Flix DUCHAMPT 30/11/10 DR PUPCHEK

Artifact: The longest yard

SUMMARY :
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Introduction Literature review Methodology Data Discussion Conclusion

I.

Introduction.

The 2005 American sports movie The Longest Yard, directed by Peter Segal, illustrates the concept of how the self arises in communication with others (Wood, p. 181) through verbal and non verbal communication. In the 2005 remake of the 1974 film of the same name, Adam Sandler plays the protagonist, Paul Crewe, a disgraced former professional football quarterback for the Steelers of the NFL, who is coerced to form a team of prison inmates ( The Mean Machine) to play football against their guards. I learned a lot of things watching this movie. I could see the importance of a leader on a team. I played some team sports when I was younger ( handball, ice hockey), but we were actually too young ( ice hockey between 7 and 10 , handball between 12 and 15) to understand why a team needs to have a leader. These days, Im very motivated in my individual workout for triathlon. Even if its a sport where people are really friendly and open-minded, there is no leader because there is no team. In the movie, Paul Crewe is the main character, but we can see how much important he is. If he was not here, the Mean Machine probably could not have even started the game. He chose the players, and it was not always easy. He coached them hard and made them listen to him. He ordered the shirts for the game. He was the quarterback of the team ( probably the most important player on the field). He found the good words and the good ways of communication with his teammates all the time. And he made them win ! The writer made it easy to see how the guards threaten the criminals in prison. They dont have compassion at all. The men here in the prison are certainly criminals (as opposed to being In prison for nothing), so guards use and ends-justify-the-means philosophy: they can do what they want, as long as they are punishing the criminals. The goal in jail is to punish the criminal, so I saw in the movie that the guards want to be superior and have weapons, as nightsticks or truncheons for example. Even if I understand that they have to show they master the situation, criminals dont have to be threatened like animals, and in reality, rules regulate the behavior of law enforcement officers. I could see that is the writers had created a world of cheating, too. Paul Crewe cheated in a NFL game, and thats why he was sentenced to prison. When the warden told him to cheat in the same way during the game and let the guards win, he was asking Crewe to perform the same action for which he was spending his prison time. Would Crewe throw the game to spend less time in the penitentiary? This story describes a world within the world, in which you have to cheat, lie, and take care of yourself alone if you want to survive.

II.

Literature review.

The most important concept I will use to analyze the film is how the self arises with communication with others (Wood, p. 181). The self is not something innate. We are not born knowing who we are, what we will do during our lives, who we will meet, like , hate, and so on Instead , we create our understandings through our lives : the self is acquired in communication with others. Each of us changes and evolves. Self-fulfilling prophecies are one way communication from ourselves to ourselves enables us to tell ourselves how we should behave. our behavior then depends on our expectations or judgments of ourselves that we bring about through our own actions (Wood, p.181). The self is an ever changing system of perspectives that is formed in communications with others. George Herbert Mead, an early 20th-century American sociologist and philosopher, identified two kinds of possible others, communicating with whom shapes and influences and how we see ourselves: the particular other, and the generalized other. (cite source, page number and use quotation marks for any direct quotes.) First , we will talk about the particular other. Its easy to understand simply according to the name. We change our selves because we want to be like people who are significant to us and who we admire; we want them to respect us or see us in a good light. For example, runners aspire to run like Haile Gebresselassie. French soccer players identify themselves as soccer star Zinedine Zidane. In addition, people want to be valued and on the same wavelength with other people very important in our eyes : fathers, mothers, siblings, teachers or coaches, for example. The process of seeing ourselves through the eyes of an other is called reflected appraisal (Wood, p182.). When we interact with someone , we can learn how this person sees us: the messages they send us perform like a mirror. The reflection is very powerful , and its the beginning of self concept. If a child has parents who always tell him that he is nice, smart, and beautiful, then the child will enter adulthood knowing that he can be someone lovable and respected. But if a child grows up with parents who tell him, for example, that he is stupid, lazy, and unworthy , then the child will not enter adulthood with confidence. And this principle is available all your life, for sure during the childhood, but also when you are an adult. On the other hand, we have the generalized other. The generalized other is society. [Wood, p.183.)Its a collection of behaviors, movements, rules, attitudes, or roles, shared by a culture or social community. If people belong to the same society, then they will behave in similar ways when confronted with a certain situation. I have seen it a lot of times in my life, as I belong to a number of different communities, so I have learned to behave in appropriate ways in each one; but when I travel, meet and discover some new cultures and ways of life, I learn some of my behaviors are not appropriate and I learn new behaviors. For example, I can say that French people eat sweet foods exclusively for breakfast, whereas in others countries, people eat salty foods for breakfast, too. I know that elite athletes are very motivated and train very hard for all they want to achieve, because they know how hard is it to reach the top. Other people dont work so hard physically. In my paper, I will try to explain how the self arises with communication with others, through verbal and non verbal communication. With regard to verbal communication (Wood ,p. 68) warns we have to be careful, because language is :

