Communication - Lesley Smith
When I read the communication discussion in townhall, Bryan’s mention of The Usual Suspects reminded me of how many movies actually explore communication in depth, and with great compassion. For example, in connection with the differing abilities of individuals to communicate, I immediately thought about My Left Foot, which chronicles Christy Brown’s heroic struggle to communicate through very several cerebral palsy by using his left foot to write messages to his family, and ultimately, the book on which the movie was based. (If you’ve never seen that movie, Daniel Day-Lewis delivers an extraordinary performance as Christy Brown). I also thought about Memento, the movie in which the protagonist has lost almost all short-term memory, and yet continues to try to solve the mystery of his wife’s death.
And just on the complexity of communication itself, there’s Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard, which films the struggle of a group of high-profile actors to create a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard IIII. They think about visual communication (locations, costumes, movement on stage) and about spoken communication (how every word should sound, and how the speeches should fit together) and throughout they rely on communication through reading to research the play and some very dynamic and disputatious conversation (a good lesson for those of us who are conflict-averse on the power of passionate discussion and disagreement to create new knowledge) to work out exactly how to interpret Shakespeare’s words. Yet they always managed, even when they lost their tempers with each other, to keep open what Ben and Beau (in an earlier posing on valuing to the blog) saw as the essential lines of communication.
That related, for me, to Nicole’s discussion on the flexibility of communication, when she was talking about teaching. Instead of blaming the audience (they didn’t get it!), the communicator has to think, “Is there another way in which I can communicate this?” For me, that’s why movies and interactive multimedia are such successful forms of communication, in that they’re visual, aural, word-based and kinetic, and thus offer many routes for the individual to enter into communication. One of the books I sometimes use in the Writing for Multimedia class, Pause and Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative includes, on one page, an illustration of a human being with the captions below “the best interactive device ever.” And it’s true, although I think we probably use just a tiny percentage of our capacity for communication most of the time, and mostly then in private settings with close friends and family. If we could bring that vividness into the dreaded presentations, just think how we could rock our audiences.
And, finally, I kept returning to Jenn’s ideal of communication as non-judgmental and trusting (and perhaps one might add worthy of trust to that?). This is an enormous task, and I, for one, am up for any recommendations (on blog or via e-mail) on how to achieve this. Take care, and looking forward to reading more….
And just on the complexity of communication itself, there’s Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard, which films the struggle of a group of high-profile actors to create a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard IIII. They think about visual communication (locations, costumes, movement on stage) and about spoken communication (how every word should sound, and how the speeches should fit together) and throughout they rely on communication through reading to research the play and some very dynamic and disputatious conversation (a good lesson for those of us who are conflict-averse on the power of passionate discussion and disagreement to create new knowledge) to work out exactly how to interpret Shakespeare’s words. Yet they always managed, even when they lost their tempers with each other, to keep open what Ben and Beau (in an earlier posing on valuing to the blog) saw as the essential lines of communication.
That related, for me, to Nicole’s discussion on the flexibility of communication, when she was talking about teaching. Instead of blaming the audience (they didn’t get it!), the communicator has to think, “Is there another way in which I can communicate this?” For me, that’s why movies and interactive multimedia are such successful forms of communication, in that they’re visual, aural, word-based and kinetic, and thus offer many routes for the individual to enter into communication. One of the books I sometimes use in the Writing for Multimedia class, Pause and Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative includes, on one page, an illustration of a human being with the captions below “the best interactive device ever.” And it’s true, although I think we probably use just a tiny percentage of our capacity for communication most of the time, and mostly then in private settings with close friends and family. If we could bring that vividness into the dreaded presentations, just think how we could rock our audiences.
And, finally, I kept returning to Jenn’s ideal of communication as non-judgmental and trusting (and perhaps one might add worthy of trust to that?). This is an enormous task, and I, for one, am up for any recommendations (on blog or via e-mail) on how to achieve this. Take care, and looking forward to reading more….
posted by Lesley Smith at
12:34 PM
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