Frame Game Wars Over Elian Gonzalez

The following is written, not to engage in a specific discussion
about Elian Gonzalez, but about the process of talking, thinking
reasoning and understanding the frames that govern this situation.

Frame Wars can and do occur at all levels of our lives.  They occur at the personal, inter-personal, family, business,  national, inter-national, and cultural levels as well as many others.  For several months and increasingly more often in the last couple of weeks we have been witnessing the Frame Wars in the media around the Elian Gonzalez case.

Given this, how do you look at the situation?  To ask that question is to inquire about your frame-of-reference and your frame of mind.

In that matter, what are the range of possible frames of reference and frames of mind that we could possibly use as we think and feel about this situation?  In this particular case, a wide range of frames have emerged in the media.

1) Hero Story Frame or Refugee Survival frame: washed up on the banks of the USA saved from certain death, the life-and-death struggle in watching mother die.  View thestory that way and it becomes a Modern Mythology of survival, a new Moses Story, asymbol of oppressed people.  View the particulars from this point of view, and you escalate the story into epic proportions and it’s no longer about the boy and his parents.

2) Political Frame: Freedom versus life in a third-world Police State country, opportunities for making a good life in an economically prosperous country versus life in a communism country, Cuba, dominated by a cultural anti-hero (Castro).  Bill Oreilly presents this frame regularly on his show on FOX news.  Viewed from this set of filters, the story is the contrast between Americanism and Communism.  We can’t dare send the boy back without denying “American Freedom.”  This frame also escalates the dynamics so that it is no longer about a particular boy.

3) Family life Frames.   A story of a Dad versus an extended family of Uncles and Aunts in Miami.  From this perspective, it’s a story about the restoration of a boy to his biological dad to restore the basic family relationships versus being raised by distant relatives in a foreign land.  From this perspective most Americas seem to realize and understand the father’s basic rights to his child and see that as primary.

4) Psychological Frames:  Traumatized and in “imminent danger” by father and “likely tosuffer irreversible emotional damage if returned, suffering PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome) and will have a depressive episode if returned” versus being brainwashed by Cuban refugees and suffering “cruel psychological pressures.”  That “the family in Miami” have come out swinging, pulling in their own “psychologists” to prove the father unfit shifts the frame to a psychological frame.  Unspoken are the assumptions of psychoanalytic model.

5) Refugee frame.  It’s a story of a mother who fled Cuba to “find freedom and opportunity in America” for her son versus the story of a 6 year old boy’s ignorance and innocence about such politics.  Is he old enough to ask for political protection?  Was it really his journey or his mothers?

6) Father comes Searching for Son frame:   Juan M. Gonzalez has now come to this country as the Miami family requested, he has arrived in Washington DC and has begun topassionately plead for his son versus the Miami family who continues to call for press conferences at last minute to accuse him of being abusive and son living in fear.

7) Federal Government or State Government Frames: This is a matter for the Federalgovernment..  No, this is a case about the local state governments.

Talk about a Frame War!  We certainly have a war of frames when it comes to this story.  If you watch, read, or listen to the latest developments of the case here in early April, 2000, the events, news presses, motions in the courts and counter-motions, General Attorney Janet Reno and the INS statements about the son being reunited with his father, etc. you can see a Frame War on a larger level playing out before our eyes.  So we ask:

Who’s Right?

Who’s Wrong?

Who’s got the best solution?

Now as with most Frame Wars on most levels — dialogue, reason, and “seeking first to understand” seems to play a very small part of the ongoing frame war.  Accordingly, the “positioning” of various interest groups around the boy has made him increasingly (as most people recognize) a “political football.”   Suddenly, in spite of thousands and tens-of-thousands of other refugees and cases before the INS Elian has become an icon of these frames.

What I’ve noticed severely missing in all of the discussions and panels is that everybody jumps straight into content and almost no one deals with the larger and higher context.  That is, with the frames that people are using as filters through which to see this story.  And what results from this?

Mostly positioning.  I have heard very few true dialogues, dialogues which seemed reasoned and which you could characterize as involving thoughtful listening.  Almost all have been characterized by positioning, side-taking, arguing for a position.

Yet until we can, as a people, step back, examine our operating frames and talk about the values, criteria, and reasoning processes that lead us to conclusions all of our “talk” typically degenerates to monologues of Point and Counter-Point.  And so with most of the so-called “talk” shows, they so frequently degenerate into talking over each other and shouting at each other shows.  Sensational.  But not very productive.

Should we use the frame of Family First and a Father-son Relationship?

Should we use Political Freedom Frame?

Should we set the highest frame Castro’s (assumed) blackmailing?

Should we use Cuban Immigration Law?

Since the highest frame always governs, whatever we use (consciously or unconsciously) will dominate.  If we can’t even step back and talk about that then we will forever find ourselves in a fight at the level of details and never understand what informs and governs the thinking of those who differ.

I refer to the Gonzalez case, not to solve it or even to offer my own opinion (although like most people I certainly have my own).   I use it rather as a marvelous example of how lack of attention to the Frame Level locks people into talking without communicating, and positioning without dialoguing.  This prevents higher level understandings.  It prevents the harder work of thinking through the hierarchy of levels of frames and making hard decisions about which to privilege.

Most of us (I’m assuming) believe that:

• Father’s ought to have the ultimate right and responsibility over their families, especially over a child stranded in another country.
• Communism and Police States don’t offer the kind of opportunities a child would get in America.
• The mother was brave to risk fleeing Cuba and did so for her son.
• People ought to have their day in court.
• Psychological states should be considered when dealing with human relationships and emotions.
• People do use situations to forward their agendas.
• Abusive parents ought to be dealt with.
• The longer something like this goes on, the harder it is on everybody.
• Justice ought to be rendered swiftly.
• The best interests of a child ought to be considered.
• It’s not the USA’s role to police every family or every state in the world.
• There are good parents in bad countries, just as there are bad parents in good countries.

But which is the highest frame?  Which frame ought to be embedded and nestled inside of another?

My recommendations at this moment in time:

• Listen to the frame about this as people talk, argue, position, reason, passionately plea for this or that side.  Listen, in fact, for the purpose of detecting the operating frames that people use.
• Listen also to detect leverage points, that is, agreement frames and the nudges of transformation.  As a meaning-making Neuro-Semanticist, it will put your skills to the test. After all, NLP and Neuro-Semantics does apply to these kinds of everyday experiences.
• When you listen to any given interview does the person operate from just one frame or from many?  How are the frames organized and sequenced?  What determines that?
• How open-minded is the person to another point of view?