How ‘Gook’ Breaks the Racial Barrier Between African Americans and Asian Americans and Why it is Relevant
On April 29, 1992, the LA Uprising took place. Violence, protests, and riots were initiated in the city. Asian American Justin Chon’s father store was looted on the last day of the riots. Justin Chon was only one of the few that suffered an attack to their businesses that year, many lost their dream and others their life. Chon was only a kid when this happened, years later he would use his experience to transform it into art. In 2017, Chon released Gook, a movie that tells a story that takes place during the LA Uprising but through the Korean perspective. The film highlights the differences and rivalry that exist between minorities and I think is really important to explore the reasons behind this conflict. This article seeks to break down the film’s elements to show how the motifs of the piece accentuate the conflict but also create a scenario were there isn’t and the beauty in it. The display of the relationship between Kamilla and the Korean brothers is going to be pointed out and how this is a perfect example of union against adversity. The context is really important and the fallout of events too, but these union allows the creation of this narrative that escapes from the barriers for a second to portray the ephemeral pleasure of a non-existent alliance in that context. This article seeks to explain how Gook portrays but also breaks the racial barrier between Asian Americans and African Americans, creating a space where they can coexist and aid each other. This argument seeks to create awareness on the conflict’s background and the possibility of respect between the communities.
Gook (2017) tells the story of two Korean American brothers, Eli and Daniel, that own a shoe shop close to an African American neighborhood in Los Angeles, 1992. They struggle to pay rent and make a living out their family business but they persevere. Soon we get to know Kamilla, an African American girl that has this unusual but beautiful friendship with the brothers and helps them run the store. The story takes place during the day that the LA Riot start, and violence and anger is spread all over the city. Korean businesses become targets and the city is on flames. Parallel to these events, we get to know Kamilla’s brother that has some resentment towards the siblings because of a past conflict between their families. This resentment eventually rises to surface and Keith, the brother, violently confronts Eli and Daniel. Both parties get into a heated fight in which Kamilla gets in the middle of, ending in her tragic death.
The film takes place in a very controversial time in Los Angeles. To continue, the context of conflict needs to be understood. Keith’s rivalry towards Eli and Daniel is not an alienated case. Conflict between African American and Asian American individuals is an opposition that has existed for decades and still exists now. Scholar Akiko Yamazato in an honest article, “Interminority Relations in the Early 1990s in California: Conflicts Among African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans”, proves how there has been conflict between minorities since the 1800s. The interminority conflict has been prominent historically and California’s early 1990s have grounds to this conflict:
The declining economy worsened the job competition and generated nativism that limited interaction among African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans. Studies show that job competition often generated conflicts and negative stereotyping among the communities. The written press of the African-American, Latino, and Asian-American community during the debate on Proposition 187 showed that little understanding and cooperation existed among the communities. The papers also proved that interminority conflict and animosity existed, …Therefore, … limited interaction among African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans prevented the three communities from cooperating to fight the intimidating situation (Yamazato 28).
The author accentuates the precedent that originates such conflict between the minorities. For a long time, minorities have been fighting to gain a place in the American community to reach the so called American Dream. Such competition for an opportunity to have a decent life in America has slowly deteriorated the bond of shared struggle these communities go through, turning it into a battle arena. We can notice this in Gook; how the brothers, through hard work, have been able to maintain their father’s shop income to make a living, and on the other hand we have Keith and his friends that don’t feel that Eli and Daniel deserve the store or the place. They feel that they are invading.
Conflict has always been present, but we must understand what differentiates these two groups when it comes to their specific struggles. They may both be minorities and they may both me marginalized, but not in the same way. Professor Claire Jean Kim in a podcast achieves to explain this in a very precise way. The professor explains that we live under a government that asks you to be white but, above all, not black, and Asian Americans are at the end not white but, above all, not black; which allows them to (apart from the denigration and dispossession of somethings) actually get involved in white people’s world like neighborhoods, work and education (Kim 00:28:15). The hatred towards black people is more powerful than for Asian Americans. This so called ‘advantage’ creates more division between the two groups and resentment on who plays the higher rank in the pillars of modern society. Dr. Kim also invites us to look at the bigger picture and historical background.
Maybe we would get farther with our political coalitions if we started with the truth, which is that Asian Americans are differently situated. It doesn’t mean we’re not subject to white supremacy. It doesn’t mean we’re not discriminated against and sometimes killed because of race, or that we don’t suffer because of race — it just means it’s a different position compared to Black people. We were not enslaved, we were not subjected to Jim Crow, we are not subjected to mass incarceration and over-policing (00:25:37).
We have to understand they are different groups, with different struggles. By beginning to understand the skeleton and structure of the problem, is the first step to do something about it.
The LA Riot was only the spark that triggered to already burdened anger that the minorities had over them. The unfair acquittal of the police officers involved in the Rodney King case was what sparked the Uprising. But before that, several months before, 15-year-old Latasha Harlins was killed by Korean American store owner Soon Ja Du because she thought the kid was stealing from her, when in reality she was only trying to buy juice. The African American community knew of this store’s racist reputation, but Du’s store was one of the few in the neighborhood so Latasha was left with little choice. Du was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced with only parole and a small fine. This racial injustice was not forgotten by the Black community and their anger can be seen in the testimony of many African Americans that were interviewed in the aftermath of the riots. The NBC news report makes a parallelism with their footage between the suffering Korean families after losing their shops and the angry Black individuals that call for justice (Koricke). We get to see two sides of the coin.
We can see the high conflict and rivalry between the two communities and evidence of the violence inflicted deep in their roots, but Gook achieves to create a narrative that lives outside this era. The film concentrates on the friendship of Kamilla, Eli and Daniel. Kamilla drags with her the torments that she has at home; a family that doesn’t show the love she seeks. In the shoe store Kamilla builds a family of her own, with the two brothers that receive her as their little sister. The Center for Asian American Media referred to Gook as
graceful, intimate portrait of this unlikely family where race isn’t a theoretical abstraction and where “race relations” aren’t just about clashes on the street. The film is by turns sweet and solemn, goofy and shocking, at once loving and unsentimental (Hing par. 5).
The relationship between the three battles against all stereotypes and encapsulates the concept outside of the racial barrier. Kamilla and the brothers don’t let this preconditioned context of structural division get in the way of their relationship. This presentation allows the viewer to engage with this ideal scenario and reflect on it. By digesting this version of reality, the films invites us to act upon this thought and swallow this possibility, promoting union and alliance.
There are two specific scenes that, I believe, highlight the beauty of the friendship. The first one would be the brothers and Kamilla dancing to Daryl Hall and John Oates’ “Maneater” (Chon 00:25:45). In this scene our characters, for a fleeting moment, escape all the struggles they are going through. They escape they oppression they are suffering, they escape the fact that they can’t financially maintain the store, they escape their family trauma. For just a moment, we can see them truly happy with each other, just enjoying a simple thing of life, music. The second scene I am talking about is when Eli drives the car, circling a dancing Kamilla, right after Mr. Kim threatened her with a gun (Chon 00:41:02). This scene works as a metaphor on how Eli makes Kamilla feel she is the center of his world for once, makes her feel empowered, thing she doesn’t feel back at home. Through soft jazz music and slow motion shots we get this odd but yet moving scene that once more defies the racial barrier. Asian American feminist filmmaker Helen Lee, on a paper published by The University of Chicago Press, comments that:
…the most powerful moments in cinema are wordless — I remember images and emotions, never dialogue. This is because of film language itself, its meanings conveyed by the style, tone, and rhythms of the filmmaking. It’s exactly in the ineffability of certain situations, the fact that speech cannot possibly render these moments, that the beauty and expressive capacity of cinema are best demonstrated (1389).
I believe this applies to both mentioned scenes. There is no dialogue in either of the scenes, speech would feel intrusive. Only by music and images, these moments carry a great value and power in the film, giving prominence to the beauty of the friendship.
