Tootsie essays

Tootsie essays Interpersonal communication is the communication that occurs simultaneously with another person in an attempt to mutually influence one another, usually for the purpose of managing relationships. Dustin Hoffman encountered and altered his interpersonal communication skills while playing the character of Michael Dorsey in the film Tootsie. Tootsie examines a gender bending, cross-dressing male in the mid 1980s. This movie was a script for its time as well as the future as its ideas on relationships between men and women still hold in todays society. Tootsie stars Dustin Hoffman as a talented but troublesome actor, unemployable due to his reputation. Out of desperation, he dresses up as "Dorothy" to win a role as a woman on a daytime soap. He continues his charade of the sexes for a full year. Michael faces many interpersonal relationships throughout the film between himself as a male along with what it means and feels like to be a woman. Michael faced stages of relationship building as a male and as a woman, in some cases with the same person. Michael was turning a friendship into more of an intimate relationship with a fellow actor (Teri Garr). Michael reached the intimacy stage with his new love however, as Dorothy, Garr despised him/her. Garr watched Dorothy enter Michaels apartment leaving Garr with a hostile and uneasy feeling on Dorothys intentions with her new man. In a chance encounter, I believe Garr and Dorothy would reach the turmoil stage quickly. Garr was able to hold two very different relationships with both characters. Michael and Dorothy conformed unknowingly to societies views of the loving man and the man stealing woman in turn changing Garrs reaction to each. Dorothys nonverbal and verbal communication changed dramatically from her original form as Michael. Dorothy used her small, frail and grandma like appearance to her advantage to create ...