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Meet the Parents

Decent Essays

‘Meet The Parents’ Reflections
Every relationship is based on the foundation of its underlying communication. Besides on a verbal level, the smallest of non-verbal cues, pauses, movements or gestures also determine the construction or destruction of a relationship between two or more people. In the film, Meet The Parents, interpersonal communication is one of the subtly placed themes that revolve around the story. Interpersonal communication can be defined as the reciprocal message processing, when two or more individuals mutually take account of and adjust to one another’s verbal or non-verbal behaviors. The relationship between Greg Focker and Jack Byrnes is one that develops at a gradual pace, though not necessarily always in a …show more content…

In fact he’s so eager to open up to Jack that Greg agrees, hesitantly, to take a polygraph test offered by Jack, but ends up displaying anxious non-verbal cues like fidgeting, facial expressions and quick, shallow breathing on every question. Jack, being the expert CIA analyst that he was, instantly notices Greg’s furtive and nerve wracked nature that furthers his suspicions about Greg being a drug addled fraud, and him not being a suitable match for Pam, Jack’s daughter.
“Persons who do not conform to the group pattern tend to have fewer communications addressed to them if they are rejected but tend to have more communications addressed to them if they are not rejected.” (Leon Festinger and John Thibaut) At first upon being introduced to Pam’s family and friends, Greg is made to feel out of place due to a multitude of inside jokes and unfamiliar references and behaviors. He is treated with condescending comments and jokes at his expense, like when the swimming trunks he borrows ‘turn out’ to be too small for him. Even during the volleyball game, Greg did not get any support from his teammates and was jeered at for not playing well, which leads to him accidentally giving Pam’s sister a black eye when he actually did do well. Needless to say, that did not get him any closer to the others. The first instance of him being accepted into the group was when he finds and returns an impostor of the lost house cat, Jynx,

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