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[scriver]

Nope, haven't put The Pianist on hold yet.  Hopefully the actors will be better at pretending to be German :I

I was honestly kind of embarrassed by the American flavor smeared all over many places.  Schindler's body language, for one thing, was shouting "I AM AMURRICAN" so hard that I had trouble suspending disbelief.

I feel like it was a strong film in terms of cinematography, and in terms of showing things one might find unimaginable due to sheer scope or brutality.  One connected emotionally with the characters.  It was created with surprisingly strong camera-work and use of juxtaposition.

That said, the accents were pretty gosh-darned bad in a lot of places and, as previously stated, I kept on going "Where are we supposed to be, anyhow?  I sure can't tell from the body language being employed!  This guy comes off like Jimmy Stewart, and I'm sure that's not the vibe I'm supposed to be getting."

Putting one's feet on the desk?

*sigh*

I should stop complaining, but I was having quite a bit of trouble in the first half of the film.  It wasn't quite as difficult later.

Are you talking about different acting-cultures here, or do you really believe that body language Europe and the US are that different? That nobody over here ever puts their feet on desks? I have to ask if I misunderstood that, because it doesn't quite seem like something you would say or think.

[Aqizzar]

I have always been a little suspicious of my local radio stations, in that their playlists never entirely match up to their reputations.  Chiefly The Edge, billed as the latest and/or hardest music.  Sure, they played some Mike Ness and Rage Against the Machine and stuff, but over time it's more and more hits from R.E.M. and the Red Hot Chili Peppers from the 90s.  Excepting of course Cage the Elephant's "No Rest for the Wicked", played every hour on the hour.  Then on my way home tonight, I heard the intro to a song I hadn't heard in years, but I didn't recognize it until the "singing" started.

If seventeen year old Dave Matthews tunes are the cutting edge of music, then I buried Paul.  102.1 The Edge, you are dead to me.

[Taco Dan]

Sleeping is only a problem for me when I need to sleep.

[Vector]

Are you talking about different acting-cultures here, or do you really believe that body language Europe and the US are that different? That nobody over here ever puts their feet on desks? I have to ask if I misunderstood that, because it doesn't quite seem like something you would say or think.

I'm sure that some people in Europe put their feet up on desks, and hell, I'm sure a couple of people also whistle while wearing suits.

I'm also well aware that over here, we don't do the whole Slavic "smile and blink a little if everything's copacetic" facial expression unless we're, you know, from that area.  We don't put our hands up by our heads like horns to say "I need to get home or my wife is going to kill me" (Japan).  When we're counting, it's with palm out and our index fingers up first, not with the backs out (Germany, I think--this is mostly observation) or with the thumb first (definitely Japan).  Different countries prefer different amounts of personal space and eye contact.

I'm talking about a movie, dude, where I had a hard time believing that they guy in question was German.  I have a German step-grandmother.  I'm well aware that Germans aren't, you know, some kind of separate species we have to observe beneath a magnifying glass.  But there are things which I do personally put under the "very different" stack (or perhaps it is just "very obvious"), and Schindler's actor completely failed at them.  Especially personal space, posture, and eye contact.

He also had an accent that changed every two minutes.  Now, I'm sure that not everyone from Germany speaks with the same accent, but usually accents of native speakers have some consistency.  It was distracting.

[Cthulhu]

Blargh, I have free time with no math to do and I can't think of anything to do >:c

[scriver]

Are you talking about different acting-cultures here, or do you really believe that body language Europe and the US are that different? That nobody over here ever puts their feet on desks? I have to ask if I misunderstood that, because it doesn't quite seem like something you would say or think.

I'm sure that some people in Europe put their feet up on desks, and hell, I'm sure a couple of people also whistle while wearing suits.

I'm also well aware that over here, we don't do the whole Slavic "smile and blink a little if everything's copacetic" facial expression unless we're, you know, from that area.  We don't put our hands up by our heads like horns to say "I need to get home or my wife is going to kill me" (Japan).  When we're counting, it's with palm out and our index fingers up first, not with the backs out (Germany, I think--this is mostly observation) or with the thumb first (definitely Japan).  Different countries prefer different amounts of personal space and eye contact.

I'm talking about a movie, dude, where I had a hard time believing that they guy in question was German.  I have a German step-grandmother.  I'm well aware that Germans aren't, you know, some kind of separate species we have to observe beneath a magnifying glass.  But there are things which I do personally put under the "very different" stack (or perhaps it is just "very obvious"), and Schindler's actor completely failed at them.  Especially personal space, posture, and eye contact.

He also had an accent that changed every two minutes.  Now, I'm sure that not everyone from Germany speaks with the same accent, but usually accents of native speakers have some consistency.  It was distracting.

After re-thinking what I said, I realised I addressed the completely wrong thing. I'm not of the opinion that people from different cultures don't have different body languages; what really was the issue was that I'm simply questioning how or why you would know what is or isn't "German" language. Or any other, for that matter.

