I don’t think Kim’s Convenience is racist. And it depicts the lives of many minority groups in addition to the Korean immigrant family. It probably helps to use Asian actors as well. Storylines are hilarious and it’s a deeper overall story than some immigrant comedies. Ins Choi has created something wonderful here. Okay, see you!
Written by a Korean-Canadian, eh? My question is: could archetyping ever be racist?
And now I’ve started watching the show.
Excellent! (Taps fingertips)
This is pretty much what GLAAD said about The Birdcage, a movie which, IMHO, is well crafted and damned funny but also full of stereotypes
My wife and I are dedicated viewers of the show.
She is an immigrant. Well, technically, we are now both immigrants, because we have moved from the U.S. to Europe and are pursuing re-naturalization in our new country, but for the purpose of this discussion, she was born outside the U.S. and immigrated there, where we met prior to our re-emigration together.
The point is, she and her parents, and their extended family, are all foreign-born. They’re Middle Eastern, not Korean, but my wife marvels at how closely the immigrant experience maps from culture to culture. The comment made by lead actor Paul Sun-Hyung Lee about archetypes is critical here: the concept of a generally-well-meaning blowhard as family patriarch is entirely independent of the specific culture. And the larger dynamic in which a gulf of experience opens between the adult-immigrant parents and the better-adapted children is deeply meaningful to her.
So, yes, the show does occasionally play at the edges of some potentially problematic material, but it almost always does so mindfully, and never maliciously or condescendingly.
And we are very much looking forward to season five.
Cervaise is back!
I’m a little late to the show. I’m enjoying it, but some of the accents are cringe-worthy (and disturbingly funny) especially in light of the fact that the actors using them have lived in Canada since they were toddlers. Are the accents meant to be funny? And if so, does that make it racist? If not, does that make me racist? I honestly don’t know.
I don’t think it makes you or any of us racist. Paul Sung Yung Lee (Appa) has no accent in real life but said he channels his father for the role. I would see that as more of a tribute, and it’s different when you’re laughing with someone as opposed to laughing at them.
Eh. If their parents or other people than hung around a lot has those accents, they could easily pick them up well enough. I’m not an immigrant, but I have lived around people with much stronger regional accents than mine, and so I can easily pull it out and sound authentic, even though I don’t normally talk that way.
I’ve seen this commonly with standup comedians who are second generation immigrants. They’ll talk about their parents or other relatives and bring up their accent. I don’t know anyone who considers that to be racist.
I know several people including my own sons who would tell me this was racist.
My best mate in my teens was Indian. He and his cousins used to make fun of their parents’ accents all the time. For their entertainment, not mine. I guess if I was being racist by enjoying it, so were they. Although how that works I’m not sure.
I like that when Appa says “sorry” it is with a Canadian accent.
I started watching Kim’s Convenience a few months ago because of a reference on this message board, and I really enjoy it. I was unaware of this thread until now, but am pleased to read all the comments, because there is some interesting food for thought.
As much as I love the show, the thing that bothers me is the use of broken English in scenes only between the parents, who would in reality presumably speak Korean when alone together.
The alternative would be to have them speak Korean with subtitles, which presents its own set of disadvantages. Still … it’s very weird.
I can relate this to my own life, as a native English speaker who spent nearly 20 years living and working in Indonesia with my also-native-English-speaking husband. Both of us became passable in the Indonesian language. If we were speaking together with Indonesians (or other foreigners, for example Japanese, where Indonesian was the only language we shared), we could hold conversations in Indonesian, no big deal.
But you can be sure that the moment it was just the two of us, we spoke English.
So it is a little weird to hear two native Korean speakers* talking in English together. Why don’t they speak Korean?
*per the show; I am talking about the characters, not the actors portraying them.
Maybe I missed it earlier in this thread, but it’s worth noting that some of the actors are complaining that the writing is getting more racist.
I think that was more to do with the final season and the lessening of input from the creator, Ins Choi. Simu Liu had lots to say.
I believe you know what you meant to say, but just to be clear, there is no one who doesn’t have an accent. You can’t speak without an accent and you can’t speak a language without speaking a dialect.
Hair splitter! I suppose you’re right though. Paul Sung Yung Lee has no noticeable Korean accent in real life.