Torchwood Body Language 103: Points, Pairs, and Groups
We've discussed how actors use their faces and bodies to show emotion, and we've discussed how directors use personal space to show interactions between actors. Now we're going to look at how directors position the actors to show where the balance of power lies in an interaction: unspoken group dynamics. In a television, film, or stage medium, we don't have the luxury of long observation to see where those shifts in balance occur, so the directors help us out and use position of bodies with respect to others.
This section will be a little different in that I'm using series of pictures or video clips instead of individual shots. This is because now we are in the realm of dynamic interaction instead of one-person actions. I am using some S1 shots but mostly S2 as the directing in S2 is leaps and bounds better, and I prefer to give good examples when I can. This one will also, of necessity, be a bit more spoilerific because I will have to analyze the interaction in the scene, and cannot do that without occasionally dicussing the plot. You have been warned.
Let's start with an easy one. What does the behavior of the group tell us?
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
The three main unspoken group interactions I will discuss are follow-the-leader, socially reaffirming behaviors, and position within the group.
Social Interaction #1: Who's on first?
We play follow-the-leader a lot in real life. It's a children's game that teaches us to look for who has power in a situation. If we are lost and looking for directions, and come upon a group of two men, 90% of the time we will ask the taller of the two men. If we are lost and looking for directions, and come upon two men, one very tall and the other wearing a police officer's uniform, 90% of the time we will ask the police officer. We're interpreting height as authority in the first example, and a symbol as authority in the second, but both times we move to the one we perceive as being in power. Being up high connotes power, as does taking up physical space, symbolic authority, and titular authority. On stage or on screen, in addition to being "big," being in the center is an additional connotation of authority. Only the important characters get to be front-and-center. Only the important character in an interaction is staged so that she or he looks large.
Hmmmm, who in Torchwood could have a combination of very unusual height, physical space, symbolic authority, and titular authority, and tends to be staged in the center of the action? Small wonder we notice that Jack dominates the screen. His symbolic authority, by the way, is his military dress, and his titular authority is the head of Torchwood Three. The directors will position Jack so that the eye follows him around the screen, showing that he is indeed in the lead, even when he is not the main character in the interaction. Here, Owen and Martha are the leads in the screen, but you are intensely aware of Jack's presence. The employees are talking, but the boss wants to know.
There is a great shot in Day in the Death that shows how a director can use height and position in the foreground to show control in an interaction. Jack isn't even entirely in the shot, but you know he's in charge. A little bit later, Jack reinforces his authority by breaking away from the contact and turning his back. Owen is in the foreground, but the power just left the scene.
Owen is a fairly major character, and so he leads a lot of interactions. This requires a bit of skill on the directors' part as Burn Gorman isn't a big guy. Owen has to get help from something to position himself in power. The directors will put him up high, put him in the center of the screen, or use perspective tricks to make Owen appear larger and therefore more dominant in the onscreen interaction. When they don't, your eye will automatically look to the bigger object, and well, it's not Owen. The same is true with Naoko Mori when Tosh gets to lead a scene. If you watch many scenes with Tosh where Tosh is the lead character, she tends to be shot in such a way to make her appear more or less equal in size to everybody else. Here, Tosh and Jack are in an important scene in TTLM and Jack is sitting. It tells us two things: Jack is the boss, because he gets to sit behind a desk, but Tosh is more important in this scene.
This kind of screen manip isn't new to the Whoniverse...the directors in Dr Who S1 did the same thing with Jack and Rose and Jack and Nine simply because John Barrowman is so much bigger than everybody else around. Billie Piper actually had to stand on boxes in some scenes. In DW S3, David Tennant is tall enough that Jack/Ten don't need that kind of onscreen manipulation. You'll notice that they don't do those kinds of positioning tricks in Jack and Ianto scenes because GDL and JB are more or less the same size...the exception being when they make a big statement in their relationship. In terms of power leads and all, Jack is sitting with Ianto sitting over him. Ianto is leading that discussion (major change from their "work" dynamic). FWIW, in the End of Days I think the reason Ianto is carrying Jack out isn't because he's Jack's lover--Gwen definitely wanted to help there--it's because Ianto is the only one physically large enough to move him. Having Tosh or Owen try to manhandle him down the stairs wouldn't work.
It's important to note that you can be in control (e.g. leading) of a scene while not being in control of a character interaction. Here is an example with Martha and Ianto: Ianto is leading the character interaction, telling Martha what to do in his professional capacity, but Martha is leading the scene.
Social Interaction #2: Make me popular and very much run after by five o'clock!
Group dynamics are usually slightly more difficult to spot than individual power dynamics, but not much. A group usually has one leader and several followers...but if a large group splits into smaller groups, you see sub-leaders and the like. Groups that function well also exhibit particular traits such as mirroring, mutual touching, open posture, and private space interactions. These are called mutually reaffirming behaviors. I've already discussed open posture and private space interactions, so for now I'll just talk about mirroring and touching.
