How I Could Just Kill A Man

Chill not gonna kill anyone here just that this week I will be using the music video of 'How I could just kill a man' by Charlotte Sometimes, a cute and interesting somewhat dark comedy mtv, to explore the concept of interpersonal communication (:

Basically the song and video tell us about how the girl is being cheated on by her evil boyfriend, and how she goes about carrying out revenge on him so as to mend her broken heart.

Well firstly, the obvious concept we can identify here is deception, ie. parties lying to or misleading each other or concealing significant information, it is one of the relational challenges that may result to relational dissolution (breaking up). Throughout the video it is shown that the girl discovers heartbreaking truths of her boyfriend cheating on her, such as finding lipstick marks on his shirt, seeing him meeting his mistress in secret and going to a hotel together (?!?!), and finding out his love notes to her.

This links us to the equity theory, whereby individuals in relationships seek to maintain a balance of costs and rewards that are relatively equal to those of their partners. The relationship depicted in the video implies that the equity theory balance is not achieved between the couple since one is over-benefiting (the evil bf) and the other is under-benefiting (the pitiful gf). The girl who is not reaping relational rewards equivalent to the effort she put into the relationship then suffer from distress and resentment and plots ways to murder her two-timing boyfriend. Her murder schemes include hanging a pile of bricks from the ceiling, killing the boyfriend as he enters the house, poisoning of his food, and cutting loose the ropes to the elevator killing both him and the mistress (muahaha yay!). Such ideas may be comical and extreme but it just goes to prove the point that under-benefiting party in a relationship are likely to suffer from much depression and stress causing persistent unpleasant emotional responses.

The video also portrays the coming apart stage of stagnation under the Knapp Model of Relational Development. Stagnation refers to couple going through the motions of a relationship like a routine script without the presence of any joy and excitement, unlike before when passion between the two still exists. This is to avoid the pain that may come from terminating the relationship therefore the relationship persists on in an almost forceful manner. This can be understood more clearly from the video where the girl continues with the daily ritual of kissing her boyfriend goodbye when he goes off to work and preparing his meals for him, even though she knew about his affair.

Relationship between two often starts out sweet and loving, however when the balance is offset in the matter of love, things can quickly sour and the relationship may just plunge to the stage of termination before you know it. What are some of your opinions on the complicated issue of love? Different perceptions on the music video are more than welcome as well. Your comments will be much appreciated (: