It’s a curious time to be an Asian-American. As Hollywood pushes for diversity, television series like Kim’s Convenience are placing spotlights on the commonplace experiences of immigrant families; through the medium of the domestic sitcom, it feels more intimate than ever.
As children, my siblings and I loved Mulan, the 1998 animated film, for a variety of reasons: the catchy instrumentals, the bright characters, the kick-ass, girl-power plot. Underlying these components was something unacknowledged, though equally compelling. Mulan had something that other Disney heroines lacked — she was Chinese.
To make one thing clear, my family is not Chinese. I figure this goes to show how much we yearned for familiarity in our entertainment. Mulan wasn’t quite like us, but she was close enough. She embodied East Asian culture in a way that could be admired. Resolved, she spoke perfect English. Her eyes, although vaguely almond-shaped, were still wide enough to accommodate cartoonish beauty. And she followed the appropriate tropes: in the end of the film, Mulan returns home wearing an attractive adaptation of hanfu (traditional garments of the Han Dynasty), and wins the heart of Captain Li Shang, a flawed but endearing love interest.
Times have changed with regards to Asian representation in media, especially in the past few years. Crazy Rich Asians (2018) has received recognition as the first major Hollywood film to feature an all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club (1993). Fresh Off the Boat, an ABC sitcom, is enjoying relative success portraying a Taiwanese family adjusting to life in Orlando, Florida (their fifth season is set to air this October).
Most recently, I was urged to watch Kim’s Convenience, a series detailing the life of a fictional Canadian-Korean family running a drugstore in Toronto. It was adapted from Ins Choi’s moderately successful play, and has recently gained popularity and accessibility via Netflix. The cast is mostly comprised of Canadian-Korean actors: Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (as Appa) and Jean Yoon (as Umma) portray immigrant parents who struggle to apply stereotypically Asian values to a Western world. Their children, Jung Kim (Simu Liu) and Janet Kim (Andrea Bang) bear the brunt of this cultural clashing, as their relationships with their parents are consistently strained by differences in priority. Jung works a blue-collar job in the car rental industry, while Janet refuses to find a Christian-Korean boyfriend, and studies photography.
If I had first discovered Kim’s Convenience as an eight-year-old, I would’ve been thrilled, since the parallels between the Kim’s and my own Korean family are uncanny. And at this point, it feels almost ungrateful to place any criticism on a seemingly-groundbreaking series. The more I watched, however, the more uneasy I felt. Sun-Hyung Lee and Yoon are familiar with the subtleties of Korean mannerisms and speech. Particularly in scenes where they bicker, it’s clear that they’ve worked to master exact voice inflections and affectations. The actors remind me almost uncannily of my own grandparents: nearly as stubborn, they throw their hands and duck their heads, emitting sighs of frustration in the exact pitch and cadence. The sole difference is that the fictionalized Appa and Umma are completely understandable. Although their (fake) accents are heavy, viewers never miss a word, and fluent Korean makes no appearances in the episodes that I saw.
Of course, the show isn’t intended solely for Korean-Americans. I want to appreciate the fact that a culture so recognizable to me is now available to a vast audience. I genuinely laughed at references to kimbap and dong chim, trivial parts of my childhood that I never shared with non-Asian friends for fear of being slighted or misunderstood. I like to think that my mother would relate to Janet — the lone Korean daughter who is constantly yearning for the affirmation that comes more easily to sons.
I wonder whether this show would be successful if it weren’t a comedy. I wonder whether, if it had subtitles, it would have aired at all. My grandparents face discrimination and disrespect on an everyday basis because of their accents; the Kim’s, it seems, are mainly untouched by racism, with auspiciously patient and progressive convenience store customers.
There seems to be an attitude of ‘take what you can get’ when it comes to minority representation in film and television. Kim’s Convenience is a step forward, albeit a glossy one. It will probably be a long time before a Western show feels Korean enough — the question lies in whether this is the ideal place to start. Regardless, I am glad that the show exists. Hollywood is far from equal representation. But it’s good to know that families have the option of coming together to watch a story that is not their own.
Morgan Becker is a sophomore at Barnard College.