Bend It Like Beckham Theory

Loving v. Virginia (1967) was a monumental Supreme Court case which allowed interracial marriage which was illegal in the state of Virginia at the time. Due to all the hard and tireless work of those civil rights activists’ interracial marriage is now legal on a national level. Although, these are great strides, there still seems to be some difficulty within families who prefer for their children to stay within their own race. I, among many others, are the ones who question the “normal” relationships and step outside our own race and explore the world of those with different cultures. We will be exploring how my relationship, and those of my participant (Zhao), are different and similar in terms of our communication not only within the relationship,

Relational dialectic seemed most suitable for this because when reading the chapter in my communication book, this theory stuck the most out to me. In the reading they mention the movie Bend it like Beckham. It is a story of two very different people who still managed to maintain a relationship. Which in both Zhao’s and my stories seem to be the main concept. This theory uses the term, dialectic, which is contradictions in personal relationships. It is people and choices are pulled in opposite directions: conforming to community standards versus a relational identity that differs. The theory talks about internal dialectic, which is within the relationship, and external dialectic which is between the couple and the community, which was talked more about in the interview. An example of internal dialectic would be the struggle I had in my relationship with openness and closedness. I was always willing to talk about my feelings, making me very open. However, Donvea would not enjoy that conversation, keeping many of his thoughts and feelings inside him. The theory says to become aware of our need to have predictability in our relationship. However, they go on to warn that without the occasional spontaneity the relationship becomes bland, boring and eventually dead. The theory also discusses conventionality and uniqueness as apart of stability and change. Where family relationships faceoff

Utterance chains are phrases that come from what we have heard, or will hear in the future. Examples would include: Marry a man from your own culture, Cross-cultural dating is hard, the two cultures are too different, or he will not have the same moral and values like we do, which are all examples I have heard from my cross-cultural relationships. However, on the other side you hear positive examples, “interracial dating is exotic, do not be trapped by old-fashioned bigot views”. Utterance chains have competing voices hoping one is heard more than the other. A spiraling inversion is switching back and forth between two contrasting voices. An example of that would be when I was dating Donvea. It was so easy at school, I constantly heard positive reinforcements of our relationship. It was at home where I would hear negative things about my then boyfriend. My parents hoped that their voice was heard more than my friends’ voice. These are all things to be considered during the utterance