In college I watched Roman Kachanov’s strange, merrily melancholic 1970s animated series Cheburashka, about a gang of lonely children and animals reaching out for friendship and belonging. The title character is an “animal unknown to science,” uncategorizable and without role models. He appears one day in a crate of oranges and groggily staggers off the side, thus earning his name (translated into English as Topple).
The shopkeeper who finds him heads straight for the zoo, which has no use for him—“It’s not going to work out,” says the zookeeper. “I don’t even know what cage to put him in.” But Cheburashka soon finds work as a window display, hired to attract attention. His peculiarity is his strength, though it is also limiting; he lives alone in a glass telephone booth, always on display. Not knowing how to categorize himself clearly weighs on Cheburashka. Nonetheless, he reaches out, finding new friends and even brainstorming about a new job for himself—as a children’s toy—that would end his strange isolation.
Cheburashka’s quiet, diffident strength is a touchstone for anyone who has ever felt that they don’t fit in to a category, that they must create their own role in the world. I’ve thought of him often over the years. Lately, though, as I navigate my own identity and career, stepping out of youth and into motherhood and midlife, I’ve identified more with Cheburaska’s best friend, Crocodile Gena.
Crocodile Gena (left) and Cheburashka. Source: http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/andrew_alexandre_owie/post290800797/
Gena is an anthropomorphic crocodile who drinks tea, smokes a soap-bubble pipe, and plays chess and the accordion. In his free time, that is. During the day he is hard at work, as a crocodile at the zoo. He files in, takes off his coat and tie, and basks naked on a rock as visitors point and stare at the wild animal. (The illusion is not quite complete, as he keeps his pipe clamped firmly between his teeth, and his hat and coat hang in full view—but this doesn’t seem to bother anyone). When the closing bell rings, he heaves himself back upright, dresses, and walks home to the chess board at his apartment with a newspaper under his arm.
I find this conceit charming, not least because it reverses our usual narratives about identity and its accoutrements. We usually think of jobs and roles as requiring props—costumes, uniforms, equipment. The police officer dons her badge and gun, the train conductor her cap. Businesswomen put on makeup and high heels. These objects may affect us and modify us, changing our behavior, our bodies, and our thoughts, but they are essentially external, at least to begin with.
For Crocodile Gena, quite the opposite is true. He must set aside the equipment that he prefers, by which he cheerfully defines himself, in order to meet visitors’ expectations about crocodile-ness. Gena would be fired if he acted like himself—that is, like an actual crocodile.
What about you? What do you set aside to play your roles—at work, in your family, in the world? Is it still waiting for you at the end of the day?