Bong Joon-Ho, director of Parasite, with his Oscars. Photo by: DAVID SWANSON/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Hello friends! Welcome back to Week 3 of my blogs!
This week we’re talking about Parasite!
For those of you who don’t know, Parasite is a film about a lower-class family conning their way into working for an upper-class family. However, along the way, the lower-class family finds that they have gotten themselves into more than what they had first intended.
The film gained worldwide attention when it was the first Korean film ever to be selected to receive one of the most prestigious awards in the film industry, the Palme d’Or, at the Cannes Film Festival.
Now, I’ll be honest.
I didn’t hear about Parasite until months after it came out.
I was mindlessly scrolling through Buzzfeed and stumbled upon one of those “17 Facts about a movie…” posts. I clicked on it because I love random movie trivia.
I realized this movie that Buzzfeed, an American-based media company, was writing about was a Korean movie, which was wild to me.
Of course, after I realized it was a Korean film and that it was receiving Oscar buzz, I stopped reading the article so that I could make sure not to spoil the movie for myself.
Then, I called my dad wondering why I had never heard of it before.
Me: “Dad, have you heard of this movie called Parasite?”
Dad: “Oh yeah, it came out a while ago. I liked it.”
Me: “… Okay, so why did you never tell me about it?”
Dad: “I didn’t think you’d want to watch it because it’s Korean.”
I finally watched it with some friends up in Chapel Hill.
I’ll keep how I felt about the movie short because this blog isn’t a movie review. But all I will say is it is brilliant.
It’s quite funny actually. One of my friends told me his White friend took a girl on their first date to watch Parasite. His friend heard it was such an incredible film that he chose to take this girl, who he barely knew, to it. Unsure if he scored a second date, but I thought it was really amazing that people who weren't Korean or who didn’t even speak the language chose to watch this film over some Disney film re-make or superhero movie.
Now, I had heard that it was critically acclaimed - nominated for Golden Globes and Oscars - but I didn’t think America was actually capable enough to award a foreign film for its excellence.
It was definitely a shoo-in for those best “foreign film” categories, but I didn’t think it stood a chance to Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino.
I don’t have cable. So on the night of the Oscars, I was only refreshing “Oscars” in search bar on Google to see who all had won. There was news of Parasite winning Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film, so I was already super happy.
That night, I already had plans to go out for a friend’s birthday, so I tuned out the second half of the Oscars. I just assumed that, that was the end of the night for the Parasite team. I just thought there was no way Parasite could possibly win Best Director or Best Picture – of course, in my heart I wanted to believe this, but I just didn’t have hope that The Academy would feel the same way.
But luckily, my friend was keeping tabs on the night.
In the middle of my friend taking a birthday shot, I got a frantic text.
A screenshot from the text conversation that went down that night.
There it was. History.
The first KOREAN film to ever win Best Picture and Best Director at the Oscars.
Now. Let’s get into why this win was so important to people like me.
Growing up, for some reason, there was the common question of “Who would play you in your biographical film?”
Every time, it would always be between Sandra Oh and Lucy Liu - the only Asian actors who were actually recognizable at the time.
But I never felt like Sandra or Lucy looked like me enough to play me (ALL respect to those women though. They helped pave the way for Asian people in the media). I only had two options, whereas other people had a whole catalog to look through. Therefore, I always hated that question. Because I never knew the answer.
But, with this win for Parasite, it meant more people who looked like me were being represented on the screen. More people were being added to this catalog of people who could play me in my biopic. And that’s so exciting to me.
A second, and more personal reason as to why Parasite’s win was so important to me, was because I’m an aspiring filmmaker.
The majority of films I associate with greatness have all been American films directed by white people. However, the idea that Parasite, a Korean film written and directed by a Korean person has received such praise, it gives me hope.
It gives me hope that a film doesn’t have to be white or even be in English to be considered a good film.
Bong Joon-ho has an amazing quote that he said at the Golden Globes when he won for Best Foreign Language Film. He said, “Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”
And that’s so exciting.
*NOTE: There are many opinions as to why The Academy chose Parasite to win this year. People are saying it’s because the Oscars was accused of being too white, and therefore, they awarded Parasite all these awards on purpose. They awarded these awards in order to seem like they were being “woke” enough to award a brilliant, foreign film. — There are many things I could say about this topic, but, again, this blog post is “An Introduction to Parasite.”
I’ll leave it at: I think that Parasite deserved this win.
Do I think that their win may have been politically charged? Quite possibly.
Does this mean progress in the film industry? I hope so.
Am I proud of Korea? 대한민국!!!