Glory Road and Cross-Cultural Communication Theories

Introduction: Culture, Conflict, and Glory Road

The 2006 American film drama Glory Road is a useful vehicle for appreciating the notion, familiar to students of communications, of what constitutes a culture. Two particular theses from the study of communications relate to the idea of culture and are illustrated in crucial ways by the film. The first is the idea that conflict constitutes a culture in itself — and a destructive one. The second is the notion that separate cultures need to communicate with each other, and that cross-cultural communication is inherently complicated. Examining these theories of communication alongside the film therefore offers a productive analytical approach. After establishing a few basic definitions of culture and related terms drawn from the discipline of communications, this paper evaluates the two specific questions of culture outlined above in relation to Glory Road. The conclusion revisits the basic definition of culture as understood within communications studies and offers a summary evaluation of the film.

Defining Culture and Cultural Code

It is first necessary to define what we mean by culture. This is especially important when the subject of conflict as destructive culture is raised, wherein conflict is defined as a culture of its own. To the ordinary layperson, conflict is a type of interpersonal or cross-cultural situation, but it is not exactly a "culture" in itself. The straightforward definition of conflict is "real or perceived incompatibilities of processes, understandings, and viewpoints between people" (Duck & McMahan, 2014). We must also consider, from the standpoint of communications, what actually constitutes a culture.

For example, Americans of all races routinely refer to "black culture," yet from a definitional standpoint black Americans constitute a co-culture — a smaller group within a larger cultural mass (Duck & McMahan, 2014). Cultures define themselves through the way they communicate, which reflects certain shared assumptions. A collectivist culture, for example, uses speech primarily to promote conformity and common ideals — one might think of how people speak in North Korea (Duck & McMahan, 2014). The way a culture communicates is called its code, and essentially a code determines how a culture distinguishes between issues that can be taken for granted and those that cannot (Duck & McMahan, 2014). What cannot be taken for granted is known as a persuadable, because people remain susceptible to changing their minds about it.

For instance, it is taken for granted in American society that cannibalism is taboo and should not be practiced. Yet American society responded in very different ways to Jeffrey Dahmer, who practiced cannibalism for pleasure, and the nineteenth-century Donner Party, who were trapped by blizzards while crossing the Rocky Mountains to settle California and were forced to eat the bodies of the dead to survive. Americans are horrified by both situations — indicating that the taboo is firmly embedded in the cultural code — yet it is broadly understood that the extreme circumstances of the Donner Party (imminent death from cold and starvation) caused cannibalism to become, temporarily, a persuadable. Part of the American cultural code is precisely this capacity to distinguish between Dahmer acting for gratification and the Donner Party acting for survival.

Conflict as Destructive Culture in Glory Road

In Glory Road we can examine the idea of conflict as destructive culture — a framework that defines cultures holding four assumptions in their code. The first is that conflict is a destructive disturbance of the peace; the second is that the social system should not be adjusted to meet the needs of its members, but that members should adapt to established values; the third is that confrontations are destructive and ineffective; and the fourth is that disputants should be disciplined (Duck & McMahan, 2014). This pattern appears repeatedly in African American history during the period between slavery and the Civil Rights Movement: the four stages could as easily be applied to Nat Turner in the nineteenth century (who was disciplined with death) as to Dr. King, disciplined as a disputant and punished in Birmingham Jail.

What is uniquely interesting about Glory Road is that it establishes this pattern among white Americans. The man who disturbs the peace is the film's protagonist, Don Haskins, played by Josh Lucas — not a black man, but a white man who fields an all-black team in a Texas competition in 1966, when racially segregated sports teams were still common. This means that the conflict is re-framed, because Haskins belongs to the dominant culture rather than to the oppressed co-culture. Among white men operating as nominal equals — such as Haskins facing off against the racist coach Adolph Rupp, played by Jon Voight — conflict is regarded as a normal and useful process. This is unsurprising given the film's focus on athletics, which are structured as formalized conflicts and competitions. In this re-framing, all issues become subject to change through negotiation; direct confrontation and conciliation are valued; and conflict functions as a necessary renegotiation of an implied social contract, insofar as it can redistribute opportunities, release tensions, or renew relationships (Duck & McMahan, 2014).

This dynamic is interestingly echoed in Bardwell's (2013) analysis of conflict and communication in a university workplace, which examines internal policies regarding diversity. Bardwell observes that the active pursuit of tolerance can produce remarkably intolerant responses — an irony that is itself part of the renegotiation process that gradually replaces the original impulse to discipline disputants.

Conclusion: Renegotiating the Social Contract

It would be easy and facile to critique Glory Road as yet another Hollywood film about the Civil Rights advances of the 1960s that centers a white protagonist. The truth is that the film offers a more nuanced picture of how cultures work through conflict — particularly when the conflict crosses cultural or co-cultural lines — precisely because its central confrontation is between white men of different generations: the older Adolph Rupp and the younger Don Haskins. Haskins is a skilled coach, as the all-black team he led to victory would surely affirm. His conflict with Rupp, which he ultimately wins, illustrates how conflict can renegotiate a social contract to redistribute opportunity, release tension, and renew relationships (Duck & McMahan, 2014).

The film's treatment of transcultural communication difficulties is illustrated by a detail that appears to undercut its central thesis: although Haskins is credited with integrating college basketball, he enters the championship with an all-black team, not an integrated one — and that all-black team proves superior. This outcome is significant. In 1966, it was black players who had cultivated and practiced the dunk; since dunking was a legal maneuver at the time, it became the decisive factor in their victory. Had black and white players shared a cultural code of communication, they would have possessed identical skill-sets and been more evenly matched. This may help explain why the renegotiation of the social contract following Glory Road took the seemingly contradictory form of banning dunking from college basketball for nearly a decade — disciplining the very maneuver that made the subaltern co-culture's victory possible.

References

Bardwell, S. H. (2013). Conflict and communication in the workplace: An inquiry and findings from XYZ university's study on religious tolerance and diversity suggesting ironies of cultural attitudes, free expression and conflict in an academic organization. Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications and Conflict, 17.

Corey, C. M., Fok, L. Y., & Payne, D. M. (2014). Cross-cultural differences in values and conflict management: A comparison of the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications and Conflict, 18.

Duck, S., & McMahan, D. T. (2014). Communication in everyday life (2nd ed.). Sage. ISBN: 9781412969574