Save The Last Dance

The movie I choose to reflect the lessons over the last four weeks against was Save the Last Dance. This movie is about two people one white one black, trying to have a romantic relationship while both living in a lower class mostly African American populated city. While the African American man Derek, is not only trying to work his way through acceptance into college to become a pediatrician. Sara the white women, is not only starting at a new high school after her mother passed in a car accident and had to live with a father that isn’t around very much, she is also trying to work her way into getting excepted into Julliard the dance school. This movie reflects struggles of understanding who they want to be as a person and separating themselves from the stereo types that they are portrayed to be showing examples of Monitor Labels. Also it goes on to show examples of this white women and black man having to communicate in a totally different way than most couples around them which show principles of verbal communication. A large factor that is continuous throughout this movie is also communication through dance which is also a defining nonverbal communication strategy. Lastly is openness/closedness relational dialectics. As you continue to read I will show how each one of these is not only a very common struggle for many relationships but how they play a role in the relationship between both Sara and Derek. After moving in with her father in a not so nice neighborhood, Sara makes friends with a very different crowd then she was used to hanging out with at her old high school. These new friends invite her to a dance club where she meets with Derek and finds herself rather uncomfortable dancing at not because she isn’t a good dancer but because she isn’t used to dancing hip hop. Derek offers to teach her how to give her lessons of her own in a private space. Throughout their lessons as time goes on the obvious physical attraction between the two of the them grows. The way that Derek stands behind her holding her hips showing her how to gracefully let them flow rolling back and forth screams sexual attraction to Sara without saying a word. In our book nonverbal communication is defined as “all aspects of communication other than words. It includes not only gestures and body language but also how we utter words.” (Interpersonal communication, Wood 118) The way that Derek’s hand shakes as he reaches around for her hip, the way that Sara stutters her words attempting to say anything at all, these are all examples of nonverbal communication. For me personally at times this is how I prefer to communicate in a romantic relationship. As my mom always says actions speak louder than words. One of the huge struggles that these teens face while trying to make this already complicated relationship work is dealing with “the streets”. As a black man in the neighborhood that Derek is going to school and living in, he is seen just as another stereo type. He is expected to not only flunk out of high school and have at least one child by the time he is 19, but also have some type of criminal record or dead by the time he hits 21. The struggles of being a teenager is hard enough none the less having to do it in an area that expecting you to fail. Derek is faced with monitor labels every day of his life and having to fight them. At one point in the movie he does just what society expects of him and talks about how he had robbed a liquor store with one of his friends when he was younger. When society labels you something before you even have a chance to see your choices you start to mold yourself into what you have been given. He began to except the label that he had been given by the society around him and the type of social relationship that comes with it. He expected to be looked down on because he was a black man in a bad area. He was expected to be in a relationship with a black women because that’s what was “normal”. By him and Sara

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