Saturday, May 18, 2019


Nonverbal Communication

Timeless - Season 1 Episode 1




"The high-octane drama follows an unlikely trio who travel through time to battle a master criminal intent on altering the fabric of human history with potentially catastrophic results" (Hulu, n.d.)

Watched the first 30 minutes without sound:

This episode begins with the Hindenburg disaster before it flashes forward to present time.  A white female is presenting a college class before going to visiting someone close that is dying and caregiver when a gentleman with a badge knocks on the door.  The gentleman transports the woman to what appears to be a top-secret warehouse.  The woman is led to a room where she finds a man sitting relaxingly on a chair.  When she appears nervous as she looks around the room and plays with the charm on her necklace.  They appear to be strangers.  However, when a lady comes in to retrieve them, she possibly addresses them.  When this occurs, the woman, as her eyes widen, appears shocked at hearing the man’s name. 

They are shown a video of a possible kidnapping of what appears to be a scientist.  The kidnappers and scientist enter a sphere and disappear.  After some discussion, the man and woman appear in the next scene wearing clothing from the past.  They enter the sphere and are transported by a black gentleman back in time.  It appears they are investigating an event and looking for someone in a picture.  Even though they are working together, they appear to be strangers.

Throughout the episode, there body language seems to be communicating nervousness, apprehension, curiosity, and sometime annoyance.  The messages are obvious by watching the movements of their eyebrows, expressions on their faces, the crossing of their arms, and slow cautious movements of their bodies.  At one time, the white man was speaking to another female in a bar.  When the woman he is traveling with, walks up and zealously shakes her hand and starts talking to her, he rolls his eyes and shifts his body. This communicates that he is somewhat annoyed with her interference of his conversation with the new woman.

Watched the first 30 minutes with sound:

The episode begins with the 1937 Hindenburg disaster before it flashes forward to a present time.  The female is a professor at a university that goes to visit her ailing mother and sister at home.  The gentleman knocked on the door, when she opened the door, he introduced himself as a Homeland Security agent.  He drove the professor to a secret warehouse.  The professor was taken to a room where a white male was sitting and waiting with his eyes closed.  Come to find out the when the female Homeland Security agent come in to retrieve them, the professor was shocked to hear that the other man was a Delta Force soldier.

They were shown a video of a scientist being kidnapped and take back in time.  The professor was shocked and disbelieved that time travel was possible. After some discussion about a time machine and time travel, the soldier and professor are encouraged to go back in time and stop the kidnapper from changing history.  They enter a second sphere wearing clothes from the 1940’s era.  The third gentleman, who is their pilot, is really a programmer that is apprehensive about going back in time since he is black.  They are strangers and had not met before this night.

When they explore the town, they locate a tavern.  In the tavern the professor identifies a famous newspaper writer.  The soldier goes over to talk with the writer.  As he is talking with her, the professor comes over to meet her.  She shakes her hand says that she is a fan of hers.  The soldier turns his body away, rolls his eyes, and annoyingly introduces the professor as his older sister. 

From watching the first 30 minutes without sound and then watching it again with sound.  It appears that I was somewhat accurate about the relationships between the three characters.  They are strangers learning to work together to prevent history from being changed.

Verbal and nonverbal communications between the characters together produce a complete story.  Individually - the story is incomplete.  This is true for everyday conversations and interactions between individuals.


Reference:
Hulu. (n.d.) Watch Timeless.  Retrieved May 18, 2019 from https://www.hulu.com/series/timeless-d7378c1a-2e53-4d79-8ce7-9cf78d456891.

5 comments:

  1. I think that if we really pay attention to the non-verbal cues we will know all that we need to know. I think that non-verbal cues often times give more information than our verbal cues. I genuinely believe that our words can lie, but what we do subconsciously with out body and our face is completely honest.

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  2. Donna,
    To receive the optimum amount of information in the message, it is important to interpret a speaker's nonverbal cues correctly (O'Hair, Friedrich, & Dixon, 2011). I think you were perceiving and understanding the nonverbal and verbal cues precisely. I heard before it is a good show. It's right for every day we need to be a good listener by observing, listening to nonverbal and verbal cues.

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  3. Resources: O'Hair, D., Wiemann, M., Mullin, D. I., & Teven, J. (2015). Real communication (3rd. ed).

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  4. Donna,
    Thanks for such an informative post. Your selection is definitely more serious than my choice. However, we both noted that nonverbal behaviors can send powerful, unintended messages. Messages in which we tend to place more stock in but that doesn’t mean that we always interpret that communication accurately (O'Hair & Wiemann, 2015, p. 96). It is important to consider the combination of gestures, body movement, facial expression, eye behavior and voice makes the exchanges more believable.
    Reference:
    O'Hair, D., Wiemann, M., Mullin, D. I., & Teven, J. (2015). Real communication (3rd. ed). New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.

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  5. Hello Donna,

    I enjoyed reading your blog. It is true that is difficult to analyze the true storyline between many human interactions without carefully analyzing both verbal and non verbal communication. I would have been really confused watching the episode especially if moved between time periods.

    ReplyDelete

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