House Bunny - Group Communication

House bunny is a comedy that hit our local cinema screens a couple of weeks ago. Its about a former playboy house bunny Shelly who was tricked into thinking that she was being kicked out of the playboy mansion. By chance, through a series of events she ends up being the housemother of a sorority group called the zeta alpha zeta, the members of the sorority are a group of seven possibly the most socially clueless women. Because of their inability to integrate with society they face the danger of losing thier house due to the lack of pledges to them. Shelly comes along into the picture and begins to give all the girls a revamp and turn them into attractive people whom everyone wants to befriend with. At the beginning the girls were reluctant but realising the emminent danger of losing their house they decide to go with Shelly. Their popularity also caused resentment from another sorority group who tries to prevent the Zeta's from getting pledges. In the end Shelly's misunderstanding with Hugh Hefner, the playboy mansion owner, was cleared up and she went back to being a playboy bunny but did not feel at ease going back to her old lifestyle and returned to help the Zeta's save their house.

In this movie we can see Shelly integrating into the Zeta's. From being kicked out of the mansion, she needed interpersonal needs like need for inclusion as she felt alone and abandoned, need for control as she used to be in charge of stuff in the playboy mansion, as well as the need for affection from the group of Zeta girls. When Shelly joins the Zeta sorority as she has them for companionship as well as went back to her old lifestyle of being in control of things going on in the house, thus joining the Zeta's, the group have met her interpersonal needs for her to feel the need to be included in their group.

Next in the movie we see problems they faced as a group during decision making, for example needing the full support of the group when making decision and Shelly had to work hard to prove to everyone that what she was doing for them was worth their support. Another problem they faced was that the solution they chose was risky, before the decision to have a makeover, all the girls were hesitant as they felt insecure of themselves and were not sure if the next step that they were about to take was it a right or wrong move. These are just some of the problems they faced as a group.

Lastly through the movie, we are able to see the process of Shelly being integrated into the group, from first being a prospective member, to a new member, to a full member. It begins with her being a prospective member when she was brought in to the Zeta's house when everyone was deciding whether to rope her into the group, here she was like a prospective member as she was not part of the group yet. Next in the following stage as a new member, she began to learn about things in the group, finding out information about each individuals in the group. Lastly she intergrates into a full member of the group, being the center of all the activities that the group was involved in. She never fell into the catergory of being an ex-member of the group though at one stage she did leave the group, because despite being away she still felt a huge part of her still with the group and was at a loss without them.

In the movie we can also see many parts of group communication, for example who in the group plays the task or maintenance roles as well as some aspects of groupthink symptoms developing after the sorority group became popular.

It is quite an enjoyable movie to watch, despite its comedic and seemingly brainless plot there are actually alot of things that we learnt in group communication that can be observed from the movie.

Survivor Gabon : Reel Life versus Real Life - Interpersonal Communication

The latest edition of the award winning reality tv gameshow Survivor was aired on friday night after much anticipation. A brief introduction of the show: Survivor is an American Version of the Survivor reality television game show based on the Swedish television series Expedition Robinson. The show is based on stranding a group of strangers as one or more tribes in a remote location, where they must fend for food, water, fire and shelter for themselves, while competing in challenges to earn rewards and immunity from being voted off by the tribe in progessive eliminations; the last challenger remaining at the end of the competition win the US $1 million prize and the title of Sole Survivor

The above is a general introduction of the game but underlying are aplenty of complex alliances and relationships in order for one to progress in the game other than just winning the challenges and avoid being eliminated every other week. What interests me to tune in to the show is in the later part of the show whereby when the group that faces the decision of who they should vote for to eliminate, it is at this point of the show whereby those who fear being eliminated will try to use their alliance or partnership to their advantage and try to win over the rest of the group not to vote for them. It is a very complex part of the show whereby interpersonal relationships come into play and its quite exciting to see how situations unfold in the show. Similar to what we have covered in lecture many aspects of relational formation also occur in the show. One good example of it is physical appearance, in the show we can see that the good looking people tend to go with each other like the handsome guy and the pretty girl and they tend to develop a more interpersonal or closer relationship with each other. Another example would be similarity like the older folks in the show will tend to bond together closer due to attitudinal similarities in terms of thinkings and values. The most glaring relational formation aspect in this gameshow would be about exchange ( form relationship based on our perceptions of the cost and rewards of the relationship ), most of the time the contestants would look for the fittest or smartest, those who would win challenges and try to form a relationship with them as they would stand to gain more from this relationships and in another view, gain a higher chance of avoiding elimination and winning the game.

Well that was reel life, now we come to the real life. I agree to a large extent that many of the relation formation aspects that we learn play a very important part when i consider forming a relationship with another person. The physical appearance, similarities, dissimilarities, exchange, proximity, reciprocity and competency. I guess of all the aspects i would take into consideration of similarities the most, cause i feel that it is very important wether the person is similar to me so that we can click together well in a friendship. Of course the other aspects of relational formation that i mentioned above do play a part but i guess some are more significant than others, well for those who read this post, you could leave a comment on which aspect you think you consider most when deciding on forming a relationship with someone? but note that forming relationship is not just pertaining the boy-girl relationships but friendships as well as working partners