Uptight asians

Asian cultures have always fallen into the category of high context cultures, due to the fact that we just seem to operate on the basis of more rules and regulations and appear less liberated as compared to our western counterparts. Here is a video from the BBC sketch comedy show 'Goodness Gracious Me' demonstrating the high context culture portrayed by typical Asian parents.



Obviously the video is an extremely exaggerated act of Asian parents but the idea of that Asian parents tend to place great emphasis and pressure on their kids' studies is still very much well shown in the video. Restricted codes and contextual cues, one of the characteristics of high context cultures, can be seen here, as it is almost viewed upon as a taboo for Asian kids to not do well in their studies, and this ideology seem to be regarded more highly in the Asian society than the Western world. This is a familiar mindset of our Asian culture whereby not doing well in school is almost like a death penalty, causing kids growing up in such environment to devote most of their childhood to all work and no play. The parents shown in the video is a good reflection of Singaporean parents as they are obviously overly kiasu and concern about their children's grades even from a very young age, and also the ridiculous habit of comparing their kids to others'. Kids as young as 7 may have their schedules dominated by math tuition, piano lessons, swimming lessons, chinese tuition, grooming and etiqutte lessons; whatever those crazy parents of theirs may think of. This is the unfortunate culture that Asian parents have picked up; god bless us Asian kids.

The video also illustrates the fact that Asians culture similar to that of high context culture sees 'face-saving' as taking precedence over the truth. From the video we can understand that the father was utterly embarrassed and displeased at the idea of his son not scoring As for all his subjects, thinking that the son had put the family to shame by merely getting a B for his classical studies. We can infer from this that our culture views the way people perceive us as of great importance, we work in a way that other people's opinions about us seem to be of higher priority than what we want ourselves to be, we avoid disappointing others' expectations for us. This coincides with the theory of Collectivism whereby fulfilment of others' needs on top of our own is deemed to be necessary.

Here is another video from the show demonstrating subtle cues are more important than actual words spoken.



The video shows how the Indian son tries his very best to drop hints to his eh dim-witted parents that he is in fact gay. Such as hinting that he never brought any girls home and he lives together with his English boyfriend while the boyfriend places his hand on top of his to give off clues about their intimate relationship. The Asian culture that we are brought up in taught us to speak in indirect ways in situations where people may get embarrassed or uncomfortable by the blatant truth. It may be seen as a cultured behavior on our part but sometimes beating around the bush just leads to more misunderstandings and unwanted annoyance.

Although due to media globalization there is the increased happening of cultural imperialism in our Asian society due to the influence coming mainly from American TV, Asians very much still fit the bill of a high context culture environment. I guess the culture programmed in us is not all that easily alterable by Hollywood after all.

P.S: Last post woohoo! Thanks for all who ever commented. Til next time, BYE WORLD!

Pretty, yes?

'Cultural beliefs represent our understanding about what is true.' Different cultures do indeed have different and distinct set of beliefs and perceptions to what are deemed to be acceptable in the society. Culture tends to be passed down from generation to generation, therefore there remains the persistence in the unique mindsets of people from various cultures.

As the popular saying goes, ' beauty is in the eyes of the beholder', what is perceived to be beautiful by some may thought to be awful by others. This ideology is especially apt in this multi-cultural diverse world that we live in. In the picture above, all e women (or erm girls) depicted have just one thing in common, they are all seen as beautiful, that is in their respective cultures.

In certain Islamic countries such as Iran, strict dress codes are required of females for the sake of modesty. Women are expected to be covered from head to toe, revealing only their hands and faces, or in some cases only their eyes are allowed to be shown if stricter Islamic laws are enforced. Such dressing may be a culture shock to people like us who live in the liberal part of the world, but in the Muslim society it is just part of the culture to be covered up and it is in fact a norm to do so. The indigenous group Karen Hill Tribe, otherwise more commonly known as the 'long neck' tribe in Northern Thailand, is also another example of how beauty is perceived under another culture very different from the mainstream mentality. It has been theorised that the coils originate from the desire to look more attractive by exaggerating sexual dimorphism (the systematic difference in form between individuals of different sex in the same species), as women have more slender necks than men.

In the modernized eastern and western societies, beauty once again take a different form. Attractive Chinese women are usually idealized to be fair skinned, doe eyed with long silky jet black hair; a reflection of how a gentle and demure asian female should look. The western world however defines women with tanned complexion and toned

curvaceous figures as sexy and alluring. We can understand from these examples that culture involves the programming of the mind. Beauty is interpreted differently by people from different cultures due to certain patterns of thinking, feeling and acting that have been instilled and established within a person's mind, therefore we are unable to understand how coils fastened around the necks can be deemed to be attractive as this set of tradition has never been taught to us as an idea of how beauty can be perceive.

Ultimately we can conclude that your degree of gorgeousness usually depends on what your culture understands beauty to be, and in the current cruel world we reside in, prettiness is more often than not measured by your degree of anorexic-ness :(

How I Could Just Kill A Man

Chill not gonna kill anyone here just that this week I will be using the music video of 'How I could just kill a man' by Charlotte Sometimes, a cute and interesting somewhat dark comedy mtv, to explore the concept of interpersonal communication (:

Basically the song and video tell us about how the girl is being cheated on by her evil boyfriend, and how she goes about carrying out revenge on him so as to mend her broken heart.

Well firstly, the obvious concept we can identify here is deception, ie. parties lying to or misleading each other or concealing significant information, it is one of the relational challenges that may result to relational dissolution (breaking up). Throughout the video it is shown that the girl discovers heartbreaking truths of her boyfriend cheating on her, such as finding lipstick marks on his shirt, seeing him meeting his mistress in secret and going to a hotel together (?!?!), and finding out his love notes to her.

This links us to the equity theory, whereby individuals in relationships seek to maintain a balance of costs and rewards that are relatively equal to those of their partners. The relationship depicted in the video implies that the equity theory balance is not achieved between the couple since one is over-benefiting (the evil bf) and the other is under-benefiting (the pitiful gf). The girl who is not reaping relational rewards equivalent to the effort she put into the relationship then suffer from distress and resentment and plots ways to murder her two-timing boyfriend. Her murder schemes include hanging a pile of bricks from the ceiling, killing the boyfriend as he enters the house, poisoning of his food, and cutting loose the ropes to the elevator killing both him and the mistress (muahaha yay!). Such ideas may be comical and extreme but it just goes to prove the point that under-benefiting party in a relationship are likely to suffer from much depression and stress causing persistent unpleasant emotional responses.

The video also portrays the coming apart stage of stagnation under the Knapp Model of Relational Development. Stagnation refers to couple going through the motions of a relationship like a routine script without the presence of any joy and excitement, unlike before when passion between the two still exists. This is to avoid the pain that may come from terminating the relationship therefore the relationship persists on in an almost forceful manner. This can be understood more clearly from the video where the girl continues with the daily ritual of kissing her boyfriend goodbye when he goes off to work and preparing his meals for him, even though she knew about his affair.

Relationship between two often starts out sweet and loving, however when the balance is offset in the matter of love, things can quickly sour and the relationship may just plunge to the stage of termination before you know it. What are some of your opinions on the complicated issue of love? Different perceptions on the music video are more than welcome as well. Your comments will be much appreciated (: