Animal liberation front okja movie#

Part of what makes Okja so remarkable is that Bong Joon-ho has found ways to make jokes that track across both cultural spheres. When Jay learns that K deliberately lied, he starts to beat him up, telling him to вЂњnever mistranslate!вЂќ Toward the end of the movie, K pops back up with a fresh tattoo that reads, вЂњTranslations are sacred.вЂќ Throughout Okja, Bong plays with the idea of translation, both its necessities and inherent limitations, and the inevitable comedy that arises out of that space. (This is also why the other subtitle joke that I saw, вЂњHowвЂ™s my Korean?вЂќ works in a subtler way.) Yeun said the character вЂњspeaks to the island we live onвЂќ: He was a character written for Korean-Americans. HeвЂ™s not quite sure of himself, and is trying to fit into both spaces, but canвЂ™t.

While itвЂ™s obvious that heвЂ™s a bit of a dolt, if you have the ear for the language, his failures are more apparent, because he speaks with the stiltedness of a second-generation speaker (YeunвЂ™s actual pronunciation is a lot better).

YeunвЂ™s performance itself is a nod to that gap it reads differently if you know Korean. ThatвЂ™s like, the comedy drop-off, the chasm between countries.вЂќД«ong wrote the character of K specifically with Yeun in mind, because heвЂ™s a character that only a Korean-American could play. ThereвЂ™s an added layer of comedy to the name itself, which has the whiff of the old country about it: вЂњKoo Soon-bumвЂќ is sort of like a white man saying his name is вЂњBuford Attaway.вЂќ As Yeun told me, вЂњWhen he says вЂKoo Soon-bum,вЂ™ itвЂ™s funny to you if youвЂ™re Korean, because thatвЂ™s a dumb name. The subtitle is a command to learn English - something that every Korean student has heard throughout her life - but to actually understand what K is saying, you would have to know Korean. Moreover, the mistranslation is a clever subversion of the supremacy of English. ItвЂ™s a flagrant mistranslation - but one that would only be apparentВ to those who can speak both languages. When they ask Mija what she wants to do, she says that all she wants is to go back to the mountains with Okja, but K lies and says that she agrees to the plan, much to the delight of his comrades. Jay wonвЂ™t go through with the plan without MijaвЂ™s (Ahn Seo-hyun) consent, but the only way to communicate with her is through fellow ALF member K, a Korean-American character played by Steven Yeun. To do this, they would have to hack into OkjaвЂ™s monitoring system and allow the super-pig to be taken back to the lab. But what theyвЂ™re really trying to do is use Okja as a mole to expose MirandoвЂ™s animal-rights abuses. The moment happens when the radical animal-rights group ALF (the Animal Liberation Front), headed by Jay (Paul Dano), ostensibly rescues Okja from the Mirando corporation. But thereвЂ™s another joke buried in the subtitles, a little gem reserved for that special group of people who can speak both Korean and English. There are poop jokes there are Tilda SwintonвЂ™s braces there are references that run the high-low gamut, including a re-creation of the Obama war-room photo and Andrew LincolnвЂ™s poster-board confessional from Love Actually.

Animal liberation front okja movie#

There are many excellent jokes in Okja, Bong Joon-hoвЂ™s genre-mashing movie about the titular GMO super-pig and its kid caretaker Mija, which is now streaming on Netflix.