As for the actor/s not living up to your opinions pushing your boundaries of your disbelief-suspension, that is completely beyond the point. One would imagine that them speaking English would be a bigger peeve, though.

[Il Palazzo]

I disagree. One of the selling points of historical dramas is having the setting correct. If you've got WWII period's shops, cars, clothes, and all that inanimate stuff right, but leave the people acting as if they just left McDonalds, it produces a rather jarring discrepiancy. Kind of like when you spot a guy in trainers pretending to be a Spartan.
It goes for accents as well. A British lord from the Victorian period speaking like a Texan would be just silly.

[scriver]

Disagree with what, exactly? I wasn't saying that it's not important.

[Il Palazzo]

I was disagreeing with "the point", which I believe was about actors, whose job is to push audience's boundaries of dibelief suspension as far as they can, and in this particular case failing miserably.
But after a couple more rereadings of the whole exchange, I'm not sure anymore what "the point" was really about.

[Mindmaker]

Spoiler: Baww'd (click to show/hide)

Works with books/movies/animes/series as well.

[Vector]

After re-thinking what I said, I realised I addressed the completely wrong thing. I'm not of the opinion that people from different cultures don't have different body languages; what really was the issue was that I'm simply questioning how or why you would know what is or isn't "German" language. Or any other, for that matter.

As for the actor/s not living up to your opinions pushing your boundaries of your disbelief-suspension, that is completely beyond the point. One would imagine that them speaking English would be a bigger peeve, though.

... How I'd know?  Because there's an internet out there with lots of different people on it, posting videos of themselves doing things, and I live in the middle of a big fat melting-pot zone where I can watch foreign movies and pay attention to the various body languages.  My step-grandmother is ... extremely German.  German to the point where my mother's cautioned me against mentioning that we're related in public.  I know her quite well.

I used to live in International Student Housing, where I carefully observed the behavior of the other students--the distances they preserved, the amount of eye contact they used, their demonstrations of enthusiasm or lack thereof.  I hunt out articles on body language on the internet and read about the experiences of Americans in other countries.

In my major, basically 100% of my professors are foreign.  Most of them immigrated as adults and maintain much of their previous customs.  There's more exposure, right there.

I also read a lot of foreign literature and pay attention to the expressed behavior there, and there's a lot of books on "understanding x or y culture."  They may not be entirely accurate, but they often have interesting points to make.  I also read books analyzing argumentation styles (for folks in business), so that I can have a standard from which I can track deviations.  From there, I can make theories as to the cause of those deviations.

I have an excellent memory.  When I want to remember some cultural custom, I just play back memories of people from that culture, as far back as necessary, and look for the patterns.

I grew up with a father who automatically copies other people's accents and behavior.  Because it weirded me out and it always seemed to me like he was mocking them, rather than fully aligning his behavior with the people he was talking to, I took his act and raised it one--I work consciously every day to eliminate my accents, become better at reading status, find in-groups and out-groups, guess majors from physical appearance and various traits, figure out what people are thinking and feeling from little hints they might not even imagine were there.  Every day, all day, this is one of the things I do.

For example, I was able to guess that a student wasn't only a math major a couple of days ago because he wrote the title of his course on the front of his notebook.  It seems like an absurd indicator, but there you have it.  Serious math students usually don't do things like that.  That implies a greater attempt at organization than we usually bother with.  The important thing is that each subject in is in a different notebook and that all the notebooks appear "correct."  Correct almost never means "distinctively labeled, save perhaps by color."

I also read a lot of Sherlock Holmes when I was a kid.  It amazed me, how much one really could deduce or estimate from little facts--the difference between seeing and observing.  I can't say I'm a Holmes sort, of course.  I just try to pay attention to whatever I can.


Also, I watched three German movies in a row before watching Schindler's List, and was struck immediately by the difference--because I'd been carefully, carefully observing what made the other films seem "German."  I found Schindler's behavior far, far more jarring than I did the use of English, because English is a far less fundamental language.  You can express the same concept almost equivalently in German and English spoken language.  I have in fact read authors who, though writing in English, made it very clear from sentence structure that the speaker was German, just by virtue of the way they used the words.  Even speaking American body language, Schindler did not say "I am German, and in the middle of a world war."  He simply said, over and over, "I am American.  I am relaxed.  I am always in control.  I am the one in power here.  There isn't any real danger to anyone."

I couldn't believe it, because the message the rest of the film conveyed was so very different from what he kept saying with his body.  It was like he was lying at every moment, and I kept catching him at it, and he didn't really care what I thought because he was too busy "acting."

[lordnincompoop]

Well said.

And that's quite a lot of dedication, especially coming from someone who claimed earlier that they "couldn't be bothered to put in enough effort for social interaction" (paraphrasing, sorry). Any motivations for doing this?

