Post 5

It has been a while since I posted. I know it is not a valid reason but projects and other assignments were really stretching me end on end.

This post will be on group communication. If a group is "a collection of individuals who, as a result of interacting with one another over time, become interdependent, developing shared patterns of behaviour and a collective identity" - Trenholm(2004), then I believe that a family is a kind of a group as well. Being a family, there will tend to be friction and sometimes different values. It may be an oversimplification but I think in the end, there still is a strong sense of interedependence, interaction and being known as a collective identity.

In post 3 I mentioned the serial japanese drama Yamada Taro Monogatari and I will be using this drama today again for this post. In the drama, the main actor is Ninomiya Kazunari, who acts as Yamada Taro. Being born in a poor family and with his father being a freelance artist and mother being too 'sickly' to work, he is left to look after the family and taking up the position as 'man of the house'.

The way the family operates may be a little bit too much of a fairytale, but could be a true portrayal of the bond of poor families. But I'm not touching on that for this post. There are many instances in the whole drama(though i have not completed watching it), that portrays the theories of group communication.

Firstly the family has their own version of the ten commandments, but they sized it down to about 3 of them that they recite everytime before they tuck into their humble dinner of rice and miso soup. It is mostly related to money like how they should not borrow money cause they are not able to return it, or if they see a 1 yen coin on the ground, they should pick it up, smile and be thankful. Throughout the series - till where i stopped - it showed the strong stand taken by the family in committing to the family commandments. This is all somewhat part of Groupthink, where they are a 'cohesive' in group and how they are closed up to other ideas that could well be a better option to take. For instance when Taro's character was asked by his teacher to go on to University due to his excellent grades, he bluntly refused as he could not afford it. The teacher then persuaded him by saying he could take up a student loan first, but then he said that one of the mottos in his life is never to borrow money and leaving the argument as that. Also the series showed various snippets of the family members picking up a 1 yen coin and smiling while saying 'lucky', though to many, they would not bother.

There are also a few groupthink symptoms in this series. This was the part where the family was asked to help a very rich friend to look after her house for her. The family was welcomed to stay at the house and everything else will be taken care of, meals to clothes. Taro did not really agree to it at the beginning, but he remained silent as the rest of his 6 much younger siblings really wanted to see and feel what it was like living in a mansion. Hence in a sense, he actually gave up own his own feelings and values to agree with the rest of ther family, denying his own individual needs and wants so that the groups needs and wants are met. Here, the illusion of unanimity appears. While everyone else in the family assumed he was fine with it, but in fact he was feeling rather depressed and "emo" about it as the family was not as close as it used to be.

Another long post, sorry. But on a more random note, this sem is going to end soon. so during the 2-3 weeks break, do catch the drama on mysoju.com, it's really a nice slice-of-life kind of slow paced drama. MY PICK! also the main is cute :]