Philadelphia, USA \u2013 February 28, 2022. Architectural details of College Hall in the campus of University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
\nOver last week\u2019s holiday, after the Thanksgiving turkey had been eaten and the Christmas tree had been decorated, I tackled the weekend\u2019s work: at least ten loads of clean laundry, piled high in baskets; Christmas lists; and the coming week\u2019s dinners.<\/p>\n
While folding, list-making, and cooking, I probably should have listened to Marie Kondo\u2019s new book, Kurashi at Home: How to Organize Your Space and Achieve Your Ideal Life. <\/em>Neither my ideal space nor my ideal life should involve quite so many mountain-high laundry baskets, one would think.<\/p>\nBut, instead of being that productive, my laundry-folding, Christmas list-making, and dinner-fixing marathon involved rewatching two of my favorite fictional shows from 2021: HBO\u2019s Mare of Eastown<\/em> and Netflix\u2019s The Chair<\/em>.<\/p>\nMare of Eastown <\/strong><\/h3>\nMare of Eastown<\/em> is a murder mystery set in a hard-scrabble, multiracial, culturally Catholic and downwardly mobile suburb of my native Philadelphia. Once tight-knit, the fictional Eastown is now decidedly dysfunctional, full of single parents, shuttered businesses, and drug addiction.<\/p>\nMare is the forty-three-year-old white (Irish-American) detective tasked with solving the murder. She was a local hero in her youth, when she sunk a championship-winning basketball shot, and she continues to be a local hero as a police detective that restores kidnapped girls to their desperate families. But as her late son\u2019s suicide, his girlfriend\u2019s drug addiction, and her college-bound daughter\u2019s departure from Eastown make perfectly clear, there will be no one coming to receive the baton labeled \u201ccommunity stalwart\u201d from Mare\u2019s outstretched hand when the time comes.<\/p>\n
The Chair<\/strong><\/h3>\nThe Chair<\/em> is about the political and organizational turmoil of an academic department in my undergraduate and graduate discipline of English literature. The fictional Pembroke University, where this department is housed, is the prototypical second-tier university, which has sunken into irrelevance and decay, even as (or perhaps because?) it tries ferociously to remain relevant, with shrinking enrollments looming.<\/p>\nJi-Yoon is the forty-six-year-old Asian (Korean-American) professor tasked with leading the English department. Once a rising star in her field, Ji-Yoon assumes the mantle of department chair\u2014the first woman and first person of color in the role\u2014and everything promptly falls down around her ears. There are students protesting the allegedly Nazi sympathies of a faculty member in an imbecilic and facile way that is today equally the stuff of satire and of reality. There is an older female faculty member justly outraged that she never got her due from the academy; a dispute over pedagogy that implicates age, race, and gender; and, overshadowing it all, the financial precariousness of the department and the university.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, there is precious little textual analysis going on at Ji-Yoon\u2019s Pembroke, because the written word\u2014the erstwhile religion of a liberal arts department\u2014is like the Catholic Church of Mare\u2019s Eastown: undeniably omnipresent, yet fundamentally impotent.<\/p>\n
Divisions, or Similarities?<\/strong><\/h3>\nSuffice it to say that Mare and Ji-Yoon would be unlikely to know each other in real life.<\/p>\n
Yet, watching the two shows back to back, I noticed that they are essentially part of the same story. It is a story of the deep divisions between different classes, religions, and races of Americans today; and yet also a story of hope predicated on the similarities that lie underneath those divisions.<\/p>\n
Mare and Ji-Yoon are differently contextualized iterations of the same character: a generation X woman coping with the decay of the institutions that the baby boomers left behind, and struggling to figure out where she and those coming after her fit into a world for which she has no coordinates, even as she helps to shape that world.<\/p>\n
Of course, the uncanny similarities between Mare and Ji-Yoon, and between Eastown and Pembroke, are predicated specifically on their ostensibly unbridgeable differences. That is, those that didn\u2019t attend college and those whose livelihoods depend on having gone to graduate school inhabit increasingly separate slices of the world. Real-life Mares and real-life Ji-Yoons never get a chance to realize how much they actually have in common.<\/p>\n
So, a real-life Mare could be forgiven for feeling entirely disdainful of the goings-on at Pembroke. Who has time to worry about whether a woman of color holds the departmental chair when\u2014living among people that look at each other eye-to-eye rather than through the lens of some theory and the distance of some sociological tome\u2014there are people of every color and background whose lives are hanging by a thread?<\/p>\n
And a real-life Ji-Yoon could also be forgiven for feeling equally disdainful of the goings-on in Eastown. It would, after all, be easier to respect such fierce pride in family and community if it were not so obvious (at least to anyone who\u2019s not feeling particularly romantic) that the only things binding these people together in the 2020\u2019s are nostalgia for their fast-receding history and belligerence in the face of how those at Pembroke University (perhaps especially those that, like Ji-Yoon, were not themselves handed anything on a silver platter) tend to see them.<\/p>\n
