Okja: A Review of the Reviews
I approached the recent Bong Joon Ho movie, Okja, as many other viewers did, at least according to the reviews I read online after watching it. I thought it would be pretty much like Babe or Charlotte’s Web. Not the same, of course, but similar given the potential of genetic engineering to provide fertile ground for new commentary on how we conceptualize the relationship between animals and food. I, like many others, did not notice the TV-MA rating, but that’s not a problem for me, per se. I do not mind violence or the stark portrayal of the more disturbing, if often hidden, facets of daily life; they need to be seen and confronted, and fantasy is often one of the most suitable means of doing so as it allows viewers to perceive the message more clearly because they are not distracted by their preconceived notions of reality. Okja most definitely lands in the category of biting social commentary, but I wonder to what extent the glorious praise it has received by western viewers and reviewers is based on a somewhat superficial image of the white people in the film.
Over the last nine years or so, I have been developing an interest and enthusiasm for Korean film and television, so I suspect I saw some troubling elements in the story that other westerners may have missed. I have seen enough Korean shows that I can recognize some aspects of the tropes and the stereotypes they use in their story-telling, though I could not remotely call myself an expert since I do not speak Korean and I haven’t yet had many opportunities to talk to actual Koreans about them. I have, however, become completely accustomed to strong male and female Korean heroes. Having spent so much time immersed in the visual story-telling of another culture, I have socialized myself to easily accept white people as subsidiary characters and villains, so I found myself surprised by the reviews of Okja that identified the Animal Liberation Front leader, Jay, as a heroic figure.
In my opinion, the only hero in Okja is Mija, the little girl who embarks on a mission to save her beloved friend Okja from either being turned into a marketing campaign or being sent to slaughter, which, I suppose, aren’t really all that different. Jay, on the other hand, appears as an eminently stereotypical white savior character, which seems to be how most western reviewers saw him with absolutely no compunction. I saw him immediately as a self-interested, smarmy caricature of a sort of ideological purity that can be achieved by no one, not even Jay himself as his non-violent rhetoric crumbles in the course of events. His Korean lieutenant in the ALF squad, known by the oh-so-obvious following letter in the alphabet- K (Men in Black, anyone?), serves as little more than that most dangerous of middlemen, the untrustworthy interpreter, which I found incredibly surprising given the Korean writer and director. The film is clearly an indictment of factory farming and the consumption of mass-produced meat, so the leader of an animal rights group could be a hero who arrives on the scene to save the little girl, but Mija is no passive, frightened child, and Jay is no savior.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
The ALF squad befriends Mija and helps Okja escape her first capture, only to plant her with a device that will allow them to infiltrate a factory farming operation in the completely ridiculous location of Paramus, New Jersey. Evidently no one told Mr. Bong that many of the factory farms are in California, or maybe as the home of western film and television, California has found a way to white-wash itself, too, by casting a New Jersey suburb as the seat of cruelty and devastation. The ALF squad sells out Okja for their own ends, which leads directly to her strange and unnecessary rape scene and arrival at the killing floor. How in the world can people see them as heroes? Is the strength of the white gaze so pervasive that it can turn well-meaning villains into heroes in the eyes of western viewers?
Was the Mirando Corporation not a collection of well-meaning villains, too? Lucy Mirando was trying to feed the world to make up in some way for her company’s depravity under the leadership of her father. What does it say about western viewers, and especially about professional film reviewers, that they can easily accept a manic greenwashing CEO and her depressed sell-out celebrity presenter as villains, while the militant animal rights activists who do more direct harm to Okja by brutally using her to further their ideological goals are crowned heroes, albeit slightly confusing ones. Mija asks the ALF squad to take her and Okja back to the mountain, but they won’t because they are part of the machine grinding away at virtue and dignity. They turn off their monitor when Okja is being raped, and isn’t that what every naive person who has refused to watch an animal cruelty film did just before they went out to buy a fast food burger for ninety-nine cents?
I fear most reviewers, in their zeal to forgive themselves for ignoring the problem of cruelty toward food animals, missed the fact that Mija and Okja are the only ones who matter in this movie. They are the only ones deserving of our adoration because the isolated mountainside where Mija and Okja grow up is more of a fantasy than anything else in the film. The mountain itself is the naivete of childhood- a time when we can assume things are well taken care of by an adult world that diligently shields us from the horrors of exploitation that underpin daily life. Mija’s introduction to reality is at first gentle with her grandfather’s euphemistic gift of the golden pig, traditionally given to brides, but in the true form of a hero, she takes it and her meager childhood savings from her smashed piggy bank to undertake a mission to control her future and save her friend. Mija’s innocence is irrevocably lost, as everyone’s is at some point in life, but Mija grips the demands of adulthood with an enviable certainty. She understands immediately that Okja has value both material and emotional. Her grandfather’s attempt at forcing her into a passive, receptive form of adulthood gives her the currency she needs to exchange material gain for emotional well-being. Mija turns her back on the cynicism and hypocrisy she discovers underlying adulthood to return to the mountain with Okja, and she purchases not innocence, but self-determination for the price of a golden pig.
