October Blog Post

For my October blog post, I have decided to write about Bateson’s Frame. This frame is in short, the context of a relationship, it sets the norms for the relationship. This concept was particularly interesting to me due to the fact that I have never thought of a set of norms to be associated with a relationship. I have always known that society is made up of norms that we follow everyday, but I never went deep enough to recognize norms within relationships.

An example of exercising Bateson’s Frame would be seen as a “playful thing” resulting in a good or familiar response and now that is a norm of the relationship. But if the “playful thing” resulted in a negative response, then it would not be a norm of the relationship and would not be something that was sort of expected throughout the relationship.

This can be applied to any relationship and situation pretty much ever, but one specific example that comes to mind is one seen in one of the Keeping Up With the Kardashians episodes. In this specific episode the family was not only on a family vacation but they were meeting Kim’s new boyfriend Chris for the first time. Of course on any family vacation one family member is going to get annoyed with another family member and things will turn into an argument. Well, when Kim and her brother Rob got into a little fight, they started calling each other names such as whore, slut, dick, etc. and basically throwing things in eachothers faces that would be completely not okay for any fight but a sibling fight. Siblings always fight differently than any other relationship dynamic, but I feel as if name calling is not as genuine and meaningful in a sibling fight. When Chris saw they way that Rob was talking to Kim, Chris went off on Rob and entered into this rage.

There are two different types of relational norms shown here, the one between Kim and Rob, and the one between Rob and Chris. When Rob and Kim fight, it is expected that name calling with these specific names will be shot out and not be taken literal, this is a norm of the relationship. However, when Chris went off on Rob and then Rob got mad at Chris, this was not a norm of their specific relationship. This was not in the window of things that are okay for their specific relationship.