Interpersonal Communication Film Paper

Meet the parents is a movie about a man (Greg Focker) that wants to propose to his girlfriend (Pam Byrnes), but before he pop the question he finds out that his girlfriend’s sister is getting married in two weeks, and that he will need the approval of her dad before being able to propose to her.   Greg takes a trip with his girlfriend to meet her parents and tries hard to impress her dad, but finds out no matter what he does it always backfires on him and makes him look bad in her father’s eyes. Towards the end of the film, Greg and Mr. Byrnes end up bonding, making up, and Mr. Byrnes gave Greg the ok to marry his daughter as long as he is able to meet his family first.
      This paper on Communication and Relationships in films will examine several central theories of interpersonal communication and apply them to this film. The Predicted outcome value theory, Uncertainty Reduction theory, bonding model and social networks maintenance fit into every situation in this movie and it started to become clear once Greg meet Pam’s parents. The first theory that was present throughout the entire movie is that of Uncertainty Reduction Theory.   (Berger & Calabrese, 1975) much of the interaction when we first meet someone is dedicated to reducing uncertainty and determining whether we wish to interact with them again (p.221).  
This was first observed when Greg first met Mr. Byrnes inside the house and Mr. Byrnes asked Greg “if he liked cats,” Greg replied, “that he did like cat”, but Pam corrected him and told her dad “that Greg hated cats.   Greg’s answer made Mr. Byrnes upset and he started not to like Greg from that point and begin to suspect that Greg was hiding secrets from him. Another example is Mr. Byrnes asking Greg what he did for a living and Greg replies “that he was a nurse and not a doctor, and that he loved his job” this made Mr. Byrnes further upset and did not want Greg to interact or date his daughter any more. In these two scenes, Mr. Byrnes showed...