“When those who have the power to name and to socially construct reality choose not to see or
hear you…when someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked in the mirror and saw nothing. It takes some strength of soul—and not just individual strength but collective understanding—to resist the void, this non-being, into which you are thrust, and to stand up demanding to be seen and heard.”
Adrienne Rich “Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose”

    
Vivaldi’s “Gloria, Gloria, Gloria in Excelsis Deo” plays over the opening credits of The Chair. A woman purposefully glides into her office. She is the newly appointed Chair of the English Department at Pembroke University, the first woman of color to hold the position.  Sandra Oh, as Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim in the title role, sits in her chair. The chair promptly collapses; Professor Kim comically falls out of view. A symbolic foreboding indeed!

     In the Netflix series from last year, the writers assembled a wonderfully diverse cast of women, each with her own accompanying “psychic disequilibrium” storyline. In addition to Dr. Kim, there is Dr. Yaz McKay (Nana Mensah), brilliant, young, black American Literature Professor, Joan Hambling (Holland Taylor), older white woman and Chaucer expert, and JuJu Kim (Everly Carganilla), Dr. Kim’s little adopted Hispanic daughter.  Professor Kim finally has the “power to name and socially construct reality… resist the void, this non-being… to stand up demanding to be seen and heard.” She is “The Chair,” after all. But will one of Hollywood’s most enduring and entrenched Character Tropes, the “Man-Child,” trip her up?

    In the initial episode, Professor Kim meets with Dean Paul Larson (David Morse). She has “ideas on how to increase enrollment” and plans to present the Distinguished Lectureship to Dr. Yaz McKay. Not interested, Larson hands her a list. Kim must trim three tenured professors; fire them to get the enrollment numbers up, the payroll down. “If anyone can bring Pembroke into the 21st century, it is you,” Larson tells her. She must bring order to the chaotic English Department. The story’s narrative is hers to drive.  Or is it?

     Cut to Dr. Kim chairing her first faculty meeting—“Bill’s not here,” says a professor.   Professor Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass), is at the airport dropping off his college bound daughter, drunkenly urinating in the parking lot and stealing an airport courtesy golf cart. He continues to stumblebum through the first episode. He falls asleep in Kim’s office, is late for class “AWOL,” as his teaching assistant Lila (Mallory Low) describes it, inadvertently shows his class a clip of his naked, from the waist up pregnant wife, and in a misguided attempt to underline the difference between absurdism and fascism, gives the Nazi Heil Hitler salute. Of course, this ill- advised gesture makes the highlight reel on several students’ phones, goes viral, and Dobson’s subsequent refusal to apologize becomes the focal point of the entire series and endangers Kim’s tenure as Chair in the process.

     So before the final notes of Vivaldi’s “Gloria” fade away, exhilaration turns to exhaustion for viewers.   Despite an Asian-American woman in the title role and a diverse cast of women—a middle-aged white man’s character hijacks the narrative with his odd Nazi salute. The women  and their narratives are quickly hustled to the side to make room for Dobson’s. I tuned in expecting a story driven by women but within minutes was inundated with Bill’s juvenile antics—the behavior of the classic Hollywood “Man-Child” trope. A man-child not in the Faulknerian, Benjy Compson intellectually hindered prototype (Faulkner coined the term), nor in the Hollywood childish narcissistic slacker archetype either, but what could be called the “Egoist Man-Child” trope—conceited, selfish, and preoccupied with his own interests. But not without his lovable qualities or so he thinks: “To do the gentil deeds that he kan, taak hym for the grettest man” or in modern English, “handsome is as handsome does” from Professor Hambling’s beloved Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath.” To Dobson and the Egoist Man-Child, if he’s doing it then it’s handsome because, well, he’s doing it. Moreover, there is always a woman, one woman, who not only indulges his nonsense but enables him by making excuses and covering for him. She may initially keep him at arm’s length but eventually succumbs to his supposed charms. And it is always at her own expense. She is the “Facilitator” Trope. Sadly, Dr. Kim becomes this “Facilitator.”  

    Certainly, one can argue “The Chair” writers have created a brilliant three-dimensional character in Professor Kim. She is smart, compassionate, and genuinely cares about her fellow faculty members.  Initially, Professor Kim helps faculty with their academic issues. She convinces Professor McKay to co-teach with Professor Eliot Rentz (Bob Balaban). His class numbers are low and is on Larson’s hit list.  Professor Hambling is unceremoniously reassigned an office in the gym basement; Kim suggests she contact the Title IX office to lodge a complaint. All this while teaching classes herself and tending to her widowed father Habi (Ji Lee) and her precocious daughter, JuJu. But as the fallout from Dobson’s salute escalates exponentially, Professor Kim’s full attention is consumed by the resultant radioactivity taking control of her own narrative, her own goals slowly slipping from her hands. In fact, each episode features either Dobson’s refusal to apologize or realize the gravity of his situation. And he is shockingly tone deaf, doubling down on Nazi jokes as students rally for his dismissal chanting “No Nazi’s at Pembroke. Professor Hitler must go. Send Professor Dobson home.” And of course, Kim keeps covering for him and pleading with him to apologize. Dean Larson explains to Kim that he wouldn’t be surprised if the president asks for Bill’s resignation. “No, he’s going to apologize. I can guarantee it,” Dr. Kim tells him.

