What can idle time do to two psychology junior faculty members

…when a meeting ends early and there’s a couple of extra hours available?

1. They propose that they will work by either checking papers or make preparations for the coming week.
2. But not before talking about cellular phones and how the Dictionary works…or not work, in my case.
3. And not until one shares the audio functions of his new cellular phone and starts playing the mp3 opening and ending theme songs of then popular kid shows Maskman (IN FILIPINO!!! IN FILIPINO!!! O.M.G. *goosebumps*) and Bioman (in Japanese).

Thus marked the beginning of nostalgia when P and I began talking about 80’s cartoons, sentai series (refer to item 3), Filipino super heroes and the psychology behind them. No, we did not get any work done, in case you were wondering.

First, a disclaimer – the notions presented here were brought about by random observations of the available TV shows we know to the best of what we can recall about it. The arguments below are far from stable and clearly open for discussion. I do admit that at the end of the discourse, I was tempted to read about the history of our “variables” and really make a solid comparison.

So, we talked about Bioman and Maskman and we noticed that the trend of “5 people”—a team, tends to be a central theme in these shows. Hence, it’s a reflection of the collectivistic culture on Non-westerners. I stopped for a moment and thought about Voltes V and almost agreed when, playing devil’s advocate as usual, I raised the issue of Daimos, Shaider, Masked Rider Black and Ultraman. Also, what about the Uncanny X-Men or Justice League? They are a team, aren’t they so why single out superheroes that just happened to originate from the other side of the globe and label them as such? P said that despite forming team, the X-men and JL still have core stories centralized in them. Individually, they are able to convey their personal stories, about who they are, unlike their Japanese counterparts who give us simple glimpses of who they are but it’s the team’s identity that matter more. Thus, the theory of individualistic nature for the former and collectivistic for the latter came to be. Well, X-men did have the “accept-who-we-are” premise in the beginning and I remember Voltes V has a couple of family ties issue. Ultraman did have a team backing him up...I must admit I'm not very sure about my own counterargument as of this time ^^;.

Anyway, another thing that we talked about was how our local superheroes and maybe some of the non-Westerners as well get their superpowers from something else, like it’s some kind of divine intervention and rather unintentional. Darna and Captain Barbell initially came to mind. P mentioned that Darna is our local rendition of Wonder Woman but unlike Wonder Woman who is born into royalty, Darna is your ordinary girl who was fortunate enough to be given powers. It is the same with Captain Barbell. Now, because I’m accustomed to making even the mundane things go through “reliability testing”, I just *had* to look for another local super hero to see if the description fits. I looked up Panday and true enough, the power of his weapon of choice came from something else of which he didn’t ask for nor initially possess. This is opposite to the likes of Batman, Superman or even Elektra.

So the conclusion in my opinion is, this entire entry is full of loopholes and really vulnerable for rebuttals, which is why it will remain unedited and raw as it is. And if someone out there can come up with something that I can tweak and conceptualize as “Rationale” and “Theoretical or Practical Significance of the Study”, I swear I will attempt to make a research proposal with funding and finish it in a term.

And next time, start and finish a meeting ON TIME. ^_^