Step Mom

In the movie, Stepmom, the struggles of divorce, trust, and dealing with a new stepmom are being tried. There are many different issues within the movie that deal with conflict. Which is why I chose the topic conflict for this paper. The first concept and scene I chose for conflict stems from the management style compromise. The management style compromise is the style that attempts to find the middle ground in a conflict (pg. 235). One particular scene stood out to me in the movie and that scene had to do with the father Luke and the mother Jackie. After Isabel (the stepmom) had been working a long day at her photo shoot and trying to keep an eye out on Anna and Ben the worst happened, Ben was lost. After Ben was safely found at the zoo, Jackie wouldn’t budge and demanded a court order for Isabel to never be with the kids alone again. This was something Jackie and Luke agreed to never do so Luke was not going to let this happen now. He went over to Jackie’s house and talked it out with her to give Isabel another chance and to not go to court. After much consideration, Jackie agreed not to get a court order. I feel this was a compromise because they both agreed to that middle ground for the kid’s well-being in the end. Another concept I chose for conflict was the ego conflict style. Ego conflict style is a conflict in which the original issue is ignored as partners attack each other’s self-esteem (pg. 226). The scene I chose for this concept was the scene where Isabel wanted to take Anna to the Pearl Jam concert. Jackie was completely against it because the concert was on a school night and Anna was to not be out that late. Isabel dropped it for respect for Jackie. Later on Isabel was to find out that Jackie deliberately got tickets to the concert and took Anna instead. I felt like this was ego conflict because it came off as a personal attack against Isabel and Jackie showed no remorse for going behind her back. Jackie’s intent to buy those tickets was from