Saturday, March 16, 2013


Week 2 – Blog Assignment

Today I watched a muted episode of the Fox series New Girl.  I have never seen this show before nor did I know the premise of the show.  By watching the nonverbal behavior of the four main characters, I assumed that they were sharing an apartment together.  There are three males and one female roommate.  There was a sexual tension between one of the males and the female.  I do not know if there is more of a relationship, other than platonic roommates or not, but there definitely is a sexual tension. This tension appears to bother one of the other roommates, and it did not seem to have any impact on the other one.  They were fighting over a parking space that had become available in their apartment complex.  There was close proximity, in one’s intimate space, between the two which I felt added to the sexual tension.  The other male roommates kept a proper distance from the female roommate.  This led me to think that nothing was going on between them and her. 

Next, I watched the same episode with volume.  I was correct in assuming that there was a sexual tension between two of the roommates.  Evidently, they had shared a kiss previously.  Three of the roommates were arguing over a parking space and the “kiss” had impacted the decision by one roommate as to who should have the parking space.  This caused more arguments within the apartment.  It was eventually resolved that the roommate who didn’t seem to care about the kiss got the parking space. 

The assumptions I made, during the muted viewing, were fairly correct.  Although, I would have understood better that there is no on-going physical relationship between the two roommates, I was correct in assuming that there is a sexual tension there.   I never realized how much one relies on nonverbal cues to interpret what is going on around them.   

Philbin, J.J. (Writer) & Kasdan, Jake (Director). (2013, February 17).  Parking
            spot[Television series episode]. In New Girl. Los Angeles, CA: Fox Broadcasting
            Company.

           

2 comments:

  1. I find it interesting that we can understand the relationships between charaters without hearing what they say to each other. I also was able to see the relationships correctly without sound. What do you think would happen if happened in our daily life? I often like to people watch when I'm out and try to guess what their mood is. It is interesting to know that perhaps my guesses are correct. It also makes me think about my own body language a lot more and shows that I should be more aware of the signals I give off to others.

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  2. Dianne,
    I was surprised when doing this activity that it was so obvious from their body language what was happening in the television show. It looks like you also found the non-verbal communication to be easy to understand. I think that television makes it slightly more obvious than in real life situations, but either way you can learn a lot when you focus on the non-verbal communication.

    Janell Lawrence

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