“Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” Communicated through a translator, this was Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s message to the audience at the 2020 Golden Globes. Bong Joon-Ho is the director of the 2019 Korean film Parasite, the first non-English language film to win the Academy Award category of Best Picture and a recent phenomenon which has taken the internet, and more significantly, the Western world, by storm.
The wide praise Parasite has received is not undeserved. Both highly-absurd, yet totally conceivable, this tale of a savvy working-class family who infiltrates their way into a wealthy family in a plot for employment makes for an extraordinary film. Parasite is an explicit critique of the deleterious effects of capitalism and the alarming effects of growing disparities in wealth. The stark poverty of the Kim family, whom the plot centers around, contrasted with the lavish lifestyle of the Parks, their employers, is central to the film. If Parasite’s explicit social commentary makes us think about the dehumanizing inequality perpetuated by our late-capitalist existence, Bong Joon-Ho’s point should be more food for thought for those of us privileged enough to enjoy a vast majority of our entertainment in our native language.
Joon-Ho’s aforementioned ‘one-inch tall barrier’ references the international implications of Hollywood’s monopoly on entertainment. Those of us in the West often don’t look much farther than our own continent when choosing what to watch. We read the critic’s opinions in the New York Times, we browse the same Netflix genres, and we share a love of the same actors. Most of the movies are probably in English, and chances are, given Hollywood’s odds, the majority of cast members are white.
We’ve heard of #OscarsSoWhite and other movements challenging the lack of diversity within Hollywood, but Joon-Ho raises another important point. The rest of the world watches English movies with subtitles all the time. They love the movies we love in the Western world just as much, despite the ‘one-inch tall barrier.’ So why do we in the West have so much trouble surmounting this barrier, ourselves? Such is the glaring hypocrisy of the Western centricity which pervades our world, but which many of us have the privilege not to notice. Thus, we expect others to watch movies in subtitles but can’t be bothered to do so ourselves.
It seems that Bong Joon-Ho is unafraid to question the normative structures of capitalism and consumerism perpetuated by Western hegemony. His statement, and his film, have the potential to force us to reconsider the movies we watch and those that we don’t, and why that might be. The ‘one-inch barrier’ of subtitles surely cannot be one too strenuous to cross, and as Joon-Ho points out, once we do, a whole host of films are suddenly within our reach.
A contract is already in the works between Bong Joon-Ho and HBO/director Adam McKay, the winner of a bidding war with Netflix for the creation of a Parasite miniseries spinoff. The existence of such a production raises a few questions. Not only will the miniseries be in English, but it will be produced by a major American network. The reception for Parasite was groundbreaking and Bong Joon-Ho’s message was clear, but will its impact truly change the manner in which we source our entertainment? For now, it seems as if something sharper will be required to pop the Hollywood bubble.
Feature image source: Flickr.
