Hitch - 2005 (Persuasion in Media)
This blog post is in response to the “Traits & Characteristics Module” for my online Persuasion (COMM 333) course. In this post, I will be analyzing three course topics to analyze the movie, Hitch starring Will Smith, Eva Mendes, and Kevin James as the lead roles. The movie circles around persuading the opposite sex (in some way) that you are the perfect match for them, as well as ways to overcome various flirting/dating obstacles. Hitch (Will Smith) is a dating consultant who is able to deliver surefire tips for a man to score any woman. His consultant (persuasion) abilities are tested by: Albert Brennaman (Kevin James) who is infatuated by a celebrity client, and Sara Melas who he tries to seduce despite her being able to read through his skills.
The objective of this post is to analyze how the image of persuasion manifests through the media. The three topics of persuasion I will be using to do this are: gender differences in persuasion, the elaboration likelihood model, and the social judgment theory.
Gender differences are prominent in this movie since it is all about love between men and women. In the scene where Hitch initially meets Sara Melas at a bar, Hitch breaks down the various obstacles that men have to overcome to approach women in public. Before they met, another man had initially tried to approach Sara, but was unsuccessful when she excuses him from the sitting area. Hitch then comes over and chastises her for her bluntness. After he seemingly deconstructs her responses, he leaves her wanting more conversation. This cross gender interaction is further explored through gender specific stereotypes in regards to persuasion (Gass, 2014). When the first man is very forward with talking to Sara, she responds by being forward as well. Consequently, Hitch steps in and chastises her action as a means of persuading her to talk to him (Hitch). Stereotypically, women feel that they must give back the same level of performance that they are given by men, which is seen as a negative thing. Through various studies, it is also seen that women are more easily persuaded by men, and men are more persuaded by other men (Gass, 2014). This is further outlined in the movie, as Hitch (a male) is able to easily directly persuade other men, and women indirectly (through those men).
The contrast of Hitch’s work life and personal life is best viewed through the elaboration likelihood model, due to the fact that the movie revolves around two paralleled situations. His central processing is shown when he engages Sara Melas, and his peripheral processing is shown when he engages his clients. This is due to the fact that he is investing himself (high involvement) in Sara and investing his knowledge (lower involvement) into his clients (Gass, 2014). At the turn of the movie, we see that his ego in knowledge of human persuasion is broken as Albert’s love life with a celebrity crumbles from negative publicity. Hitch thinks that all of his skills are bulletproof, until Albert’s situation proves Hitch wrong. This happens at the same time that Hitch’s own love life with Sara crumbles. This causes him to invest more into his own turmoil that that of his client, Albert. His reaction proves how much involvement he had for each situation. While he has to actively navigate Sara’s tendencies and personality, he generalizes the women his clients are interested in and gives his clients tips that he has memorized like an input output generator.
The final topic I am using is the social judgment theory. When the movie comes together, Hitch has a shift in beliefs about what makes men successful in persuading women. Hitch has a clear latitude of acceptance and latitude of rejection that he acts upon. Initially, his latitude of acceptance lies in his confidence that his personal knowledge of persuasion work flawlessly. His latitude of rejection is that these men’s genuine selves are what hold them back from being with their women of interest. Through Albert’s actions that Hitch doesn’t see, Hitch has a shift. When Hitch confronts Albert’s love interest, she tells him the specific actions that made her fall in love with Albert. These actions don’t fall in line with what he advised Albert to do, they were the opposite. Albert retained his genuine self when interacting with his love interest. When Hitch realizes this, his latitude of acceptance begins to encompass his initial latitude of rejection. This contrast is explicitly labeled at the beginning and the end of the movie. He narrates, giving tips on how to score a woman. At first he gives a specific tip, and the end he implies that there are really no tips to be given. In relation to the social judgment theory, the message Hitch was receiving was that his skills are what allowed his clients to find love. He then adjusted his latitudes when he received the message that his clients expressing their genuine selves are what succeeded. (Lietzenmeyer, 2016)
Given that this specific movie explicitly fleshed out the art of persuasion, I was very engaged in writing this post. It allowed me to mostly observe ‘real life’ enactments of gender stereotypes in interpersonal relationships. This also gave me a more concrete view of what the applied social justice theory could look like. It was very hard for me to grasp the concept when going over the reading materials. Since we specifically focused on media, deconstructing the use of persuasive concepts will be in the back of my mind when watching moves.
References Lietzenmeyer, A. (2016). Traits & Characteristics. Retrieved from http://ple1.odu.edu/courses/201620/comm333/modules/3/1/2 Gass, R. H., Seiter, J. S. (2014). Persuasion: Social Influence and Compliance Gaining.