Mirroring is the unconscious imitation of your friends' behavior during group interaction. People who like one another mirror each other...if you've ever seen a couple who have been happily married for 40 years, you know what I mean. They act alike. They move alike. It's an unconscious way of expressing mutual comfort and mutual interest. In a comment to the previous post on body language,
peasant_noted that in S1, Torchwood doesn't mirror much. She's right. I'm just going to explain mirroring here, but she is right and she is correct in her analysis. (Thank you!)
Here is a good example of mirroring. Owen and Tosh have more or less the same posture, which you can pretty much guarantee that they didn't discuss beforehand and agree that they'd all stand just like each other when the scene started. Gwen and Ianto are standing pretty far apart from each other but they too are standing in exactly the same way. They are all reacting to the same situation, and reacting more less the same way.
The team tends to mirror most when they are all reacting as a group to one particular thing. Here's a good example from S1, where they all have a look at Abbaddon. Have a good look at Tosh and Owen there. Another scene where the team (or part of it, anyway) are mirroring is when Martha shows up. She's here, she's new, and Gwen and Tosh are curious. So are Gwen and Jack. Owen and Gwen are so not interested in the movie here...compare them to Ianto.
In pair interactions, Gwen and Rhys mirror each other when they are together, which is unsurprising considering they are an intimate couple. Our other intimate couple mirrors each other as well, possibly the only public sign that they are a couple that doesn't stop and start depending on whether they are in boyfriend mode or office mode. Here are Gwen and Ianto mirroring each other, and Jack and Ianto (warning: blurry). Look at Jack and Ianto's posture here. They are holding their pizza the same way, well, okay, fine, they're both right-handed, but look at how they are holding their heads. At the movies Jack mirrors Ianto. His hands are behind his body because he is holding them away from Ianto's intimate space (they're on work time), but the posture, expressions, and stance is otherwise the same, and their heads are slightly tilted toward one another.
Torchwood doesn't mirror very often, but they don't mock either. There is a fine line between mirroring and imitating another person to mock them. The Master's character is written to mirror-mock the Doctor from Utopia through LOTL, specifically how he bounces around the Valiant with the same manic energy that the Doctor does. It's a neat little twist--that kind of manic energy is the kind of energy that a truly crazy person exudes (I know, I've met a few and I'm being deadly honest)--but also a deliberate imitation of the Doctor, intended to injure the Doctor and demean him in public. One of the implications for us, the audience, is that the Doctor is incredibly crazy and dangerous (which he is, especially if you happen to be a Dalek). Public mirror-mocking can be incredibly insulting, belittling, and demeaning, and it speaks volumes about the TW characters that no matter how much they like or dislike one another, they don't mirror-mock.
Mutual touching is how members of a group express comfort and support. Obviously, the dynamics of personal space come into play here, but the short version is that group members who like each other and want each other around will touch each other frequently. Group members who are not in the inner circle are not allowed to touch. A real-world example is that you might give a bear hug to your nieces and nephews, but you give a more polite, reserved hug to your inlaws. Torchwood Three is a touchy group, with the level of tendency to touch being Jack, Gwen, Martha, Owen, Tosh, and Ianto, where Jack touches the most and Ianto touches the least (when I say "touch," here, I mean friendly day-to-day interactions, not physical restraint in extremis). This is normal and by itself doesn't imply that Gwen is higher up in the food chain than, say, Tosh--this is a professional situation, no matter how weird, and some people are naturally more comfortable with touching in professional situations than others. (I almost never touch male coworkers and rarely touch female coworkers, whereas I know some people who are just more touchy. It's okay, that's just the way I am.) We know from dialogue and situations that Ianto and Tosh are naturally reserved people, which is normal. Tosh in particular is Japanese, a culture where the rules of mutual contact are different than western culture. Jack touches just about everybody (except Ianto, more on that later, and poor Owen keeps getting caught in blinks!)--but outside of purely work interactions, the team doesn't touch Jack nearly as often as he touches them. Yes, I know I used a similar Jack/Tosh picture in the personal space thing--you might notice that Jack himself has moved his elbow away from his body to be in physical contact with Tosh. Gwen touches everybody--she's definitely the touchy one in the office, even more so than Jack. Owen touches Gwen and Martha frequently, Tosh rarely, touches Jack on occasion, and lets Jack touch him frequently. Tosh lets Gwen and Jack touch her, but doesn't move to touch anybody on her own. Martha touches everybody save Tosh, which is understandable given what we know about Tosh and UNIT, and a big sign of how quickly she was accepted into the group is how everybody starts touching her almost right away.
