought by people in relationships that is why interpreting the message right instead of reaction to the information itself is very important. Breadth and Depth of Self-Disclosure In “Stuck in Love” we see how the concepts of breadth and depths are covered by Sam and Lou. First when they hardly know each other they try to cover as many topics as possible. Since they are both artistic people they concentrate mostly on art: literature and music. Then they slowly turn to the personal understanding of love, marriage, and family relationships. But all the topics are covered superficially on the first stage of their acquaintance. Samantha is very skeptical when she first talks to Lou in private. Her tone, her phrases emphasize how she aims to oversimplify human interactions and avoid closeness: Sam: “At least try to be interesting. No Catchers in the Rye”. Sam: “What`s your favorite book? Just say the first thing that pops into your head.” Lou: “Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Clearly. Read it like 100 times. It`s actually what made it want me to be a writer. Lou: “Hey, is something wrong?” Sam: “I have to go.” Lou: “Samantha, wait what?” Sam: “What do you want from me?” Lou: “I like you. I want to get to know you better.” This dialogue demonstrates clearly how the breadth of self-disclosure converts into depth. First Sam mocks the superficial level of conversation on which people usually tell each other some trivial things which can be predicted to a certain extent but as the layers of the onion are taken away gradually the information becomes too risky and the person who shares with it becomes more and more vulnerable. When two people usually detect common topics and interests they find that they can be ultimately intimate with each other. However, for Sam who got used to communicate with others only on superficial level covering a number of common topic depth turns out to be rather problematic and the feeling she faces o this level is fear. The Benefits and Costs of Self- Disclosure in “Stuck in Love” The benefits of self-disclosure serve as relief to the heroes of “Stuck in Love”. The main conflict of the movie is based on the fact that the daughter cannot forgive her mother for cheating on her father and quitting him and the whole family for another person. Samantha ignores her mother refusing to talk to her and to accept what she did. Suddenly at the end of the film the father makes confession that pushes Samantha to real catharsis which is depicted in the movie in literal visual way: she falls on the sand and starts crying. At the same time Bill feels released because he was holding the truth about his blameworthy past deed from his children for more than 15 years. Bill: “Those things she did to me, the things you`ve been holding over he, I had already done to her years ago.” Samantha: “What are you talking about?” Bill: “ I fell in love with somebody and and got lost, left. Samantha: “Bullshit”. Bill: “ You were just a baby. And you mother waited for me”. Samantha: “Shut up, dad!” Bill: “And when I realized what a selfish shit I`d been. She took me back. It`s the truth”. Samantha: “You could not tell me, dad? Really? You just made me hate her?” At the same time it is clear why Bill was keeping this information in secret in order to save his face before children and to be regarded as a victim. However, this very personal and painful information was very valuable for understanding the whole situation with waiting. Interpretation of Self-Disclosure in “Stuck in Love” In the movie one of the heroines obviously has problems with self-disclosure and trust. The experience of her parents made her feel that it is impossible to trust anyone. However, when a man appears in her life who notices this on some subconscious level she realizes that self-disclosure is inevitable in their relationships. I there conversation I the restaurant Samantha ad Lou discuss her book and Sam discloses some really personal information about herself but the real meaning of it is more serious. Lou: “How much of that really happened?” Sam: “I made most of it up. I didn`t draw that much from my parents` divorce other than the little girl seeing her mother having sex with another man on the beach.” Lou: Holy shit, that really happened? Sam: “It was late, and my mom came staggering of the back of the house with Martin. And she was all over him. And I remember Martin saying: “What about Bill? What if Bill sees?” And my mom replying: “I don`t care.” This unexpected revelation leads to even more personal self-disclosure of the heroine later ho confesses about her fear of close intimate relationships and Lou understands that the message behind this is that “I trust you so that I can tell you all that.” The whole movie “Stuck in Love” is literally built on the concept of self-disclose. As characters reveal perusal information about themselves gradually their relationships change and progress. Those characters that have a block with self-disclosure realize that it is an important stage which must be passed. References Altman, I., & Taylor, D. A. (1973). Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Werner, C.., Brown, B., & Altman, I. (2009). The physical environment and relationships. In H.T. Reis & S. K. Sprecher (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Human Relationships. Published, 12/2009. DeVito, J.A. (1993). Messages : Building Interpersonal Communication Skills, New York, HarperCollins Self-Disclosure. Social Penetration. Retrieved from: http://wps.ablongman.com/ab_doyle_communbound_1/0,6042,886323-,00.html Tolstedt, B. & Stokes, B. (1984). Self-disclosure, Intimacy, and the Depenetration Process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46 (1), 84–90. Read More