Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown of English chair: A critical reading of Netflix’s The Chair (2021)

Abstract

Netflix’s comedy-drama The Chair (2021) chronicles the various challenges and crises that Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim, the first woman and non-white chair of the Department of English Pembroke University, has to respond to both the professional and personal front. The present paper seeks to make a detailed critical and thematic study of these challenges and crises while also investigating the suggestion, which emerges from the clash between faculty members Elliot Rentz and Yasmin “Yaz” McKay, that young faculties will always be more talented, objective, responsive, and sympathetic to student demands in comparison to older ones, an implication that can remain perpetually debatable. Moreover, the series also highlights, through the characters of Ji-Yoon and Dobson, how the challenges and troubles of one’s personal and family life demand simultaneous attention, making it difficult to successfully navigate professional and personal responsibilities.