Ianto is a bit different, and we notice him because of it. He holds himself separate from the rest of the team, for a start, right down to a formal suit in a world of jeans. At first, this was enforced by group dynamics, particularly after Cyberwoman when he was in disgrace, but in S2 he's been recognized as a member of the team. Now it's just him (notice that he is down a step here?). He is consciously holding himself apart from the rest of the group. Unless he is directly behind Jack or Jack is using Ianto as an extension of himself (as in DITD), Ianto stands alone, and other group members come to him. In terms of touching, we've seen him touch Gwen very rarely, never Owen, never Tosh, never Martha (unless she initiates contact), and in work situations in S2 he is picky about how he touches Jack. That's huge--it's how the directors are distinguishing between "boyfriend mode" and "work mode" with Jack and Ianto. When they are in boyfriend mode, Ianto touches Jack frequently. Jack usually waits for Ianto to touch him, except in extreme situations. When they are in work mode, even at times when they are clearly having a boyfriend moment, they never touch. Even when Ianto is helping Jack into his coat, he never actually touches Jack. There is one scene in FOOTR where Jack and Ianto are sitting so close they look like they are in physical contact, but the camera never shows both of their faces in the same closeup frame at the same time...so despite being in a small place where they have no choice but to have their bodies side by side, the directors are telling us that they are Not Touching Each Other because it's work time. Look closely, not even their knees are touching. Folks, that's clever, clever directing.
Social interaction #3: If I stand here, I'll be in your way.
Group position is another way we can see how the group interacts. This one is the most subtle, much more so than mirroring or touching. This can and frequently does change as the leader of the interaction changes. Groups tend to have their own group space, much like a person will have individual personal space. The limit of the group space and how you feel when you enter that group space depends a lot on the type of group and what the group is doing. A bunch of happy children at a playground feels very different than a group of young drunk men. You'd probably wade through the first one and walk way, way, way around the second. That group space is composed of several overlapping individual spaces, and the position of any given member of the group in the hierarchical structure determines largely where that individual fits in to the personal spaces within the group space.
In other words, the higher you rank in the leader's esteem, the closer to the leader you get to stand.
This concept is the most difficult for me to explain, so I'm going to use a series of examples. Once I'm done with showing the examples, I'll talk about staging a bit. Look at these pictures and guess who is where in the hierarchy of that particular interaction.
One Two Three Four Five Six
The first one is pretty obvious, even if you ignore the fact that I already showed this picture. Ianto is not part of the group. At ALL. They couldn't make it more obvious if they slammed a door in his face. In picture two, Jack is on the outs with the group. Gwen is ripping him a new one, Owen and Tosh are fully agreeing with Gwen. Ianto is standing farther back and it is unclear just how firmly he stands with the group, but he's gone too far to back down. In the third picture, Jack is on the outs again, and there is a big fat black line between him and Gwen. Tosh, Ianto, and Owen are more or less on equal territory, and Gwen is the leader of the group.
In the fourth picture the group is divided again, but a different way--this is a completely personal interaction, and the group is split according to Jack's personal life. He has Martha standing close to him, which makes sense as she is being introduced to the team. Ianto is in his customary position behind Jack's shoulder. Gwen, Tosh, and Owen are facing them. What this picture is showing us is who is intimate with Jack and who is not. If Ianto weren't recognized by Jack as part of Jack's inner circle, he'd be standing with the rest of the team. He's not, he's there in Jack's space with his very dear friend. Martha, of course, is going to stand near her friend. It's a telling moment about how Jack and Ianto deal with one another and the roles they play in each other's lives, even though they don't even look at one another.
In the fifth picture, Tosh and Ianto are talking and Owen is not sure whether he wants to participate or not. There is an unseen character in this picture, Jack, who isn't invited to this conversation. This is a real boss-worker bee moment, where the worker bees wouldn't be having this conversation if the boss were around. There aren't many everyday white-bread workplace moments in Torchwood. This is one of them. They're gossiping at the water cooler.
The last picture shows Gwen railing against the group. One by one, they shut her down and leave the room. In this case, they are pushing her out of the group interaction by having the interaction go somewhere else.
This happens in real life, although it's typically more subtle than on screen or stage. In real life, we don't need to resort to such, well, drama. We have 360 degrees of motion and much more room than the TV camera or stage can provide. On screen or stage, the motion is limited and the directors have to work harder to make sure the audience gets the point, so they really emphasize this kind of interaction.
Since I mentioned group space (composed of several individual personal spaces) it would help if I gave an example. Here is Andy wanting in on the spooky do, and the group is telling him to back off.
The next post will be a selection of scenes with a whole-scene interaction: body language, posture, motion, group position, contact, and personal space. After that, I will have one post for each of the five main characters discussing their relationships with the others.