Relational Dialectics

In the movie, The Devil wears Prada, dialectical tension is abundant. The main character, Andy, is in a relationship with her boyfriend Nate. She has been searching for a job for months, and when she finds one she is determined to make it work. However, as the movie progresses, we see that her job as assistant is more a way of life. The job nearly consumes her every move and as she becomes more involved, her relationship with Nate starts to deteriorate.

What first made me think of this movie was when Andy was a few months into the job, and she came home late one evening. Nate had made dinner for them and bought her flowers since they hadn’t really spent much time together. Andy doesn’t make it to dinner…in fact she doesn’t come home until Nate is almost ready to go to work. He is waiting in their apartment when she comes home, and he is miserable. He tells Andy how she isn’t the same girl he once knew, that she is never home and she doesn’t care about anyone but herself and her job. Andy and Nate argue over this situation, but do not see eye to eye, and go their separate ways to bed. This exemplifies the integration-separation dialectic because Andy expresses how she wants to be this wonderful girlfriend, and be the best assistant she can all at once. Andy, without knowing it, had been pulling herself into inclusion within the fashion industry and discarding her college friends and boyfriend. It is not so much that this was intentional, but rather an inevitable tension. On the flip side, Nate was just asking for more connectedness, some time for their relationship to grow. They struggle with this dialectic for a while throughout the movie.

The stability/change dialectic also takes place within various parts during the movie. As Andy is introduced to this foreign world of fashion, she quickly becomes bored with her past ways of life. She starts to hate all of her old clothes, hangs out with new people, and starts questioning her love for Nate. There is a time where she reflects on her past memories, while shuffling through pictures in her apartment At that point of reflection I think she became aware of how predictable her life had become. This new job, was not something she would normally go after, so she felt a satisfied with her decision to keep pushing forward. Andy was defiantly experiencing more of an internal battle of certainty and uncertainty, not knowing which direction she wanted her life to go.

Lastly, I didn’t really notice much noteworthy expression/non-expression between Andy and Nate. However, they did seem to attempt to manage the other two dialectic problems in various scenes. When Andy and Nate had their first argument, Andy made an agreement to do a sort of spiraling inversion approach. She set up appointments with her boyfriend to just go out with him and not think abut work. Then the next day she would do just work and let Nate figure something else out. Andy thought she could manage their relationship successfully this way, but the outcome proves her wrong. Going back and forth constantly was wearing Andy out and started to manipulate her every move. Overall, this relationship was a messy one for sure. In the end, Andy quit her life-consuming job in order to get Nate back.