Kamilla’s dancing scene with the car circling her makes reference to the first scene at the beginning of the movie. In the first scene we see the store being burned and Kamilla at the side just dancing (Chon 00:00:34). We later know that this is a scene that alludes to the tragic death of Kamilla at the end. Kamilla’s soul burns together with the store, as she is no more, the purpose of the store is no more either. The store symbolized the safe space the brothers created with their little sister and now she was gone. There are many ways to interpret Kamilla’s death and the burning store. It could symbolize the rejection towards the racial-triangulation model or even the rejection towards the model minority myth. Award winning journalist and film critic Chauncey K. Robinson describes Kamilla as
…a beacon of innocence in the sea of poverty and hardened souls surrounding her. She also serves as a link between the two communities, Korean and Black, represented between the Korean brothers and her own siblings. All of these characters can be looked at individually, but also as symbols of the complex nature of human interaction, especially when it comes to looking at race. Gook gives no obvious answers, but does show the ways in which people from different walks of life can be affected by prejudice, trauma, and poverty in very similar ways (par. 6).
Kamilla’s death can be seen as only the consequence of a racial rivalry that ended in disgrace and tragedy due the negligence of both parties or it could also mean a new opportunity for both communities. A family tragedy was the first thing that divided Keith and Eli, instead of grieving together, they built barriers between them that kept them distant with hatred accumulated. Kamilla’s death could be their second chance to grief together, to mourn their little sister as one and to finally break the barrier that led them to that point in the first place.
Gook’s message remains relevant until this day and recent events in the United States prove how important it is to look back at this history. Very recently, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nury Martinez announced her resignation as state leaders and President Biden asked her to leave office. The reason behind such calls is that a recording leaked of a discussion involving the former president of Los Angeles City Council and two other council members where Ms. Martinez was making racist remarks. According to The New York Times article,
On the leaked recording of the October 2021 conversation, Ms. Martinez made racist remarks about the Black child of a white council colleague, questioned the trustworthiness of white liberals, and belittled Indigenous immigrants in the city’s Koreatown neighborhood (Cowan and Hubler par. 6).
This can only prove Dr. Claire Jean Kim theory of the American government’s agenda and structure and how the system still restrains this hatred towards minorities behind the scenes. It is important to look back and see how comments like Ms. Martinez’s are the ones that instigate conflict. How are people supposed to bring down their barriers if their own leaders racially classify and belittle the minorities? It is important to explore films like Gook that, even though the story may not be completely real, it collects data and real events of a controversial and unfair moment to assume a pedagogical role and provide a narrative that speaks a truth and enacts a possible reality of peace (Kamilla’s relationship with Eli and Daniel) for us to digest and evaluate to act upon it.
Works Cited
Cowan, Jill, and Shawn Hubler. “Los Angeles City Councilwoman Resigns amid Uproar over Racist Remarks.” The New York Times, 12 Oct. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/us/los-angeles-council-nury-martinez-resigns.html.
“Framing Asian Suffering in an Anti-Black World: A Conversation with Claire Jean Kim.” 2020 Visions: Imagining (Post-) COVID Worlds series from Edge Effects, 23 September 2021, https://edgeeffects.net/claire-jean-kim/.
Gook. Directed by Justin Chon. Samuel Goldwyn Films, 2017.
Hing, Julianne. “Justin Chon Gets Personal with ‘Gook,’ His New Film about the L.A. Riots.” Center for Asian American Media, 16 Aug. 2017, https://caamedia.org/blog/2017/08/16/justin-chon-gets-personal-with-gook-his-new-film-about-the-l-a-riots/.
Koricke, Diana. “Korean Businesses Targeted During LA Riots | NBC Nightly News.” YouTube, uploaded by NBC News, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dvwn4aXE8s.
Parreñas Shimizu, Celine, and Helen Lee. “Sex Acts: Two Meditations on Race and Sexuality.” Signs, vol. 30, no. 1, 2004, pp. 1385–402. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/421886.
Robinson, Chauncey K. “‘Gook’: The Not-so-Black-and-White Race Dynamics of La Riots.” People’s World, 17 Aug. 2017, https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/gook-the-not-so-black-and-white-race-dynamics-of-la-riots/.
Yamazato, Akiko. Interminority Relations in the Early 1990s in California: Conflicts among African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans, The College of William and Mary, Ann Arbor, 2003. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/interminority-relations-early-1990s-california/docview/1957927962/se-2.