Arbitrary, which means that verbal symbols are not intrinsically connected to what they represent. Ambiguous, which means that language doesnt have one and single meaning. It defers with personal experiences, cultures, interests, Abstract, which means that the words are not something concrete. We are not supposed to speak about physical things.

We have to be careful of what people say . All is depending on the context, the experience of people. A word doesnt mean the same thing for two different people. In the analysis, we will see that verbal communication can be very powerful, when the message is clear. Nonverbal communication is more difficult to understand. Before reading Wood (p. 100), I could not imagine that there were all these categories of non verbal communication.
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Kinesics: this refers to how we move our body and our face motions. Haptics: Its any use of physical touch. Physical appearance : its how people look. For example, you will dress up for a job, but dress down for a picnic. Artifact : This refers to personal objects we use to announce our identity. For example, a flag, or a poster. Proxemics : Its how we use the space and the distance. Chronemics : It refers to how we perceive and use time to define our identities and interactions. Paralanguage : Its vocal but not actual words. For example : Hum It includes sounds and vocal qualities. Environmental factors : Elements of settings that affect how we feel, think and act. For example, the restaurant which want you to stay will use low lights, comfortable chairs and soft music. Silence : lack of communication.

In the analysis, I will try to show that non verbal communication is everywhere, but also very powerful too, even if sometimes, we dont even know that we use it.

III.

Methodology

This paper will apply the concept of The self arises with communication with others to the movie The Longest Yard, by observing different behaviors during part 9, the climactic football game between the prisoners team, the Mean Machine, and the team recruited from prison guards.

I will examine how people, especially the main character Paul Crewe, communicated as particular others to influenced the self-concept of different individuals during the game, and how they expressed themselves through verbal and nonverbal communication. I will also focus on the way the generalized others of the prison society influenced individual characters.

IV.

Data

Before describing Part 9, let me summarize what happened beforehand. Paul Crewe is a former NFL player sentenced to three years in penitentiary for shaving points during a very important game. The prison guards plan to play a game of fooball agains the prinson inmates. The warden asks Crewe to help the prison guards but Crewe refuses. However, he accepts the offer to quarterback the team of inmates, called the Mean Machine. The team was very bad at the beginning, and missed players. Crewe had to find men who want to play even if they had never played in their life. Crewe coached them too.

The part of the movie I want to analyze takes place at the beginning of the game between the guards and the inmates. The footage is available on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=YhC6KUpR7kc
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0045: Paul Crewe shows the players the uniforms they will wear during the game. Its a beautiful black and red shirt, with the number and the name of the team (Mean Machine) in the front, and the name and number of the player in the back. All the players are very happy , and come to take their own shirt. [Doesnt he say something about Caretaker?] 0150: Paul Crewe leads the The Mean Machine onto the field. But when the players enter on the field, they see the cheerleaders. They stop, and they start talking to the girls: Hello, How are you?, Call me. Then, some guards arrive with guns and say to the Mean machine players, Back away from the girls. So, the players turn back and move to the center of the field.

0250: The kick off. The guards receive the ball. We can see that all the inmates want to punish the guards. They dont care about playing the game; they just try (and succeed) to hurt the players on the other team. 0343: One player, #44, remembers what one of the guards told him in prison; he has just observed that guard, and he is now ready and able to hurt the guards on the field. But, Paul Crewe catches him by the helmet and asks him to protect him on this play.

0422: Another player, #00, remembers how a guard told him very aggressively, Back to your cell, hitting a truncheon on a bench. He takes vengeance too, hurting this guard while he is running to catch the ball.

0453: Paul Crewe gathers all his players and says What are we celebrating? Fourteen-nothing! Look at the score board! [] A broken leg will cure. A loss for the Mean Machine will stay forever! Then, all the players apologize for their behaviors. They are now motivated to win the game instead of hurt the guards.

0600: A player on the Mean Machine is assaulted by a guard. But the referee says that he did not see any foul. The players of the Mean Machine are mad.

0638: A guard catches a mean machine player by the face mask, which is strictly forbidden in an American football game. The referee says that he saw a regular contact and no mistakes from the guard. The inmates are outraged. They think they cant win, because the referee is not impartial.

0659: Paul Crewe says he has an idea to make the referee mmore objective. Then , we can see a smile on the face of one player( 0709). Paul Crewe takes the ball and hits the referee with the ball below the belt, It seems to be very painful for the referee who falls down. On the next play Crewe does it again. The Mean Machine players are laughing. Crewe suggests to the referee that he might want to get it right now.

V.

Discussion.

In this part, I will try to put the literature review and the data together. We can identify in this movie some particular others. Remember that According to Mood (p.181), these are specific people who are especially significant to us and who shape how we see ourselves.Paul Crewe. Remind us how important he is as a leader by position (quarterback), then show us that he earns the respect as a leader by his behavior as well. He could have quarterbacked a losing team, but he led a winning team. Paul Crewe is the first particular other we can observe in the movie. He is the leader of the team and plays a very important role on the other players. He chose a very beautiful shirt, and makes everybody in the team happy. According to nonverbal communication concepts, the shirt serves as an artifact , a personal object we use to announce our identities and to personalize our environment( Wood p.102 ). All the players are really motivated and ready to enter on the field and be as good as they can. Crewe is saying with this artifact that the Mean Machine are a proud team, sharing a same goal under the same colors.

When Paul Crewe violently catches one player by the helmet, according to nonverbal communication concepts, he is communicating by using haptics or touch( Wood p. 101), . In the NFL, where Wood is used to playing, haptics are very much part of the game but they are highly regulated. In this game they are not. In t his particular scene, the player is much taller and stronger than Crewe, so he could have hit him back or at least have answered him with something like Dont be so violent or Let me be. But he respects Crewe a lot as his leader, and he knows that with Crewe the team has a chance to win. So the other player uses silence, a very powerful nonverbal communication technique, to express that he understands why Crewe handled him roughly. And he will even change his behavior for the rest of the game, and stop hurting the guards. The player also knows that Crewe was a very good NFL player, so he cant refute his ideas football. Crewe is someone very important in the football environment. Then , at 0450, when Crewe gathers all the mean machine , they shape a circle around him. He is the boss of the team , and is very angry. He finds the good words, and show that verbal communication can be very powerful: A broken leg will cure, A lost to the mean machine will stay forever. He screams and explains to the players what they have to do now ( play instead of hurt the players of the guards team). All the players, all really strong, could be pissed and say to Crewe that its not a small man like him who will tell them how and what they have to do. But instead of this, they all apologize, telling sorry. This kind of verbal communication is understood by everyone in the team. They recognize their mistakes, and are ready to begin another game, the real one. To finish, Crewe changes the behavior of the mean machine a last time. When all the players are mad of the referee, Crewe find a solution to stay quiet while he is trying to make the situation evolved. He has an idea : hit the referee in the underbelly. We can say that this is a haptics ( something which involve physical touch) through the ball. He doesnt have to speak. And we can see a facial expression on the face of one player : he begins smiling. All the players become very happy, they laugh a lot, whereas they were very angry few seconds before. So, Crewe was again very important through the eyes of his players.
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The referee.

Two times, the referee influence the game. The first time was when one of the mean machine player was assaulted by a guard. The referee use the silence to express that he doesnt see nothing. Then , during the next action, one guardian stopped a player by his helmet, which is forbidden. But again the referee didnt seem to see a foul, and let the game continue. The referee in a game is the person who control all. He can stop the game when he wants using his whistle ( the most powerful artefact of a referee), decides what is a foul or not, excludes a player or another. And its very frustrated for a player when the referees decision seems to be wrong for him. Sometimes, referees make bad decision, but without wanting it. And they apologize later. But in this case, the referee is clearly for the guards. He wants the guards to win and is ready to make some referees mistakes to influence the game in favor of guards. Maybe he was paid, we dont know, or he just hates criminals. After the first foul of the guards , the referee uses his arms ( kinesics) and verbal communication to expulse a mean machine player. But the referee changes the mind of the players : the guards know that they can do fouls, whereas the mean machine are really sad, and think they cant win the game. We could see it

in the movie when they all were very angry, starting yelling everywhere and telling bad words And everybody knows in sport that if you want to perform, you need to be mentally strong. On the contrary, being mad is the best way to make mistakes and dont play well. So we can say that the referee influences on the mean machine players individually, before Crewe finds the solution to stop it.
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Player #44 and player #00

