When Harry Met Sally - Essay Example

? Relationship Analysis: When Harry Met Sally Your School Department, This paper is a partial fulfillment for the subject ________, under Professor ________. Relationship Analysis: When Harry Met Sally Introduction This paper seeks to review how the characters in the movie, When Harry Met Sally, follow the steps in developing and maintaining a romantic relationship using dialectic theory and uncertainty reduction theory. The paper has four parts apart from the introduction: First, the discussion of the movie, then the discussion of dialectic theory in relation to the movie, then the discussion of uncertainty reduction theory in relation to the movie, followed by the conclusion. When Harry Met Sally When Harry Met Sally is a film directed by Rob Reiner in 1989, and was written by Nora Ephron. It is listed as one of the top American comedy films of all time and is also considered one of the most romantic movies of all time. Ephron gained an Oscar nomination for this movie. The film also gained a lot of Golden Glove nominations, primarily with Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress. The film follows the story of two people, Harry Burns and Sally Albright. The story is set within a twelve year span, starting in 1977 to 1989, from Chicago to New York. The movie chronicles their relationship: from the point that they do not like each other to the point that they got married. They first met in Chicago, where Harry hitched a ride with Sally on the way to New York. It should be noted that Harry’s girlfriend is Sally’s friend and that’s how they knew each other. They did not go along with each other because of their different opinions regarding relationships between men and women. The film’s theme about relationships is revealed here: Men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way (Harry) and Women and men can be friends (Sally). They part ways as soon as they reached New York. The relationship is not romantic, not even friendly. Five years after that encounter, they saw each other at an airport and even share the same plane. Both are in romantic relationships: Sally was with Harry’s friend and Harry is engaged to a woman named Helen. This surprises Sally. Harry suggests that they become friends but further elaborates on this previous rule (but with an exception now because they are both in respective romantic relationships), making Sally reject his “friendly offer”. After five years, they meet again in a New York bookstore. Harry is now divorced and Sally is now single after breaking up with Harry’s friend, Joe. They have coffee together and they have talked about their previous relationships. At this point, they decided to become friends. They spend more time with each other (platonically), have dinners together, have late night phone calls and have dates with other people. Their dating experiences with other people continue to show each other’s differing beliefs on dating. One New Year’s Party, Harry and Sally danced, and they found themselves getting attracted to each other. They denied their feelings and they set each other up with their respective friends. By some twist of fate, their best friends hit it off and got engaged. One night, Sally calls Harry because her ex is getting married. Harry goes to Sally’s house and comforts her. They had sex unexpectedly, leading to awkwardness the next day. This leads to their friendship’s cooling off, until they have an argument at their best friends’ (the one they set up for each other) wedding, promptly severing their friendship. Harry then tries to patch things up with Sally, to no avail. Fast forward to another New Year’s Party with Sally and she felt alone because there was no Harry to be with her, unlike the last New Year’s Party. As she leaves the party, Harry appears and they make up their mistakes and realize that they do indeed love each other. They kiss. The last scene shows that they were being interviewed about their marriage. Dialectical Theory and When Harry Met Sally Dialectical Theory in communication states that the relationship status between two people is caused by tensions between those two people (Griffin, 2009). These tensions are often oppositional in nature. The theory comes from Bakhtin’s original theory in literature about Dialectics, about how Dialectical tensions change relationships as it constantly changes. Successful relationships are kept by having constant attention. Simply speaking, the tensions in a relationship can by symbolized by the Yin-Yang concept: Opposites make things work, and the balance of it is important (Montgomery, B. and Baxter, L. A. 1998). There are four concepts in relational dialectics. These are: contradiction, totality, process and praxis (Altman, I., V. A., & Brown, 1981). Contradictions are the core concepts of this theory, as relationships are the products of two contradictions. A contradiction is formed when two forces are dependent on each other, but they also negate each other for example, openness and privacy; one can be totally open today but not so a little quite later, or the other person can be totally open but not the one he or she is in a relationship with. Totality is another concept that states that contradictions cannot be taken singularly, but rather as a whole. Totality states that contradictions work to define each other. Process states that the relationship is always dynamic. One can actually be one the Yin more today, but move on to the Yang part tomorrow, in terms of contradictions. Praxis is practical behavior: a relationship is maintained in interaction and active participation between the contradictions. Praxis presents one’s daily needs in terms of oppositions so that they can change