La Land Movie Essay

Patrick Cardozo

COMM 1304 Intro to Communication

Professor Bridget Mueller

3rd March 2017

Analysing the effective communication concept and skills between the two major characters in la la land, Mai and Sabastian

Just like we all dwell in our various relationships, the movie la la land highlights the struggle we go through in overcoming communication obstacles in our daily life. Our behaviour and various interaction at each stage in our relationship really matter in establishing a solid bond. La La Land tells the story of Mia, an aspiring actress, and Sebastian, an enthusiastic jazz musician, who are struggling to make ends meet in Hollywood, the movie explores the joy and pain of pursuing your dreams. Sebastian intends to do his part to preserve

that tradition of jazz music, particularly as he knows that that genre of music is dying. His dream is to open his own jazz club. Partly because of their individual struggles and partly because of the situations, their initial couple of chance meetings were hostile ones. But in due course become attracted to each other largely because of the passion each sees in the other for what they are both striving for in life. However, there are many obstacles to Mia and Sebastian’s future. They may be able to endure the life of a struggling artist for so long before those struggles take their toll. The pursuit of their individual dreams took a toll on them, with nothing left for their relationship. Ultimately the compromise each person made in getting ahead in their pursuit of success changed the person with whom each has fallen in love with.
This paper will analyse the effective communication process used in the relationship between the two major characters in the movie La La Land. We highlight the relationship process and effective use of communication used by Mia and Sebastian; we talk about the interaction stages they pass through, Self-Disclosure, what communication behaviour they exhibit, the factors involving in binding the two characters together, the way perception affects their relationship, and conflict between the two characters.
Perception is defined as the processing, interpreting, selecting and organising of information. Perception's effect on the communication process is all about how the same message can be interpreted differently by different people. Self-Disclosure is simply the communication of information about oneself to someone else, which influences perception. As we all know people feel a sense of closeness to others who reveal their vulnerabilities, innermost thoughts, and facts about themselves. The sense of closeness increases if the disclosure is emotional rather than factual while personal disclosures that are too general reduce the sense of openness, thus reducing the feeling of closeness.
In La la land the two focus characters Mia and Sebastian self-disclosed information about each other i.e.

when Sebastian went to Mia’s workplace and he took her out. on their way, Sebastian started to ask questions about her and the things she likes; he asked her about who she is currently seeing and she tells him how long they have been dating for. they talk about their professions, Sebastian tells her how much he loves jazz music and how his dream is to own a jazz club. he tells her about a place that was formerly a jazz club but turned to a samba tapas place now. She also tells him how she fell in love with acting and how she and her cousin will always reenact scenes from movies in her room. she also tells him that she should have been a lawyer but she left school to pursue her dream as an actress. She then tells him she hates jazz and he gets so disturbed at that statement and decides to take her to a jazz club to explain the interesting fact about jazz

music.
Relationships often develop through a series of stages; the initial stage Contact where the people involved become aware of each other’s existence. This may be very brief and very distant. It could be formal, e.g. at a workplace, or informal, such as seeing a person at the transit centre. In this next stage, “Involvement”, the people engage more with one another, forming a light bond of friendship. The communication becomes more frequent and the balance of giving and receiving is maintained. A sense of mutuality develops such that when they both see each other, they demonstrate pleasant feelings towards one another. At this point, the relationship is at its deepest and most committed stage. This stage is subdivided into three categories: personal commitment, interpersonal commitment, and social bonding. This next stage is known as the Deterioration stage, here as the relationship progresses, and reality sets in, various problems might arise which in turn test the commitment that each person has for one another. The Repair stage is when the harm is done, but all hopes are not necessarily lost, if the people want the relationship to continue then there is chance or avenue for repair. The last stage which is known as the Dissolution stage is when they both cut their bonds (or perhaps return to a more platonic level).
In La la land Mia and Sebastian’s contact stage was sort of informal, the first time they meet was in traffic Sebastian was honking at her to drive because she got carried away in while driving and was pissed at her the next time she saw him was at a lounge where he was playing the piano she fell in love with his playing at that moment she wanted to talk to him after he was done but Sebastian walked out on her because he pissed at the owner of the restaurant who just sacked him because he wasn’t playing the kind of music he was asked to.

Later, she met him at a pool party where he was playing with a band, she walked up to the band and requested that they play a song and then he recognised her, from here they started to build a relationship they finally got to talk and get a sense of each other at the party. The progression from their contact stage to involvement stage of their relationship was quick, they both started to Self-Disclose information about each other at the party but their self-disclosure was mild, next day he went to her workplace then took her on a walk, there was more self-disclosure, he then asked her on a date to the movies, this was where their relationship progressed from involvement stage to the intimacy stage because the both shared some intimate moment. She allowed him to kiss her, from that moment they started dating and were committed to each other, their deterioration stage happened when Sebastian got a steady job as a pianist for a popular pop

band which does a lot of touring, she started to get tired of his absence and he was also trying his best to be with her too but it wasn’t really working out, she also got pissed off at him because she knows he doesn’t enjoy playing for the band because they don’t play his genre of music, she wanted him to pursue his dream, which was to own a jazz club but he taught he was making Mia happy since he had a good paying and steady job which let him provide for the both of them, he was really angry when he found out she didn’t like that he kept on playing for the band and wasn’t following his dream, he yelled at her and she walked out of his house angrily. The repair stage of their relationship was when Sebastian went on to plead with her after realising that she wanted the best for him, but it was sort of late by then because she got tired of the Hollywood disappointment and wanted to leave the city and go back to her hometown in Nevada. After trying to heal the relationship which didn’t work out Sebastian went looking for her to tell her she got an audition, he took her to the audition where she was finally offered a movie role which would be shot in France for a period of seven month, but by the end of the shoot after a period of time she was married to someone else and had a kid too. At this stage, the relationship had been dissolved without Sebastian knowing.
Interpersonal conflict is a disagreement between two or more individuals involving significant resentment and displeasure. Conflict resolution or conflict management strategies could encompass finding different ways to reduce feelings of resentment and displeasure. For example, helping people to see things from the other person's standpoint
In this movie, after the deteriorating stage of the two character, Sebastian tried to resolving the conflict between the couple admitting that he was wrong and that she should give him the opportunity to make it up to her Sebastian was ultimately using the accommodating conflict style in trying to repair the relationship. Sebastian also employed facilitating open expression strategy to manage the conflict between them he let Mia express herself and listened actively to what she had to say and expressed appreciation of how she feels. he told mia that he had been wrong the whole time and she was correct and he needed to follow his dream of opening his own jazz club.
In conclusion, This paper talks about how perception, self-disclosure, relationship stages and conflict management is important in managing communication in a relationship and ultimately in our daily lives. This was done in other to prove that the effective communication process used in the relationship between the two major characters in the movie La La Land such as the interaction stages they pass through, Self-Disclosure, what communication behaviour they exhibit, the factors involving in binding the two characters together, the way perception affects their relationship, and conflict between the two characters, which are important tools that could help us sustain our respective relationships. Hopefully, we can all learn from the trial and tribulation sustained by Mia and Sebastian in the movie La la land.
Work Cited