Gook (2017) — Justin Chon

LA Riots happened the way most events do: slowly and when nobody else was looking or giving a damn.

We all know and heard of the LA Riots as being one of the biggest events to take place in the 20th century American soil, but not much has been produced in cultural terms about the characters that lived it, especially the Korean families that were directly affected by it.

As this article interestingly points out, after the riots it was clear, at least for the Asian families involved, that the yellow people, even though being considered “model minorities”, were not that different from all the other minorities neglected by the State. Stores were attacked and people had to get to arms to defend themselves and their property.

But Chon’s film focuses on the personal relationship between the two Korean-American brothers, owners of a failed shoe store left by their father, and an African-American girl. Their lives connected when their father and mother, respectively, were murdered when they were both working at the shoe shop. They became their own family, independent of color and context. Maybe that’s why the events that lead to the riots were softened by how well the three friends got along. Although it was very obvious that racial tensions were adding up in the neighborhood, there’s this perfectly matched group of friends, who are interracial and help each other when in need.

That is until Kamilla’s brother comes to scene and reveals that in his mind their mother was only killed because she was working with the Koreans. With the riots already burning part of the city down and after hearing Kamilla thought of the ‘gooks’ as their family, Keith — the brother — sets to attack the shoe shop.

The movie shows very clearly how a personal frustration can be taken onto other people and other groups of people; in other words, it’s easier to put the blame on a stranger than to recognize him as an equal. And I believe that’s what Justin Chon’s work intends to. It is an attempt to bring to knowledge a story which was not known and by doing so he takes the walls of prejudice and racism down.