COMM 380:  Media Criticism

 

Introduction

 

In his book, Human Communication as Narration, Walter Fisher (1984) explains how humans are natural storytellers and how stories help us add to our values as well as strengthen them (p. 349). The film Room represents symbols of endurance, love, and hope and creates a tragic, yet hopeful, storyline that revolves around a mother and her son and the hardships they endure together. The theory of symbolic interactionism will be used to analyze the different elements used by the film’s creators that lead to the creation of this successful film. According to Foss (2009), what makes a story stand out is its ability to “create a personal involvement in the narrated world and the active narrative” (p. 308). Throughout the film, the audience continuously reacts to the characters, relationships, and events taking place through the successful creation of the film’s story that relates to members of the audience through its symbols.

 

Context

           

Room is a drama film written by Emma Donoghue and directed by Lenny Abrahamson and was released in 2015. Donoghue’s storyline was inspired by true events of abduction and she was triggered to write this plot because her “mind was full of motherhood and was trying to capture the extraordinary change one goes through when they become a mother” (Donoghue, 2016). This R-rated movie won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for Brie Larson’s phenomenal performance. The movie’s success and positive reception by both the audience and critiques can be attributed to its rich, thematic layers that are left to be uncovered by the audience.

 

 

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Emma Donoghue, the author of the novel 'Room,' reveals how and why she decided to tell this heartbreaking story of captivity.

 

 

Description of the Theory

 

Symbolic interactionism dates back to Ancient Greece and Rome. Walter Fisher, the communication theorist, then developed the symbolic paradigm and formulated it (Fisher, 1954, p. 309). This theory explains how the elements of a story help the audience relate to its different components: characters, events, and genre.  Filmmakers write the storyline in a way that appeals to our experiences to help us make sense of our surroundings whether that be people, places, events, values, or actions (Foss, 2009 p. 309-312).

 

We can then say that film creators can use cultural and personal symbols to engage the audience by using the elements of the film to make them relate the storyline to their own lives. In Foss’s words, “narratives involve audiences in ways that other forms of discourse do not because they are intersubjectively shareable” (Foss, 2009, p. 309). Having said that, we can then say that Room uses the elements of this symbolic interactionism because the storyline is sharable and can be relatable to the audience.

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Application of the Theory

         

George Herbert Mead was among the first theorists to lay the foundation of the symbolic interactionism theory. He believed that people are like creative, social products and that “the meanings that things have for human beings are central in their own right” (Blumer, 1986, -.3).  By following Mead’s chain of thoughts to analyze this film using symbolic interactionism, one can identify its objective. In this film, the objective is to make the audience relate to the story without having them go through the same events. The film creators have successfully presented us with symbols through two main features: the characters, the events, and the genre. Both features helped the audience relate to the characters and the storyline by experiencing many feelings (sympathy, love, hate, fear, etc.). The theme and the genre also served as aiding, complementary features that helped in achieving the filmmakers’ goal.

           

The first feature of this film is its characters. Joy who is Jack’s mother, Jack who is Joy’s son, Old Nick who is Joy’s abductor and rapist, and the room where the events take place during the first half of the film. We can easily identify Joy and Jack as two round characters because, throughout the film, their characters change and surprise us with their actions while Old Nick’s character is flat and stays the same as the plot progresses and reaches its climactic event when Joy’s plan for Jack to escape room succeeds.

 

The room where they live is an inanimate phenomenon yet holds many meaningful symbols to the film’s characters. The room’s character is pretty special and unique because of the people who lived in it and the events it has witnessed. It developed a flat character because in the beginning of the film, we can tell that this room holds a lot of symbols and memories to the people who are captivated by it. It is Joy’s prison and Jack’s only universe, his only reality; he does not live in a typical room where most five-year-olds would live, he lives in Room. According to The New York Times, Dargis, a film critic, states that Jack “doesn’t live in a room or the room, but in Room which he refers to as if it were another living being (Dargis, 2015). By the end of the film, when Joy and Jack were finally free, this room still held memories of what happened even if the people who used to live there no longer do. Events might change; Joy and Jack might eventually move on with their lives, but the traumatic memories and events that took place in this room will live forever.

 

The genre of this film is drama. We see Joy and Jack face many adversities while living in “room” trying to protect themselves from Old Nick and even after escaping, they encounter many obstacles that prevent them from coping with the outside world and the people who surround them. This type would often make us gain self-knowledge as it makes us think of what defines us as persons; are we forgiving? Would we always be able to forgive those who hurt us and get over what they did to us and move on with our lives or not?

 

The last feature is the events. The film’s events progressed at a moderate pace and the major events developed the smaller ones in a chronological sequence. However, some major events took place at a very fast pace. For instance, the decision Joy took to plot Jack’s escape was very fast. The events are active; we see Joy taking the decision to plot Jack’s escape, we see her attempt suicide but we do not see her say anything before acting; however, there is always a logical introduction to those actions. It is also worth mentioning that as the events progress and by the end of the film, what was once Jack’s universe becomes just a room. The rhetors used the events to take us on a symbolic, self-exploring journey as they work together with the characters to present us with the perfect combination of elements that provide us with existential questions that we ask ourselves based on the events that take place and the characters’ experiences.

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Conclusion

 

The symbolic interactionism theory served its goal by identifying the film’s elements that helped the audience relate to the storyline and characters by arousing feelings through symbols of love, sympathy, and the characters' traits. Film creators used this theory to build characters and events that affect the story in a way that engages the audience and helps them relate it to their feelings through the genre (drama). For example, the symbols and decisions of each character affect how the audience felt toward the characters and the storyline (sympathy, love, hate, fear, etc.). The film’s narrative adds to the audience’s values through the characters’ spontaneous and organic feelings and the storyline’s plot.

 

 

 

References:

 

Blumer, H. (1986). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. University of California Press.

 

Dargis, M. (2015, October 15). Review: “Room,” mother and child in 100 square feet. Movies. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/movies/review-room-mother-and-child-in-100-square-feet.html

 

Fisher, W. R. (1987). Human communication as narration: Toward a philosophy of reason, value, and action. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.

 

Foss, S. K. (2009). Rhetorical criticism: Exploration and practice (4th ed.). Long Grove, IL:  Waveland Press.

 

Hanson, R. Mass communication: Living in a media world. (p. 44) SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition. 

 

Room. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3170832/

 

Tribute Movies (2016, October 20). Emma Donoghue – Room interview [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwldOrpEt8A