And so we were tasked to watch the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. It stars Kate Hudson as Andie Anderson, a columnist for Composure Magazine, a fashion magazine. She writes about fashion, but she really wants to write about politics, poverty etc. She was the one who formulated the idea How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, after trying to help her friend from revealing to the world her depressing love life.

Also starring Matthew McConaughey as Ben Barry, an advertising guru, who's also on a similar mission as Andie. He's on a mission to make one girl fall in love with him in order to win a bet, and a promotion. Lucky him, his friends chose Andie. At first he thought getting Andie would be a breeze, but I guess he thought wrong.

Afte a couple of uneasy situations for the two, they ended up knowing each other's secret mission, and later on, they realized that they have indeed fallen in love with each other.


EVT or Expectancy Violations Theory is how others respond to a social norm violator of rules within a culture, may it be positive or negative. Others might think that this dating game between Andie and Ben is fun and exciting. Well, that's for others, and not for me. Why? Simply because I was raised not to talk to just anyone. Yes, ironic in some way because I'm a Communication Arts student, and Public Speaking is supposed to be one of my can-do things. By anyone I mean, anyone on one-on-one. Anyway, as far as what I know about Filipino culture, we don't date just anyone (well, set aside the modern ones who would just go for anyone who's available). Dating isn't a game, it's supposed to be a test. A test for the two loveseekers to find their perfect match, properly. By properly I mean, common friend introduces boy to girl. Not, at a bar/party, boy approaches girl and asks her for a date. No no no. That's a BIG No for me.

This is proxemics. The measureable distances between people as they interact. Being too close to a total stranger in just one night is breaking the norms. I might be over-reacting, but if you were raised the Filipino way, you wouldn't be acting like them. Thus, here comes the culture difference again.

Moving on, violation valence. It simply means breaking the norms. It's not what we expected, but it just happens. Something that could bother us for a while. A simple flick of his finger on our skin would leave us sleepless for nights. It's irritating. It's pretty confusing too. Take this for an example, Ben tries to please Andie in anyway possible, for her to fall for him. But Ben doesn't know how Andie feels about him. Sure, she does look happy, and in love.. but is she REALLY IN LOVE with Ben? She looks like she does, but does she really? See. I told you. It's confusing.

Last but not the least, Communication Reward Valence. What can you do for me? What can you do to me? Ask these two questions, and that's CRV. In the movie, we could see that Andie is slowly falling for Ben, so when Ben acts a little pervert-y, she's not as offended as what normal girls would be. Instead, she just laughs it off like it's nothing. You see, everyone wants to have something in return. Why would you bother stick up to someone who won't give you anything in return? Am I right? :)

So the next time I'll see a movie. I wouldn't just enjoy what I'm seeing on the silver screen, but other than that I would enjoy the thrill of thinking how this certain act of the leading man could create some sort of havoc in another country. Thus comes the difference in culture.