Those two players had what we called reflected appraisal. The saw and remembered how guards see them : bad, criminal, submissive, and mistreated person. They understand how the guards deal with them : they know that they can do almost what they want because this two men are criminals and nobody is in their side. So, they influence the way those two mean machine will play thereafter. They will want to take revenge and hurt the guards, instead of playing the game in the legal rules. The two Mean Machine use one after one a bad physical touch to hit the guardian. This refers to a haptics.

But in this part of the longest yard, we can also locate some generalized others. Just a reminder: its a collection of rules, behaviors, roles, shared by an entire society. People who belong to this society must have the same attitude.
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The mean machine with the cheerleadears.

When the mean machine players stopped , at 150, in front of the cheerleaders, this is a kinesics that this entire society is able to do. They wanted to come close to the cheerleaders ( its a proxemics, they wanted to reduce the space between them and the cheerleaders) , because, they did not see girls since a while in prison. I think anybody in prison would be very happy to see a girl ( and cheerleaders are usually very beautiful girls) , because you are always between boys in prison.
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The mean machine with the guardian.

The criminal used a very powerful non verbal communication to express that they hate the guards and they want to take revenge of all they underwent in prison. They used a haptics: they tried to hurt the guards with a very mean physical touch. All the people in jail dont like their guards in my opinion. People in jail are sometimes mistreated, and in the movie, we saw that, at the beginning, everyone in the criminal team want to hurt the guards. They all have this attitude (excepting Paul Crewe who tried to stay quiet).

VI.

Conclusion

I found this research paper very interesting. I have to admit that at the beginning, I did not know exactly what we were supposed to do and what this kind of paper can show me. But after doing it, I understood the importance of it, and I learnt a lot. With this paper, I could see that communication is everywhere. Communication is life. Verbal and nonverbal communications can be very powerful. But yet you have to understand the 6W of communication: who, what, when, where, why, and how. And at the same time, you have to master it! I learnt a lot about non verbal communication essentially. I could not imagine that there are so many possibilities to express something without speaking. Now, I can say : Oh yes, this is very interesting, and I have already done it for some non verbal communication as proxemics, environmental factors or physical appearance. But when I did it, I could not even thinking about the message I left to my interlocutor. In the movie, Paul Crewe is especially very good for that. Each time, he found the good non verbal communication ( but also verbal) , to put his teammates in the right way. This kind of people is a real leader, and you need them in your life to achieve what you want. The self arises with communication with others(Mood, p181) was something hard to understand for me at the beginning too. It was very contradictory, because the self is personal, whereas others are something you cant control. I knew that we change our self with our environment, but I could not think about this kind of people or group so important for ourselves. The longest yard is a good movie to study communication. There are different populations, from different genders, age and cultures, and with different thoughts, opinion, or physical appearance. So you can approach it from many ways.

Im glad to did this paper, because now, I will be really careful about how Ill communicate. When people will try to leave me a message without talking, I think Ill take care about it more than before. Or maybe Ill able to understand some non verbal communication people dont want me to understand (as a sign for a secret , or a lye). Moreover, knowing that the self arises in communication with others, Ill pay attention with who Ill communicate and who will learn me something. I mean, its not because someone very important say something that is true. I will sometimes verify what someone is saying, or find concrete examples. And you have to be careful, seeing where you are. I can say that because for example, there are not the same rules in the United States and in France at all. Something can be true in Europe and wrong in the US. Some things are allowed here ( like the death penalty), but are forbidden and not accepted by the society in France. So you have to change your opinions and thoughts in function of where you are living. So you need to be careful each single second.

Reference list:

Peter Segal(2005). The Longest Yard . Wood, Julia (2010). Communication Mosaics: an introduction to the field of communication.6th edition. Place of publication: Wadsworth