104) Know your role....?

It is still a little strange for me to watch how people act in some situations. From what I have seen this is still very much a culture, in which the people really play the roll of their position (play is the key word). What I mean by this is when people are dealing with someone who is their superior they really kiss their ass (for lack of a better term). To me it just seems really fake, and it would really bother me if I were the one in the upper position (not to mention if I were the one being pissed on). But it seems to be what is expected here, and very normal (at least from my eyes).

But the other day I saw an example of this that made me literally gasp out loud (“gol” if you will). I was filming for the show (and here, especially, the roles of everybody seems to be pretty clear cut- it is really easy to see who is above who), and was just watching people and how they interacted with each other. One guy in particular (lets just call him Tod so things don’t get too confusing) I was observing seemed pretty clearly to be on the low end of the totem pole…if not the lowest. It was the first time I had ever seen him (Tod), and he seemed to be doing the work no one wanted to do, or whatever needed to be done (like moving cords for the sound guy, or holding an umbrella for the camera man). So as I am watching all this, I notice one guy call Tod over, take one last drag off of his cigarette, and then precede to hand the butt to Tod. Tod then immediately takes it and runs about 20 yards away and stomps it out on the ground. I was willing to accept this if the guy who gave him the cig. had something important to do, and just didn’t have the time (like immediately start filming). But that was not the case at all, I watched him stand around and talk and do nothing for the next 10 minutes while the next scene was being set up.

I was embarrassed for both of them just watching the whole thing go down. And it’s not like Tod is just some young intern right out of high school, he must be about 35-40 years old! I don’t want to give the impression that this type of thing could only happen in Korean or anything like that. I just mean to give an illustration of a cultural trait going overboard (in my opinion).