The Looking Glass Theory

. Explain the looking glass theory and self-concept as they pertain to Shrek, Donkey, Princess Fiona, and Prince Farquar. Your answer needs to address the components of self. In your answer, include how self-concept affects the way that they communicate. Remember that communication includes cognitive, listening and speaking processes.

According to the looking glass theory, we use others as a mirror to see ourselves and we imagine what others think of us then include these imaginings in our self concept. In the movie “Shrek”, the main character and the hero of the story, Shrek, was always concerned about how he looks and what people think about his face and outfit. That is why he was shocked when he thought that the princess was talking about his hideous face with donkey and reacted very negatively to express his love towards the princess. Self-concept describes a person and his or her personality. A person's self-concept always affects his/her ability to communicate with others. When Shrek brought a flower for Princess Fiona and wanted to express his feeling towards her he heard all the conversation between the donkey and the princess. The princess was talking about the secret why she became ugly at night. But the Shrek thought that she was talking about his ugly face and she did not want to marry her for that. In that case Shrek was just hearing their conversation, but not listening and it indicates his poor self-concept. Even though the Dragon breathes fire and eliminates any Knight who tries to save the princess, this is not your ordinary fairytale dragon. Hanging out at the keep and being surrounded by hot boiling lava all day can make any dragon hungry for a little love. It could find the true love heart inside the donkey and even though it could not talk, but they communicated and expressed their love to each other. When the donkey was doing fake praising to the dragon’s beauty, the dragon took that for real and did go after the donkey until it could arouse the true love for it in the heart of the donkey. At the first time Shrek denied to take the princess’ hand, then the princess agreed to marry the greedy Prince Farquar and wanted to get married as soon as possible. The greedy, short and timid king thought that Fiona loved him so much and that is why she wanted to get married sharp. But it was a verbal miscommunication and their hearts could not com...

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...ions. Explain further how Donkey’s comparison of parfait layers is not applicable to the social penetration model, nor in keeping with the analogy that Shrek was making.

Social penetration refers to the process of relationship bonding whereby individuals move from superficial communication to more intimate communication. Shrek is the fairy tale where the ugly, green ogre is the hero, donkey that talks non-stop as his sidekick, and there is a princess who turned into an ogre at night. At the beginning Shrek helped the donkey and as result the donkey tried to be his friend even though Shrek insulted him over and over. But the donkey could not realize why Shrek was trying to avoid him and liked to be isolated from the social life. Every one hated Shrek for his ugly outfit without thinking twice. That is why Shrek was tried to keep himself away from everyone and did not want any friend ever. But the donkey was a following Shrek at his every step after all the insulting from Shrek and he escorted Shrek at his journey of rescuing the Princess Fiona. But in real if anyone misbehaves as Shrek did with the donkey can never be friends as the turned out to be very intimate buddy at the end.