My Church and My Academy<\/strong><\/h3>\nI am 35 years old, half a generation younger than the fictional Mare and Ji-Yoon. I grew up in Philadelphia and its suburbs, and I am a Catholic. I am also a collegiate instructor with advanced degrees in English and Education.<\/p>\n
As I came of age in the mid-2000\u2019s, the institutions that more than any others were responsible for the circumstances of my own life\u2014post-WWII era Philadelphia Catholicism and the elite post-WWII academy\u2014rotted from the top down.<\/p>\n
The Church bled parishioners and its schools bled students\u2014partly because of its deep and pervasive cover-up of clergy that sexually abused children, and partly because of its sheer laziness and inertia. Meanwhile, the academy grew bloated with administrators and club-med facilities for increasing numbers of decreasingly literate and numerate students; codified its commitment to superficial leftism at the expense of rigorous intellectual engagement; and conveniently forgot that \u201chigher education\u201d should have something to do with, well, education.<\/p>\n
Yes, I believe in both the power of great literature and the truth of my Catholic faith. But (my own individual friends and mentors in both the academy and the Church, and many good individuals like them, notwithstanding), I have long understood that the institutional academy and the institutional Church are, broadly speaking, impediments to my beliefs rather than constitutive of them.<\/p>\n
By the time I defended my dissertation (2016), by the time my children were baptized (2015, 2017, 2021)\u2014I knew that I was engaging with an American academy and an American Church that had forfeited nearly all their moral authority, as well as the internal and external legitimacy that came with it.<\/p>\n
So, perhaps unsurprisingly, I watched and re-watched both Mare of Eastown<\/em> and The Chair<\/em> through the lens of preemptively jaded nostalgia.<\/p>\nMare, Ji-Yoon, and Models of Hope<\/strong><\/h3>\nTo my surprise, my recognition of how alike the fictional Mare and Ji-Yoon are, for all their surface-level differences, mitigated my nostalgia and evoked my hopefulness.<\/p>\n
Each show ends not with despair for all that has been lost, nor with forced optimism for all that could yet be, but with measured gratitude for all that each woman is right now<\/em>\u2014as a professional, as a friend, as a mother\u2014who in fact does, all evidence to the contrary for most of each show, transcend and grow past her circumstances.<\/p>\nEach show is a tribute to the individual personhood, the unique contributions and potential, of each solitary human being.<\/p>\n
And each finale is an ode to lighting a single candle rather than cursing the darkness. Mare discovers that she is strong enough to support her dearest friend through the loss of her son, even as she mourns her own. Ji-Yoon walks away from the departmental chair, choosing to be true to herself by an internal metric that surpasses outward accolades.<\/p>\n
As such, each of these shows is profoundly counter-cultural, in a moment where we want to reduce people to a set of characteristics, positions, or achievements.<\/p>\n
Mare isn\u2019t actually \u201cMare of Eastown.\u201d She\u2019s Mare, and in the words of her daughter, \u201cEastown is better because [she\u2019s] there\u201d (just as anywhere would be). And Ji-Yoon isn\u2019t ultimately \u201cThe Chair.\u201d She\u2019s an exceptional teacher, a faithful friend, and a loving mother (whose adopted Latina daughter understands her native Korean after all).<\/p>\n
So each series, though evocative about a place, is more fundamentally about a person. And as each story ends, it is clear that each woman\u2019s flexible fortitude will serve her well beyond her current circumstances.<\/p>\n
Mare and Ji-Yoon\u2014like all of us, if we realize the eternal significance of our shared humanity and the ephemeral smallness of our place and time\u2014adapt and live on.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over last week\u2019s holiday, after the Thanksgiving turkey had been eaten and the Christmas tree had been decorated, I tackled the weekend\u2019s work: at least ten loads of clean laundry, piled high in baskets; Christmas lists; and the coming week\u2019s dinners. While folding, list-making, and cooking, I probably should have listened to Marie Kondo\u2019s new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4810,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
Mare of Eastown, The Chair, and Universal Models for Hope in a Divided Age<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Over last week\u2019s holiday, after the Thanksgiving turkey had been eaten and the Christmas tree had been decorated, I tackled the weekend\u2019s work: at least\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mare of Eastown, The Chair, and Universal Models for Hope in a Divided Age\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over last week\u2019s holiday, after the Thanksgiving turkey had been eaten and the Christmas tree had been decorated, I tackled the weekend\u2019s work: at least\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Faith and Reason\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-12-01T23:37:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-01-06T02:02:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1600\/2022\/12\/college-hall-300x223.