BEEF (2023) — reviewed in light of the Circuit of Culture
The series, which earned multiple nominations at the Emmy 2023, portrayed a powerful warning for our generation.
Here I examine its encoded meanings through the lenses of Stuart Hall’s Circuit of Culture
Recently, the 2023 Emmy, the most important award of the American television industry, revealed its long-awaited list of nominees and I was pleased (but not at all surprised) to spot the Netflix series BEEF (2023) with no less than 13 mentions.
Released in April this year, the series unfolds from an incident of aggressive driving and follows the protagonists Danny Cho (Steven Yeun), a failed contractor, and Amy Lau (Ali Wong), a disgruntled businesswoman, in a dispute that leads them to reveal their darkest impulses.
OK, but why does BEEF deserve our attention? In a nutshell, because it has many symbolic elements to understand our society and culture.
An excellent tool for uncovering the meanings inherent in a cultural object is a theoretical and analytical framework known as the Circuit of Culture, offered by the renowned theorist Stuart Hall, back in the 90s. This approach, still so relevant, looks at works and cultural processes from a multiperspective, in articulation to the meanings dealt with its representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation.
So, next up, I attempt to look at BEEF using the lenses of the Circuit of Culture.
Disclaimer: I am doing here a short version of an actual cultural analysis, since the Circuit of Culture is much more complex and allows for a deeper scrutiny. If you want to understand the method in full, read Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. Also, it is not my intention to detail the storyline of the series. If you want to recap the plot of BEEF, there is a good summary here.
That said, here we go.
What does BEEF represent?
In terms of representation, BEEF (2023) presents pertinent portraits to reflect on the spirit and appearance of the contemporary generations. Through the storyline and characters, it addresses issues such as depression, social inequalities, and generational trauma. However, it skillfully intersects these themes with a perspective of race, by exploring the itinerary of Asian Americans. For example, it portrays their particular relationship with anger and repressed anguish.
In the series, the manifestation of these feelings is common to both protagonists, Amy Lau (the rich one) and Danny Cho (the poor one), but it is possible to perceive the different consequences and contours of their suffering from the difference of class and gender.
Having traced the different perspectives, both figures can be assimilated as symbols of representation of an achievement society, as theorized by Byung-Chul Han (2015). This society is characterized by burnout and a quest for ostensible professional and financial success.
In Han’s view, the prevailing emphasis on being positive, productive, and constantly striving for self-improvement in today’s society, called by him as a “positivization”, gives rise to new forms of violence, which may seem invisible: neural diseases such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), burnout syndrome — symptoms that are building the pathological landscape of the early 21st century.
So, the message the series crystallizes is that the dilemmas caused by socially constructed ideas around success, money, work, and family pressures — as opposed to a quest for fulfillment and taking care of existential desires — play a big role in creating tension and triggering trauma and mental health conditions.
Which identities does BEEF highlight?
By showing the experiences of people of East Asian descent (Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans) in the North American context and culture, the series invites the identification of people who recognize themselves in these characteristics or who share similar ways of life, marked by identity and cultural hybridities. That’s the most obvious meaning in terms of identity.
But exploring the demographic data of users who rated the series on the IMDb platform (data was collected in April 2023) also helps us to understand the identities associated with the show — from the perspective of gender and age group.
In a universe of 47,468 reviews, the highest number of reviews (12,984) was given by the audience group aged 30–44 and the highest score by the audience aged 18–29 (with 4,325 reviews). From a gender perspective, men provided 17,796 reviews and women 6,456 (the platform only provides two gender options).
By correlating this data with the age rating and the topics raised by the series, there is an apparent identification between the group known as the “working-age population” (those who are theoretically capable of participating in economic activities) and the portrayal depicted in the audiovisual production.
How was BEEF produced?
Actors Steven Yeun and Ali Wong star in and executive produce the series, created and directed by Lee Sung Jin, a writer and director born in Seoul, South Korea. The series is distributed by Netflix, one of the world’s leading entertainment services with 231 million paid subscriptions in more than 190 countries.
BEEF also carries the stamp of the indie and ‘up-and-coming’ film studio A24 and shares narrative elements (such as moments of psychedelic lighting and soul swapping) that evoke the recent Oscar-winning film ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’, produced by A24 as well.
Something worth noting about the symbolic values associated with the production is the use of art elements (the paintings, the architecture of the houses, the high-end furniture, and the strange ceramics, among others). These signs have been idealized to occupy a place of meaning-making that alludes to the characters’ feelings of anger and alienation.
For instance, each episode of BEEF begins with a painting that accompanies the title. In the words of the series’ production designer Grace Yun: “It was a visceral feeling that we got from each image of whether or not it would reflect the theme of that episode”.
How was BEEF consumed?
The vast majority of public comments and ratings seen on social media are positive. So far, it has a score of 8.1/10 on the IMDb platform. On Rotten Tomatoes, it appears with an average of 98% critics rating and 86% audience score (the percentage of users who rated the series with 3.5 stars or more on the platform).
Also, the meanings encoded by the producers in the storyline seem to reverberate among consumers. I found a viewer’s comment about the series that summarized the range of meanings perceived by the audience: “Show started out being one thing and ended up taking you on a journey of drama, dark comedy, violence, intergenerational trauma, wealth-gap inequities, importance of mental health, and finally existential crisis!”.
What does BEEF help to regulate?
As a media mass product, distributed on a large scale around the globe, the series brings to the public sphere relevant reflections on mental health and on what are the structural mechanisms of our society that operate to favor these conditions, intersecting issues of class, gender, and race.
Still from the perspective of societal regulation, we also can say that BEEF contributes to the formation of a collective imaginary around Asian identities, which belong to a historically marginalized community in the United States.
The series follows the BAME Casting movement — a push for greater inclusion of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic people in the film and television industry — by going beyond on-screen representation, as its producers and creators are also Asian-American.
This in conjunction with the complex way its characters are portrayed, creates social representations that are not limited to stereotypes crystallized from portrayals of Asians in the media.
Now, it is your turn. Have you watched BEEF? What are your thoughts and feelings about it?
Also, have you heard of the Circuit of Culture? I’ll be pleased to read comments about what you think about this method of cultural analysis!
References
Bitran, T. (2023). The Art of ‘BEEF’ Was Inspired by Magazine Spreads, Yoga Poses — and Play-Doh. Netflix.
Bui, H. (2023). How Beef cuts to the heart of Asian American angst. Inverse.
du Gay, P., Hall, S., James, L., Madsen, A. K., Mackay, H., & Negus, K. (1997). Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. SAGE Publications.
Han, Byung-Chul (2015). The Burnout Society. De Gruyter.
Jones, E. E. (2023). Beef review — Ali Wong’s dark, existential thriller is deliciously subversive. The Guardian.
Solani, D. (2023). Netflix’s ‘Beef’ Really Spoke to the Road Rage-Filled Bitch in Me. Vice.
