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Having a Mastodon conversation about CQL. There's a post getting reblogged (or boosted, as they call it there) by a lot of people about being sooooo confused at the beginning of the show.
And someone else responded to it with a (very good faith!) reaction of "Huh? Aren't you used to having worldbuilding/character stuff revealed as you move through the story?"
And I wrote this:
I think when you're brand new to an entire genre (as many, many CQL watchers were), you're unsure of how much you need to understand from the get-go. "X is confusing and Y is confusing--is this because it's the beginning and this will be revealed later? Or is it because I'm just not fluent in this genre? Am I missing something? Do I need to know what this means right now?" Which I don't think is an entirely unreasonable reaction.
I had had a similar experience years before when I first started watching Korean dramas & found that a lot of stuff that the narratives takes for granted, I didn't have any knowledge of. It took watching several shows to pick up on how the education system works or the different honorifics, things that gave nuance & color to a show. I was watching those early shows on a much shallower level than I have watched later shows--I'm picking up on so much more with later shows.
So when I came to CQL, my first Chinese drama, I was prepared for there to be a lot of cultural stuff that I'd have to learn & I had some idea of what those things might be.
But if I hadn't had a previous experience, I think I would have found it a lot more stressful trying to differentiate between "thing I don't understand because I'm encountering new characters & worldbuilding, but all will be revealed eventually" and "thing I don't understand because I'm watching something from a different culture."
There's a special kind of confusion that arises when you can't tell those two kinds of confusion apart, which I think was a lot of people's experience.
And I didnt say this over there, but:
I think this is one of the reasons the best foreign shows reward so much rewatching. Because when I rewatch CQL now, I know soooooooooo much more about the culture and the genre than I did on first rewatch, so I'm picking up all these hues of color that were totally invisible to me the first time through. And that's one of the great joys of encountering art from other cultures! You get to learn all that stuff, then go back and have an even deeper experience with the art!
And someone else responded to it with a (very good faith!) reaction of "Huh? Aren't you used to having worldbuilding/character stuff revealed as you move through the story?"
And I wrote this:
I think when you're brand new to an entire genre (as many, many CQL watchers were), you're unsure of how much you need to understand from the get-go. "X is confusing and Y is confusing--is this because it's the beginning and this will be revealed later? Or is it because I'm just not fluent in this genre? Am I missing something? Do I need to know what this means right now?" Which I don't think is an entirely unreasonable reaction.
I had had a similar experience years before when I first started watching Korean dramas & found that a lot of stuff that the narratives takes for granted, I didn't have any knowledge of. It took watching several shows to pick up on how the education system works or the different honorifics, things that gave nuance & color to a show. I was watching those early shows on a much shallower level than I have watched later shows--I'm picking up on so much more with later shows.
So when I came to CQL, my first Chinese drama, I was prepared for there to be a lot of cultural stuff that I'd have to learn & I had some idea of what those things might be.
But if I hadn't had a previous experience, I think I would have found it a lot more stressful trying to differentiate between "thing I don't understand because I'm encountering new characters & worldbuilding, but all will be revealed eventually" and "thing I don't understand because I'm watching something from a different culture."
There's a special kind of confusion that arises when you can't tell those two kinds of confusion apart, which I think was a lot of people's experience.
And I didnt say this over there, but:
I think this is one of the reasons the best foreign shows reward so much rewatching. Because when I rewatch CQL now, I know soooooooooo much more about the culture and the genre than I did on first rewatch, so I'm picking up all these hues of color that were totally invisible to me the first time through. And that's one of the great joys of encountering art from other cultures! You get to learn all that stuff, then go back and have an even deeper experience with the art!
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Also, I'm thinking that "a different culture" can mean so many different things, right? Even when you watch something made in your own country, your age, social class, life experience, political affinity, etc. can sometimes make it seem almost foreign, like you're approaching it from a different culture altogether. There's a recent local movie about the trial to the military juntas, which has received a lot of positive reviews--and while I don't think it was terrible, I felt that it was overly didactic and played it really safe, with a sort of beatification of that specific moment and its main players, instead of going for the grittier and uncomfortable, less simple reality.
Anyway, all this was to say that I definitely agree with you, learning and then going back for a rewatch gives a deeper, thought-provoking experience!
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Oh, that is so interesting! So interesting!
Even when you watch something made in your own country, your age, social class, life experience, political affinity, etc. can sometimes make it seem almost foreign, like you're approaching it from a different culture altogether.
True true!