Slamming Doors and Removing Shoes: Cultural Instincts in Art

In the Season 2 episode of Frasier, "Roz in the Doghouse," Roz gets offended when Frasier questions why Bulldog wants her to work on his show. To demonstrate how mad she is, she stomps to the door and slams out of the apartment!

Well, that's the plan anyway. She's on crutches, so she has to slowly hobble her way to the door, yelling as she does: "I'm out of here!" She reaches the door! 

And then she has to come back because she forgot her purse. 

I always think of this episode when I'm watching Asian dramas and people take their shoes off while they are in the middle of a fight. 

Yup, he paused to slide off his shoes.

It isn't the same thing precisely. Roz is deliberately provoked and provoking. 

The shoe-taking-off is instinctual. In one episode, a character rushes home to stop a family confrontation and...he slides off his shoes at the door. He doesn't draw attention to the fact. He simply does it. 

The point of similarity is that Roz is enacting an understood cultural performance. In anger, one stomps away and slams the door! It is a known behavior pattern. 

Likewise, taking off one's shoes is ingrained. It's habit but it also can be performed: quickly, as the image shows here, or thoughtfully, as occurs in other dramas.

As Agatha Christie would say, "People can't help but give themselves away even when they are trying to hide stuff."

Like Victorians swooning on couches, people communicate in and use the cultural language they know.