Drama and Perception

Hello everyone! I've been enjoying catching up on your quarantine adventures. Thanks for including me in this. I haven't been doing any baking (leaving that to my housemate...) but I have been thinking a lot about perception. Mainly, how I want to be perceived by others.

So of course I have to start by talking about K-dramas.


Korean dramas are great. They're fun and frothy and melodramatic. If you want to watch a pure-hearted character with an improbable occupation find love, this is the genre for you!

K-dramas don't show you what it's actually like to be a Korean person, obviously. But they tell you something about how Korean men and women wish they could be perceived.




If I had to boil it down, I would say the ideal perception around emotion. 

Look at those sparkly smiles

To be a K-drama hero, you've got to act cute! You're going to embrace emotionalism over mean things like success and skills and getting things accomplished. You will teach the people in your life (who are workaholics) to be silly and emotionally expressive. They will learn the value of love! Of friendship! Of family! 

Cool? Cool.

So then I watched some Chinese shows.
          

And ooooh man, were they different.

The ideal perception was about competence. To be a hero, you have to put aside your emotions and do the task in front of you.

Go is the C-drama version of chess. Characters play it only as a metaphor.

 

So. Much. Crying. They are tears of justice.

 In a Chinese drama, a hero does that task brilliantly. There are so many slow-motion shots of heroes accomplishing tasks! You've only got your wits, skills, and strict morals to help you. Your family will die. Your love interest will die. You will cry one beautiful, perfect tear and then you will continue to accomplish your gosh-darn task.

Anyway. COVID-19. Quarantine. How people perceive me.

With this forcibly imposed distance, I've been looking at my workplace like it's another culture, just as foreign as a K-drama or a Chinese show. I've been thinking about what my work ideal is, and if I really need to live up to it.

I used to think a lot about how I present myself at work. It's hard to be taken seriously in higher education when you're only 30 and have a personality like an especially nerdy chocolate fountain.

But I haven't thought about presenting a "professional" ideal in weeks. I take Zoom calls with the dean on my couch. I ask my students about the dogs I hear in the background of our video chats. I don't care when my roommate wanders into frame.

I've told myself it's because my coworkers don't care anymore, but maybe it's me who doesn't care. I think I'd rather be perceived as something a little closer to the reality of Anna: who's been stuck inside for 7 weeks, who's Going Through It Too....and who sure has watched a lot of Asian TV recently.