I've been thinking a lot about expectations this week.
A number of years ago, when I was visiting my brother, he criticized me for not doing something that he expected me to do. It was a frustrating talk because he wasn't at all willing to hear my perspective. But what bothered me the most about it was when I said "you can just ask" and he said "I shouldn't have to".
I was doing everything culturally expected of a good guest, I didn't even know what his extra expectations were, and yet he felt entitled to be mad at me for not automatically knowing them, and not living up to them.
It can be so easy for us to let our expectations get ahead of us, to make assumptions based on our own perspectives, and to then feel let down.
And I feel like I'm seeing a lot of this kind of thing in people's experience with media these days. There seems to be a clash happening between expectations and reality. And people feeling genuinely upset when the reality is not what they wanted.
I'm seeing a lot of complaints and "critiques" that seem to fall in to the category of "this is not how I personally want this to go" or "this doesn't resonate with my personal experience".
To be clear, I'm not saying this in a pointing fingers kind of way, because I have 100% done it myself.
When the trailer for Cutie Pie first came out, I got so excited imagining Kuea as some bad boy living a double life. He was going to be so hard to tame, he was going to put Lian through the wringer, and it was going to be amazing.
What I got was something very different from what I expected, and I struggled with the show.
But it was a really valuable learning moment for me. Because everything in the trailer was in the series. It was my interpretation of it, of those few minutes out of hours of material, my assumptions about the moments not yet shown, that caused me frustration.
That was a turning point in my "let's see where the journey takes us" philosophy. And I have to say, engaging in QL has been a hell of a lot more fun since I learned to let go of what I thought should happen.
I still have critiques of shows, of course I do. Nothing is above criticism. But I don't get so personally affronted now when something doesn't do what I expect. I'm more willing to see where the destination takes us before I decide the journey isn't working.
Of course I am still human, and I still get caught off guard sometimes by expectations I didn't realize I had let slip in.
But I have found my experience immeasurably improved by considering a few things when I'm watching a series:
- Am I leading with curiosity, or judgment?
- What is happening here culturally? What assumptions am I making based on my own background and country of origin? What happens if I step back and look at the bigger picture of how this culture engages with media? Do I even know, or do I have more to learn?
- Is this actually bad... or is it just not for me? Is this just not resonating with me? Is it making me uncomfortable? What can this discomfort tell me about myself? Is it a bad show, or just a show I need to walk away from?
- Am I more focused on the story I want told, and not paying enough attention to the story that the creators of the series want to tell? What assumptions am I making about their intent?
- Am I only focused on what the value is for me as an individual, and not considering how this may be making other people feel seen or be meeting their needs? Can I acknowledge that there can be inherent value in things that do not give value to me personally?
There is value in critique, but there is also importance in self-reflection and understanding why we are feeling the way that we are, and when our own setting of expectations may be playing a role.
It's funny that in some ways this seems to be a reflection of what a golden age of QL we are living in - there are so many options, and time is so scarce, that I can see why people are frustrated when they feel like a show is not living up to what they wanted.
But as someone who has lived multiple decades without this kind of media, and only relatively recently having been able to experience it...there is a lot more to be gained by reveling in what you are loving than over what you are hating.
