The stage was set, the lights went down and in a suburban Japanese primary school everyone prepared to enjoy a performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The only snag was that the entire cast was playing the part of Snow White.
For the audience of menacing mothers and feisty fathers, though, the sight of 25 Snow Whites, no dwarfs and no wicked witch was a triumph: a clear victory for Japan's emerging new class of “Monster Parents”.
For they had taken on the system and won. After a relentless campaign of bullying, hectoring and nuisance phone calls, the monster parents had cowed the teachers into submission, forcing the school to admit to the injustice of selecting just one girl to play the title role.
Japan Sparkling. For better or worse Asian schools have frequently been stereotyped as polar opposites of American ones, as ones where performance is stressed over self-esteem. So it's sad to see Asians not only emulating out trappings but racing us to the bottom with our own weaknesses.
5 comments:
Hey there, BiJ!
Hmm... this is an interesting post in a number of ways...
Firstly cos the news item is really interesting anyway.
Secondly cos you seem to be making strong judgements based on a narrowly based cultural interpretation of where 'the bottom' is.
I mean, in choosing/ demanding/ suggesting to have multiple Snow Whites, could we also not read this as a beautifully unique and creative solution to the problem of limited supply and demand?
Granted, your standard-issue accountant or economist might have a hard time accepting its viability as a going concern, but then, when have they ever had to put up with a class-full of squealing kiddies (and disgruntled parental support)?
Science fictionardos might read into it a cultural shout-out for cloning. Who knows, maybe there really IS a demand for hard-to-kill albino princesses out there?
Finally, politicians and psychologists might encourage it as a kind of childhood-formative-experience wish-fullfilment leading to enhanced confidence in public appearance, motivation to excel and team-work cooperation; not to mention the sheer cerebral challenge involved in knowing to whom one is referring when everyone around one has the same name, even be it one of such distinction and fine standing. This phenomenon is certainly something New Zealanders tend to be fairly familiar with; in't that right, Trev?
www.mrjohnclarke.com/html/SWF/flash.php?page=D#
However it's best to look at it, the imagination required for such a dramatic rewrite tickles my funny-bone. So to speak.
... I'd love to see the script! (Has it been translated yet?!)
Hey, JiG. I typed this entry up in a hurry this morning and am not at all qualified to expound on where the bottom is. My comment was more about the shift from being constructed as the polar opposite to the US toward becoming more and more like it (thereby losing what made the Japanese system so admirable in the first place). I'll have to take a refresher course on Orientalism to follow that logic any further, though.
Good seeing you last night at the bar. Also nice to meet people that I've previously only "met" through the internet. We ducked out to find a place less crowded, so the visit was kinda short. Sorry about that. We'll have to catch up at the German bar(s) before summer vacation.
Interesting write-up. As the former supervisor of a hogwan kindergarten, I know what the teachers were up against.
For the Graduation show, I once wrote an adaptation of "Hungbu and Nolbu" in which I ended up creating a "chorus" (as in the old greek plays) which commented on the events in the story and spoke in rhyme, and where I could assign kids extra lines so that every student in my class spoke the exact same number of times. Then Willy wanted to quit because he played the "bad guy" (Nolbu), and we had to talk him back into playing his part (though the boy who played the ogre thoroughly enjoyed his part, and the sparrow really hammed it up).
The twenty-five snow whites is funny, cute, but also appalling. I would have scrapped snow white entirely if parents were hectoring me like that, and passive-aggressively done a ten-minute long everybody-talking-in-unison "screw-you then NOBODY's gonna be the star" act with the most asinine songs I could find.
Re: actually meeting people you've only met online, let me know if you come to Seoul, and I'll hook you up with some guinness on tap, some great Indian food, or whatever else it is that you can't get in Kwangju/want to get in Seoul.
But . . . but, if I go to Seoul, I won't be Brian in Jeollanam-do. Ha, yeah, I'll look you up next time I have some free time in Seoul. Most people I "know" online are up there anyway. Same goes for you if you ever come down to Jeollanam-do.
Tacking on to Julian's comments again, I guess the play in Japan COULD be read as the teacher/organizers/parents trying to maintain uniformity in a society known for it---I know nothing about Japan, so don't jump on me for those generalizations. But . . . yeah, I think the parents were out of line, and like Rob I'd be tempted to just cancel the whole thing and bench the kids for the playoffs.
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