The film Hitch concentrates on the story of Alex ‘Hitch’ Hitchens, who is a successful relationship doctor. Hitch helps his client Albert Brennaman to win the heart of his celebrity crush Allegra Cole. However, Hitch falls in love with Sara Melas, and he is perplexed when all his romantic gestures do not win her over. Eventually, he wins her love, but they are faced with barriers when Sara realizes what Hitch does for a living. Hitch is heartbroken, but he tries everything to help Albert, who has problems with Allegra too. Consequently, Hitch realizes that he only helps his clients with confidence, but everything else is their own doing. Therefore, the discussion intends to employ communication concepts such as conflict, relationship dialectics, communication as a foundation for personal life and relationships, listening, and self-disclosure in analyzing the film. The fact-sheet will concentrate on soliciting for ways through which the communication concepts apply in the film.
Communication Concepts and Hitch
First and foremost, conflict refers to a struggle between interdependent parties, and they pursue goals that are not compatible (Jandt, 2016). Hence, they are bound to disagree and talk in loud tones before they finally agree, or sometimes they don't. Conflicts may also lead to longer discussions because the parties try to affirm the importance of their goals. For example, in the film Hitch, the lead character Hitch takes a long time to convince his girlfriend, Sara, about the significance of his job. On one side, Sara believes that Hitch is a bad person, and that is why he was hiding the information. On the other side, Hitch does not want to lose Sara; hence he is trying to work towards that by telling her about the people he has helped. Moreover, there is a conflict when Hitch goes to Allegra's house to convince her to take Albert back. It takes a lot of effort because Allegra wanted to leave, but Hitch never wanted that. He was sure that Albert loved Allegra, and he wanted to make that happen. Additionally, there is a conflict between Albert and Hitch when he loses Allegra after they are exposed by Vance Munson. Albert believes that sometimes Hitch was wrong, and that is why Allegra starts leaving him. Vance also tries to force Hitch to help him, but he refuses. Hence that almost leads to an altercation between the two men, but Hitch does not give in because he was in love with Sara.
Secondly, listening entails being silent and occasionally participating for the speaker to clarify even better. Active listening involves participation and not only being silent because that may not work when the subject is complicated. In the film Hitch, Albert does a good job of listening to Hitch the date doctor when he speaks hence mastering all the things that he said. Also, Hitch listens actively to Allegra, thus realizing how Albert won her heart. He realizes that he had very little to do with it and that Albert only won Allegra because of being himself. Active listening is also witnessed when Hitch interacts with other clients in the film. They seem to trust him with everything they have; hence they are very attentive when he speaks, which pays off in the end. Listening is key because it helps the characters who are mentioned to understand the speakers even better, thus participating by agreeing or disagreeing.
Thirdly, communication can also be used as a foundation for personal life and relationships. In that, communication helps individuals in identifying themselves and interacting with the surrounding (Ballard‐Reisch & Turner, 2017). That begins from one's personal life where there are so many things that cannot happen without effective communication. It is almost impossible to interact with family members and friends without conversing with them. The same applies to develop relationships on different levels. All relationships start from dialogues that are well developed to bring parties together. For instance, in the film, we learn about Hitch's personal life by observing his interactions and communication with others. He manages to develop a relationship with Sara after numerous interactions and dialogues. That helps in cultivating a good relationship between the two love birds. Albert and Allegra also develop a good relationship and eventually get married because they continually communicate and have dialogues. Sometimes they disagreed and broke up; however, Hitch helps in solving their issues, and they eventually get married. Hence, it is imperative to ascertain that communication acts as a foundation in their personal lives and relationships in the long run.
Moreover, relational dialectics refers to an interpersonal communication concept that encompasses the tensions and struggles in relationships (Johnson et al., 2018). That is the purported specialty of the lead character Hitch, who is good at teaching Albert what to do. However, he also goes through the struggles, and it gets so bad for him because he even gets allergy trying to impress Sara. At some point, they break up because Sara realized that Hitch was not being honest with him. Hitch only gets Sara when he decides to be himself and leave the romantic strategies. The same happens to Albert, who struggles so much when it comes to convincing Allegra to become his girlfriend. They also struggle, and there are tensions, especially when tales of the date doctor reach the streets. Albert refuses to give up on Allegra, though when Hitch confesses to Allegra, it becomes an easy ride for Albert and Allegra. Most importantly, the film includes a lot of tensions and struggles when it comes to relationships. Even the relationship doctor goes through a lot of tensions before he eventually secures the girl of his dreams. That film does an amazing job in showing how real-life relationships are and how everybody struggles before they eventually get it. Relational dialectics affirm the notion that relationships are not defined, and most of the time, they involve learning and getting to know one another. Mistakes are bound to be made along the way, but the same communication styles are used to lure loved ones back if they are really in love with each other.
Consequently, the concept of self-disclosure entails revealing personal information to strangers to get some help from them in the long run. Self-disclosure usually takes place in therapy before one actually gets help from the therapist or guidance counselor. Also, there are instances where self-disclosure may take place between friends who have been hiding issues from one another. In the film Hitch, there are various self-disclosure instances, especially when it comes to men who are chasing their love. All Hitch’s clients participate in self-disclosure because they have to reveal personal information to get help. Also, they are forced to talk about the woman whom they want and what she does for a living. The self-disclosure process is very key to Hitch because he uses that to bring the two people together. In the case of Albert, he was in love with a huge celebrity; hence it had to take a lot of time and calculation before they finally went out on a date. After Sara realizes what Hitch does for a living, he decides to come clean, thus telling her everything about himself. Self-disclosure starts by tearing partners apart because they realize that they were betrayed when it comes to revealing personal information. However, the process helps the partners to get to know each other better, thus developing real emotions for one another. For example, Allegra is later impressed by all the problems that Albert went through only to impress her in the long run. The same happens to Sara and Hitch, who falls in love for the second time for real.
Conclusively, the communication concepts which are discussed above affirm the significance of communication in life situations. Conflicts are rarely appreciated, but they are part and parcel of communication, and they help individuals to air their frustrations. In the film, there are conflicts between Hitch and Sara, who argue after Sara confronts him on his career. Self-disclosure helps lovers to reveal everything, thus getting closer as a couple. Communication is also a foundation of personal life and relationships. In Hitch, the audience learns about the personal lives of the characters because of how they communicate with one another. Moreover, relationships are developed after effective communication, which cultivates long term relationships.
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