Blog #4 Conflict Styles in "Maid in Manhattan" by Rachel Schumpert
In the movie "Maid in Manhattan" starring Jennifer Lopez, Marisa Ventura is a maid in a beautiful hotel who mistakenly falls in love with a very famous politician. Marisa was trying on another woman's clothes when Christopher saw her it was love at first sight. Even though he thought he met the perfect woman of his dreams, she was convinced it could not work because of her job. In this movie, Christopher and Marisa used the Smoothing subcategory of the Avoiding conflict style. Smoothing is used when the parties "play down the differences and emphasize issues on which they have common ground." Once Christopher found out who she really was, they used this style to ignore the press and all of the negative things people were saying about their relationship. Instead, they focused on things that they had in common. By ignoring what they both do for a living, Marisa and Chris were able to focus on their relationship and avoid the conflict that everyone else was stirring up about them. Another form of Avoiding that took place was Protecting. One of the reasons Marisa was scared to go public with Christopher was because she was afraid it would hurt his political race, so she thought she was protecting him by keeping everything private. By doing all of these things, Marisa and Christopher are avoiding the conflict from surfacing by trying to work around everything. Obviously a maid falling in love with a politician is not a very normal situation, so by handling the conflict the way they did, they were able to come to a resolution, which was their relationship going public and working out perfectly, despite the press' skepticism towards the issue.
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