Does public affection institutes love? Does is displays ownership? (The hand that I'm holding and the body attached to it belongs to me, so back off!!!) Could there possibly be too much public affection, especially when children are around?
These questions all stim from the movie, The Namesake. It seemed to be traditional for Gogol's family to not display affection, not even an "I love you". I'm not for sure if this is an accurate Indian tradition, but it made me think about those couples, both hetero and homosexual, who don't seem to mind "showing off" their love for each other no matter where they are. What do you think...can there be too much or too little public affection?
Personally,
ReplyDeleteI am a very affectionate person. I do think there are boundaries with public affection. I do not think that people should be in public acting like they need to be in a hotel room.As far as kissing and hugging, I have no problem with that.Being affection is an expression of how you feel about a person.
I think in the film it was portrayed that the parents perceived affectionate touch as sexual, not merely affection. I think it was confusing to Gogol. My parents weren't affectionate - I think I would have had the same response Gogol did when his girlfriend touched him in front of his parents. I don't know if that's cultural - I suppose it is, the idea of European body space and all. Hmm.
ReplyDeleteI don’t know the psychological aspects of public affection; in other words, I couldn’t tell you whether it is a display of affection or a display of ownership. In fact, I’m not sure whether you could definitively say it is either of those; it may be a combination of the two…it may be impossible to know. Since (in my opinion) the psychological motives behind public affection are difficult to gage, I think a more effective way to examine public affection would be to look at it in cultural contexts. As we saw in ‘The Namesake,’ public affection is obviously taboo in Bengali culture. Now this may be difficult to believe, but I think America- relative to other societies- is probably around the middle of the road with regards to the social acceptability (or lack thereof) of public affection. I lived in Romania for a short period of time and I will say this: public affection is just an ingrained, accepted part of their society (I’m not sure whether this is necessarily indicative of Eastern European culture or Latin Culture…I didn’t particularly care to ask). But if one walks through a park in Romania, they will assuredly see young couples scattered throughout who are virtually doing everything shy of the big ‘it.’ However, no one sees it as a big deal…it is a part of their culture. So perhaps to understand the psychology of public affection, it would be useful to first examine the psychology of various cultures and their differing perspectives on public affection.
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