Negative Expectations And The Film While You Were Sleeping Essays

Negative Expectations And The Film While You Were Sleeping Negative Expectations and the film While You Were Sleeping Everyday people feel the effects of other's and society imposed ways to act or perform in daily actives. These imposed way are called expectations. Expectations can help people live up to there potential, act politely, finish projects, spend more time with family, and many other things that yield a positive outcome. Unfortunately, expectations are not always positive. Often these imposed expectations lead individuals into unhealthy stereotypes, sexism, sudden career choices, nonproductive relationships, little self-esteem and many other adverse results. The film While You Were Sleeping displays how one self, traditions, societies and others expectations can all intertwine and become a maze of lies, false hope, self-fulfilling prophecies and confusion. The film takes place in Chicago during the early nineties. Lucy Eleanor Moderatz is a lonely, single, Thirty year old orphan who works at the el-train taking fares. Everyday she ?sits in a booth like a veal (While You Were Sleeping)? and watches the commuters come and go. She soon falls in love with a commuter that she has never talked to. Peter Callaghan is a stereotypically arrogant businessman who everyone loves. On Christmas day, Lucy finds herself witnessing Peter being mugged, and then thrown onto the train tracks of a quickly approaching train. Lucy saves Peter from the train and he is taken to the hospital in a coma. When Lucy checks up on Peter in the hospital a nurse assumes Lucy is his fianc?e and introduces the family to her under that pretense. Peter's family has heard of Peter's fianc?e, but has never talked to or been introduced to her, so they welcome her fully into the family unaware that the two have never met. Lucy is swept away by the idea and the acceptance of the family and does not reveal that she is not the real fianc?e, who happiness to be away in Paris on business. Soon Saul, Peter's Godfather, finds out the truth but encourages Lucy to play along to keep the family moral up. This is all taking place while Jack Callaghan, Peter's blue-collar brother and Lucy fall in love with each other. By the end of the movie, all is figured out and Jack and Lucy are married but not before some unhealthy expectations, awkward situations and conclusions are discovered. Negative self-expectations are when a person has an ?ideal or predetermined way imposed on them that is not rational or probably. (Bentley 257).? Negative self-exceptions often occur when one does not think ahead, but acts suddenly, leading to generalizations and stereotyping. In addition, these expectations give the person an unreal image of themselves. People are lead to believe that they are inadequate in comparison to others because they do not measure up to a self-imposed standard. The standard is so stringent that no one can fully live up to it. Strict self-expectations cause anxiety, which can lead to panic attacks, and even hart attracts (Talbot 339). As well, these expectations are also unjust and thought of without proper justification (Bentley 260). Lucy Moderatz has negative self-expectations of herself, which lead her to be shy, and rarely out going. She seas Peter Callaghan everyday and watches his every move but she never approaches him. Lucy is a good example of the negative half of the success-begets-success idea. If an individual get off to a successful start in life, they will tend to continue to be successful; if they start off as a failure, they will tend to be one again and again (Stotland 66). Lucy feels that she has struck out with men before and she will again. This expectation of failure leads her not to attempt an encounter with Peter. Success and failure in one area often shows up in other areas. The success-begets-success idea articulates that soon Lucy will not reach out to any new people whether she wants to procure a romantic relationship with them or not due to her past rejections (66). Success-begets-success is closely related to self-fulfilling prophecies. A self-fulfilling prophecy transpires when ?a false definition of the situation evokes a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true (Merton 426).? Once an expectation is