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elizabeth Grace Matthew\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ElizabethGMat\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elizabeth Grace Matthew\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/\",\"name\":\"Mare of Eastown, The Chair, and Universal Models for Hope in a Divided Age\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2022-12-01T23:37:35+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-01-06T02:02:07+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#\/schema\/person\/638734eab5c5225abae2fcb86491bb60\"},\"description\":\"Over last week\u2019s holiday, after the Thanksgiving turkey had been eaten and the Christmas tree had been decorated, I tackled the weekend\u2019s work: at least\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Mare of Eastown, The Chair, and Universal Models for Hope in a Divided Age\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/\",\"name\":\"Faith and Reason\",\"description\":\"Elizabeth Grace Matthew\u2019s "Faith and Reason" considers culture, politics, and religion through a passionately moderate and thoughtfully Catholic lens.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#\/schema\/person\/638734eab5c5225abae2fcb86491bb60\",\"name\":\"Elizabeth Grace Matthew\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2db8f965b6555e065b49abd2a22e3f97?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2db8f965b6555e065b49abd2a22e3f97?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Elizabeth Grace Matthew\"},\"description\":\"Elizabeth Grace Matthew (https:\/\/elizabethgracematthew.com\/) is a Regular Opinion Contributor at The Hill. She writes about culture, politics, and religion. Her work has appeared in various outlets including USA Today, America Magazine, Deseret News, Law and Liberty, the Washington Examiner, RealClearBooks&Culture, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and FemCatholic. Matthew holds a bachelor's in English from The University of Pennsylvania, a master's in English from Penn State, and a doctorate in Education from St. Joseph's University. Before turning to writing full-time, she was a university professor and administrator. Follow her on Twitter @ElizabethGMat\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/elizabethgracematthew\/?igshid=MzMyNGUyNmU2YQ\",\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/elizabeth-grace-matthew-a95b6977\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ElizabethGMat\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/author\/ematthew\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Mare of Eastown, The Chair, and Universal Models for Hope in a Divided Age","description":"Over last week\u2019s holiday, after the Thanksgiving turkey had been eaten and the Christmas tree had been decorated, I tackled the weekend\u2019s work: at least","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Mare of Eastown, The Chair, and Universal Models for Hope in a Divided Age","og_description":"Over last week\u2019s holiday, after the Thanksgiving turkey had been eaten and the Christmas tree had been decorated, I tackled the weekend\u2019s work: at least","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/","og_site_name":"Faith and Reason","article_published_time":"2022-12-01T23:37:35+00:00","article_modified_time":"2023-01-06T02:02:07+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1600\/2022\/12\/college-hall-300x223.jpg"}],"author":"Elizabeth Grace Matthew","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@ElizabethGMat","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Elizabeth Grace Matthew","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/","name":"Mare of Eastown, The Chair, and Universal Models for Hope in a Divided Age","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#website"},"datePublished":"2022-12-01T23:37:35+00:00","dateModified":"2023-01-06T02:02:07+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#\/schema\/person\/638734eab5c5225abae2fcb86491bb60"},"description":"Over last week\u2019s holiday, after the Thanksgiving turkey had been eaten and the Christmas tree had been decorated, I tackled the weekend\u2019s work: at least","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2022\/12\/mare-of-eastown-the-chair-and-universal-models-for-hope-in-a-divided-age\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Mare of Eastown, The Chair, and Universal Models for Hope in a Divided Age"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/","name":"Faith and Reason","description":"Elizabeth Grace Matthew\u2019s "Faith and Reason" considers culture, politics, and religion through a passionately moderate and thoughtfully Catholic lens.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#\/schema\/person\/638734eab5c5225abae2fcb86491bb60","name":"Elizabeth Grace Matthew","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2db8f965b6555e065b49abd2a22e3f97?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2db8f965b6555e065b49abd2a22e3f97?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"Elizabeth Grace Matthew"},"description":"Elizabeth Grace Matthew (https:\/\/elizabethgracematthew.com\/) is a Regular Opinion Contributor at The Hill. She writes about culture, politics, and religion. Her work has appeared in various outlets including USA Today, America Magazine, Deseret News, Law and Liberty, the Washington Examiner, RealClearBooks&Culture, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and FemCatholic. Matthew holds a bachelor's in English from The University of Pennsylvania, a master's in English from Penn State, and a doctorate in Education from St. Joseph's University. Before turning to writing full-time, she was a university professor and administrator. Follow her on Twitter @ElizabethGMat","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/elizabethgracematthew\/?igshid=MzMyNGUyNmU2YQ","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/elizabeth-grace-matthew-a95b6977","https:\/\/twitter.com\/ElizabethGMat"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/author\/ematthew\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4810"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1600\/2022\/12\/college-hall-300x223.jpg\")