That said I admire your keen observational skills. I'm a little jealous, even.

[Vector]

Well said.

And that's quite a lot of dedication, especially coming from someone who claimed earlier that they "couldn't be bothered to put in enough effort for social interaction" (paraphrasing, sorry). Any motivations for doing this?

That said I admire your keen observational skills. I'm a little jealous, even.

Thank you, I'm flattered =)

The thing is, there's a difference between not wanting to interact with people and not being interested in them.  I'm always interested in figuring out what other folks think and feel with as little effort (i.e. as little socializing) as possible.  I don't really have trouble socializing anymore, but in general I just don't find it interesting unless I'm learning something new.  Rather, it's unsatisfying, like eating candy instead of a normal dinner.  By the time I'm done, I don't feel... complete.

I don't fully know what the motivation is, really.  It's sort of a personality thing, perhaps?  I always feel best when I'm busy understanding the interactions of a system and figuring out how it all folds together.  Other people have hobbies like watching TV (as apparently just about everyone in my rhetoric class actually does).  My hobby is figuring out why other people watch the TV, what it's giving them, why they project themselves onto one character or another.

And I guess one of the reasons is that, in striving to understand myself, I've had to function as an observer of myself--and it's a lot easier to understand one element of a system if you understand large portions of the rest of the system.


That, and my best friend was suicidal for many years.  I had to learn how she felt from punctuation and capitalization alone (on IM protocols), her breath, the way she moved, the slightest change to her shoulders, the way she drank a glass of water.  She was busy pretending she wasn't telling anyone and that no one could tell, but I always had to know, immediately, how I had to behave around her on any given day.  Could I make jokes?  Was she only mildly depressed, so I could go home early without feeling bad?  Did I have to give her my full attention?  Was she angry at me for something I deserved, or was she just lashing out again?  How could I get her to stop hitting me without making her cry?  If I wasn't careful when I made her stop hurting me, I would be forced to take care of her as she got upset about having upset me--because her way of living was to always find some way that her life was more troublesome than other people's, to make herself feel better about her own inability to affect others.  If she couldn't solve her own grievous problems, but she could survive them, then she knew other people could survive as well, and she had no responsibility to help.

She is why I observe, and she is one of the reasons why I'm not the most fond of interacting with people or making friends, much of the time.  I don't want to be stuck that way, forced to help someone by that bond just because I can understand how they're feeling, and I can make them feel better.  I know I can help, but I'm afraid of getting stuck again--and instilling dependence on me, yet again, seems like a bad idea for everyone.


Bleh.  More than anything, I'm afraid of not knowing--of being caught out one day without some necessary piece of knowledge.  Of being unable to read a situation so I can't see danger, an opportunity, an advantage.  Of someone suddenly saying: "Quick!  Tell me how to prove that the square root of 2 is irrational!" and my simply... not knowing.  If I didn't know, I would be passed over for someone who did know, and I would be left behind.  Worthless.

The reason why I study languages obsessively, by the way, is because I grew up in an area with a large immigrant population, and there was always someone speaking in Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, or Spanish around... or anything else, though those were the most popular.  I was really lonely.  I kept thinking: "Maybe if I could just understand what these people are saying, I'd feel less lonely.  Maybe, if I understood how to act like these people, they would accept me even though I don't look like them."

"Maybe, if I take care with my words, fewer people will misunderstand me and get angry.  Maybe, if I study mathematics, I won't have to feel like I'm a smaller person than all of these men who are so good with numbers.  Maybe, if I watch this TV program and think about why other people are watching it, I will understand the watchers enough to talk to them some day.  Maybe, if I watch these people talking, I can understand the pattern behind the information they are sharing, and I will be able to understand why no one wants to talk to me.  Maybe it's that my patterns are wrong.  If I know things they don't know, but that they can understand, if I can speak their color of English, if I can somehow simplify concepts from pictures, sounds, smells to these words, if I can learn to tell a story, if can learn to be humble without being deferential, if I can be polite without being obsequious, if, if, if...

"Well, maybe then I won't be lonely anymore."


But as I've worked towards this understanding, I've paradoxically become more interested in the science than in the interactions themselves.  My incomprehension caused my loneliness, not the absence of people.  For me, the important thing was understanding.  Odd, I guess, but mostly true... I'm lonely in one way, but it's not the old sort of gnawing I felt.

Ah, well.  We inhabit an odd world.

[ToonyMan]

Bleh, I woke up today not to my alarm clock, but my parents getting into another verbal fight.  It's probably the worst thing in my life right now which is pretty cool because I've had worse before.

I also can't end anything I say on a negative note anymore, I also consistently spell negative right now.

[iceball3]

Tu madre is pissed at me. I was supposed to hang out with my sister, but I guess I said something or something? I have no idea what's happening really, but I'm in some kind of trouble...