Discussion on the Film "six Degrees of Separation"

Extra Credit on the Film Six Degrees of Separation

The reality that Paul is attempting to construct is one that is totally opposite than the one that is his own. Paul is constantly talking about how he knows the Kittredge’s daughter and son. He regularly talks about his days at Harvard and how he is so wealthy. He builds up this extravagant scene of being prosperous, yet, he is a mere destitute. You only figure out this fact at the end of the movie. Yet, through this entire film he constantly talks about how well-off he is. He tells the Kittredge’s his father is the famous African American actor and director Sidney Poitier (which he is not). The Kittredge’s love to here Paul’s story of his days at Harvard with their son and how his father (Sidney Poitier) is producing a movie version of the Broadway hit, Cats). Paul said it best when he was describing the imagination, and he certainly had a great imagination. Paul said,

The imagination. It's there to sort out your nightmare, to show you the exit from the maze of your nightmare, to transform the nightmare into dreams, that become your bedrock. If we do not listen to that voice, it dies, it shrivels, it vanishes. The imagination is not our escape. On the contrary, the imagination is the place we are all trying to get to.

This just goes to show you how he locked into his imagination and became a total different person.

The next question that was raised is about the Thomas theorem. The theorem states that, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." Moreover, W. I. Thomas precisely stated (in 1923) that particularly within every-day-life social worlds any definition of the situation will not only influence the present but - whenever following a series of definitions the individual is involved in - also "gradually a whole life-policy and the personality of the individual himself". Consequently, it was no surprise that W. I. Thomas whenever investigating societal problems like, e.g., intimacy, family, education, basically stressed the role of the situation when detecting a social world "in which subjective impressions can be projected on to life and thereby become real to projectors." (Merton, 379-424)

The Kittredges see Paul as one of there own. Rich and powerful. They do not see much into the lie. They love his company and treat him as one of their own. Paul defines whatever you see or do as real. The conscious world is real to him.

Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective is termed as a "fully two-sided view of human interaction”. Dramaturgical theory suggests that a person's identity is not a stable and independent psychological entity, but is constantly remade as the person interacts with others.

In a dramaturgical model, social interaction is analyzed as if it were part of a theatrical performance. People are actors who must convey who they are and what they intend to others through performances.