the dialectical tensions. There are quite a lot of core tensions in a relationship. Some are autonomy and connectedness, openness and closedness, instrumentality and affection and certainty and uncertainty. These are also some of the core tensions present in Harry and Sally’s romantic relationship. Harry and Sally’s relationship did not start in very good terms. They weren’t even friends. However, they were still connected at some point because of their networks. They lived autonomous lives, but at the same time, they were connected by some sheer form of relationship or incident, such as the scene in the airport or the bookstore. That’s looking at it from the whole point of view. In their relationship, both were autonomous: they were “singles” going out together, they were “friends” who have separate dates with other people, but continue to have dinner and spend time together. However, they also feel connected to each other. They were co-dependent too, and they only realized it during that fateful New Year’s party. They exhibited openness and closedness too. As they progressed into the relationship, they were gradually opening up to each other. Actually, they were open to each other at the start, but the ride from Chicago to New York and the talk in that conversation turned the openness in the relationship into closedness. Their relationship with each other got closed and it opened once they got out a lot. Certainty and uncertainty is the important contradiction in this relationship but the contradiction is only present after they had sex together. Were they in love? Were they an item? Nothing is certain between the two of them, yet the two are certain that there is “something” between them; what is it, no one knows. The contradictions, especially the uncertainty in this phase of the relationship is quite important as they pushed the couple into the edge, forcing them to admit their feelings for each other, making the relationship certain (Petronio, S., 2002). Uncertainty Reduction Theory and When Harry Met Sally Uncertainty Reduction Theory is a theory by Berger and Calabrese. It explains the development of the relationship between two strangers. It explains that people engage in actions that tend to reduce uncertainty towards each other by using self-disclosure (Griffin, 2009). Usually happening in the first stages of a relationship, the uncertainty reduction theory kicks in when the strangers start to talk to each other. These strangers go to check points and steps in a relationship to reduce uncertainty for each other, to form opinions if the strangers like or dislike each other. There are three stages in a relationship to this type of communication theory. First is the entry stage, then the personal stage and lastly, the exit stage (Wood, 2004). Entry stage in a relationships is self-disclosure using behavioral norms. One person may ask another about pets, abut favorite things, etc; basically exploratory questions about the other person. They are usually shallow and demographic. Questions like Where are you from?, What is your job? are common questions in this stage of a relationship. The people involved in this relationship aren’t as involved. Involvement increases as they disclose more information about each other, which is basically pushing to the personal stage, where the two people share personal information about themselves. In this stage, the couple will start asking about values and the beliefs of each other. This stage will only happen if the information in the entry stage of the relationship is sufficient. Personal issues, morality issues, emotional issues are discussed here. Emotional dependence and involvement increases after disclosures. In the exit phase, the former strangers would now decide if they like each other or not. If they like each other mutually after all those emotional baggage, they can pursue a romantic relationship together. If not, they can just exit the relationship (Wood, 2004). In the movie When Harry Met Sally, the couple started their entry stage and their relationship got stuck in the personal stage for a long time (for a decade, in fact). They only knew each other well, as in for decision time, when they finally got over the fact that one is as not as dangerous as the other thought he would be. Harry, for Sally in their personal stage, is actually a broken-hearted man. This puts her at ease and made her less defensive, offering her to disclose more about herself since she was sure about herself and Harry; they were not uncertain about each other anymore. Conclusion The movie offers a perfect example of a romantic relationship that can occur in real life. It is characterized by two untrusting strangers (not love at first site, unlike most movies) that developed feelings in a span of a decade. The relationship theories validated their love story as a proof that love or relationships, is always a work in progress. References: Altman, I., V. A., & Brown. (1981). Dialectic conceptions in social psychology: An application to social penetration and privacy regulation. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 14. p. 107–160. Griffin, E. (2009) A First Look At Communication Theory. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Miller, K. (2005). Communication theories: Perspective, processes and contexts (2nd ed). NY: McGraw Hill. Montgomery, B. and Baxter, L. A. (1998). Dialectical approaches to studying personal relationships. New Jersey: L. Erlbaum Associates. Petronio, S. (2002). Boundaries of privacy: Dialectics of disclosure. New York: SUNY Albany. Reiner, Rob. When Harry Met Sally. MGM, 1989. DVD. Wood, J. (2004). Communication Theories in Action: An Introduction. (3rd Ed). New York: Cengage Learning. Read More