     Soon after, Dobson organizes a Town Hall supposedly to apologize for his actions. Kim asks him if he knows what he’s going to say. He responds, “I’m truly heartbroken for having offended anyone here” and then launches into “Springtime for Hitler” from the 1967 film “The Producers.” At the Town Hall, Dobson attempts to justify his actions and issues a non-apology Apology— “I’m sorry if I made anyone…” The students boo him before he can finish. After the Town Hall fiasco, Larson puts together a disciplinary hearing and Dobson is expected to “write an apology that can be disseminated.” Kim tells Larson that he’s writing an apology and “this is all going to resolve itself.” Larson questions Kim’s professionalism stating, it’s a “serious reputational matter. Not only for Pembroke but for you personally...because right now, the perception is that you’re defending your boyfriend.” She assures him that her feelings for Dobson are “platonic and professional.”

     Meanwhile back where the focus should be, on academics, the female professors attempt to actually bring Pembroke into the 21st century. Eliot Rentz  continues to teach “Moby Dick” as if it was “ thirty years ago.”  Yaz McKay however, encourages her students to tweet out their favorite lines from the novel, “Call me Ishmael” and “From Hell’s heart I stab at thee” top the list and in one class the students perform a rap version of  “Moby”  Hamilton style. Joan Hambling bridges the gap between centuries as well. She explains that Chaucer is the father of modern English and that much of our language comes from Chaucer’s time—“You’ll be astonished how many images and idioms from our everyday speech come to us directly from the 14th century.” Initially she resists reading her “Rate My Professor” reviews but relents and allows the character known as IT Guy to sample a few for her. Apparently, one student says it’s her face he thinks of in a moment of passion ( not in a good way). With the help of IT Guy, she discovers the offending student and publically faces off with him, defending Chaucer, “if you can’t figure out he’s a badass then just stay the f*ck out of my classroom.”  Students witnessing the spectacle applaud her and ask her what she’s teaching next semester. “Chaucer,” she replies. Professor Hambling has just upped the enrollment in her class.     

Professor Dobson however, remains unwilling to budge and  put the university first.   Let’s take a look at a quick exchange— Kim: “I’m the face of totalitarianism.” Dobson: “I’m being called Hitler so I don’t think you get to be the face of totalitarianism.” Kim: “my students are turning on me. I am being seen as complicit.” Bill: “who gives a f*ck about how you’re seen?” Ah, yes. Poor Bill Dobson. He is King Lear, the “man more sinned against than sinning.” And, yeah, he is actually telling Kim who cares about how she is seen.      Meanwhile, at his termination hearing, Dobson says, “…to be an English teacher, you have to fall in love… with literature. And what you’re doing when you do that is you’re always trying to see things from someone else’s point of view.”  Easily one of the most laughable lines in the entire series because from the beginning Dobson has had a congenital inability to see anything from anyone else’s point of view. Professor Kim asked him to do one thing, apologize for his mistake and he cannot do it.  “It’s about whether you’re one of these men who, when something like this happens, thinks he can dust himself off and just walk away without any f*cking sense of the consequences,” she tells him. And yet when the committee votes to fire Dobson, Kim, ever the “Facilitator," continues to back him claiming, “Firing him isn’t going to change the culture here.” Kim’s continued defense of Dobson shows she has been reduced to the ubiquitous cinematic role of steadfast girlfriend, despite her adamant denials to Dean Larson. Even more importantly, she inadvertently states the case for her dismissal as Chair. She was tasked with changing the culture at Pembroke by bringing it into the 21st century, which she has not delivered.         

     Indeed, at a meeting following Dobson’s dismissal, the faculty votes to oust Kim as Chair. According to Rentz, “students are calling for a boycott of the English Department.” Her falling out of her chair in the opening scene now becomes literal as well as symbolic. Rentz attempts to assume the Chair but in her last act as Chair, Kim hands it off to Joan Rambling. Kim has “the power … to correct the “psychic disequilibrium” that Joan has suffered during her Pembroke career. Furthermore, Joan gets an office, the best in the department. Dr. Kim’s final stand showcases not only her fortitude but the goals she might have achieved had she only been able to drive her own narrative.      Unfortunately, Dobson continues to make the narrative about himself through the closing credits—no arc of character, no learning curve, no growth. Despite helping JuJu with her “Dia de los Muertos” presentation and attending Kim’s niece Minja’s first birthday “Doljabi” party, he has not learned to consider narratives other than his own. In the final scene, Kim and Dobson share a bench outside at Pembroke, “Not being chair suits you,” (italics mine) he tells Kim, ever the thoughtless egoist. Never once does he acknowledge that he is responsible for her losing the Chair position. Furthermore, he intends to fight to get his job back, never having acknowledged his mistakes or once properly apologized.

     Here’s a suggested alternative ending: Professors Kim, McKay, and Hambling sit together on the bench, and revamp Melville’s “great male adventure” to include not only a future where women can cancel the “void, this non-being, into which (they have been) thrust” but where they are the protagonists driving their own adventures. “It’s not down in any map; true places never are” (Melville “Moby Dick”). Not yet anyway! Is Melville’s white whale a metaphor for the Egoist Man-Child in film? If so, can Hollywood slay it? As Professor Kim says to David Duchovny regarding his misguided attempt to assume the Distinguished Lectureship position, “The (academic) discipline has moved forward and you’re still stuck back in a different era.”
Sadly, so is Hollywood!