People in airports are either by themselves staring morosely into the distance, or are sitting next to their travel partner whom they are well sick of, and therefore are also staring morosely into the distance (or sometimes staring morosely at each other).
People who talk on phones, when they do make hand gestures, tend to make floppy arm movements that are reminiscent of windshield wipers. It's a gesture that starts on the right, somewhat authoritatively, then just collapses to the left. Repeat.
Since I failed at people watching, I thought I'd briefly discuss what made gestures seem unnatural/unconvincing. This thought had occurred to me already when watching Friends, but over the weekend I got the opportunity to play a video game called "Heavy Rain" that made me think about natural/unnatural movement. The graphics in "Heavy Rain" are very good, and the characters are modelled off of real people, down to facial expressions (in a video on the making of the game, they showed little metal nodules being stuck onto the actor's faces for expression-tracking purposes. It was pretty cool). Yet, everything seemed just a little bit off to me. I had the same impression when I watched Friends: that the movements and the expressions seemed slightly less than convincing.
Even without knowing what the individuals were saying, it seemed like every action was an after thought. There was a split second of disconnect between a thought being expressed, and an arm movement or facial expression being made. Alternatively, when the actions were being made simultaneously with mouth movement, they were repetitive gestures (e.g. arm flapping). I suppose this latter gesture is more "normal", but then after a while it just got kind of annoying.
What does this say about oral advocacy? I'm not sure. I suppose the timing issue might be something to consider going forward as we try to figure out ideal gesturing when we argue (i.e. get gestures to a point where we don't have to think about it); the repetitive gesture is something we've touched on briefly in class already. I guess we have to strike a balance between over-thinking gestures (leading to the disjunct between idea and gesture) and not being in control of our bodies at all (repetitive gestures).
People in airports do tend to look morose. This has always puzzled me. I like airports. I am convinced I will find true love there. But that has nothing to do with hand gestures.
ReplyDeleteI like your closing analysis. How does one analyze naturalness? By definition the natural cannot be fully explained, but rather can only be felt. So as you say, we just sort of have to strike a balance.
Great post!
ReplyDeleteNever thought about watching people and their sync with the movements. In tv shows there really ought to be a difference in sync as opposed to real life!
The movie Love Actually drastically increased by expectations for what I'd see at an airport because it shows people embracing after having been apart for some time. As you have pointed out, this is not the case.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I definitely agree that timing is a factor and then gestures can be distractingly awkward if they appear to be unnatural because they are coming at the "wrong time." My sense is that if you feel like your gesturing is awkward then other people will too.
i've always found airports to be truly terrible places. There is nothing happy or romantic about them. It's just the place where one is obliged to wait for hours on end and where the lighting is bad, the food is awful, there is a high chance that in a couple hours one will meet a terrible and painful death and / or will have to spend the next couple hours seated next to a very, very chatty stranger.
ReplyDeleteThe only "happy" place is the arrivals area and even than most people just seem to want to leave as quickly as possible...
i agree though that some tv shows can be a lot of fun to watch because the gestures are so off that they end up becoming unintentionally hilarious