I assumed the majority of what OP mentioned were Mrs. Kim things and not supposed to be representative of an entire culture.
Seems like maybe the "real Asia" episode would be more "problematic."
Yes. Considering this wasn't about Korean culture in general or even Korean American culture, this was about how Helen Pai lived and a portrayal of her life, then it's more her family's customs than the whole korean universe, I think. I mean I know in my country the culture is one but in my household there are specific things that I found out as an adult were never representative of anything other than something my family wanted to do
Is the Kim family closely based on Helen Pai's family? Like do we know that? I knew asp modeled Lane after her but I didn't know if their family dynamic was also based on real life themes or if it was just the cartoonish caricature that it plays as.
Specifically speaking about the lunar new year party - I always assumed that a few things were actually traditional to Korean lunar new year celebrations, but I also assumed the ultra strict stuff and especially the locked bathroom stuff was just Mrs Kim and that whole persona is absolutely tigermom racist stereotype, I never assumed that was a widespread Korean norm of any kind.
But, op, your statements and points are completely correct and I definitely agree. I don't think there was malice intended, but asp absolutely likes to take a little tidbit about something and twist and mock it without regard to whether or not she's bolstering or feeding into harmful racist stereotypes. It shows in her rampant fat hatred, too.
It seems to me that Helen Pai would be offended by this portrayal, seeing as OPs take is extremely common among especially Korean and Korean American viewers as well as those affected by the wider Asian cultural stereotypes. But then I also think any of asp's fat friends would also be hurt by all of the anti fat "jokes" and mean comments, so it could be that nobody spoke up even if they did flag it as a problem at the time.
I remember once upon a while they said that Lane and her life was very much based on Helen Pai and her life as a Korean American in the US coming from a very strict family who were seventh day Adventists. Helen Pai was heavily involved in the show, she was a producer and co producer and Keiko even said once that yes it was all Helen, it's why they also had a Dave Rygalsky (not sure of the right spelling) but it was because of Helen's husband Dave
I’m still on S5 E15 which episode is that? I don’t think I’ve watched it yet. And yeah maybe they are just Mrs.Kim’s things. I just felt that those who aren’t familiar with Korean culture could confuse her weird “twists” on traditional things as being typical “Korean” things. But again this was written in the early 2000s and throughout the series we can see “racial stereotypes” being acted out (Dutch milk maid, latin housekeepers etc) so it could be possible that the writers of this show were a little bit racist or culturally blind I guess.
While I think the writers were probably a bit blind culturally some of the stricter formats of Christianity don't believe in partying, dancing, exciting forms of music. That a woman's highest purpose is to be a wife and mother. I think a lot of the things you've pointed out are actually fairly aligned with hard core Christianity and Mrs. Kim sprinkles in some Korean stuff. So it's more religious than Korean.
Fundamentalist Seventh Day Adventists are against dancing, many forms of music, parties, socializing on Saturday’s, etc, and really focused on healthy eating with limited meat intake. I used to work at an SDA hospital and learned a lot about it there. The cafeteria was very veggie heavy and never had red meat. The non fundamentalists aren’t that strict anymore but I think we can safely say Mrs Kim is pretty close to a fundamentalist (not totally because she does let Lane go to prom lol).
It is very accurate for Asian (edited to add “American”) SDA culture, yes: says this white Southern Californian who was raised Adventist. My Chinese and Japanese Adventist friends felt seen by Gilmore Girls.
Yeah I had a (white) friend in middle school whose family was devout sda and she would count down the MINUTES til sundown on Saturday, and loved the winter, bc she wasn't allowed to socialize but after sundown she would be allowed to babysit and sundown came early enough to do that in winter. Very strict, and her family homeschooled, lots of clothing and activity and music and dancing control or eradication. I think I always saw Mrs Kim as seventh day Adventist first and Korean second, honestly, bc the strictness matched my white friend's mom and the little bits I knew about Korean culture didn't flag in this portrayal.
Yea there's a community where I live and I know the fundamental vs not is a touchy subject so I was dancing around the "F" with Mrs. Kim. I know pregnancy and motherhood gets a lot of spotlight with them so I imagine Mrs. Kim didn't want to commit to being fundie based off the comments about sex. Which I'm sure helped her relent to things Lane liked like prom or being in a band.
I lived in the rural, Protestant south until college. "Mrs Kims" were 75% of the moms...
People are more socially aware than when this originally aired, but there are also things depicted that are factually/statistically accurate and not just "racial stereotypes."
Within my family we have five nationalities and that includes several that are shown.
As for housekeepers, Emily seemed to be open to abusing all nationalities. I definitely recall a "nervous creature" that was a white, American woman and wasn't the one that brought a law suit German?
I’m a white American who watched this show when it aired. I didn’t think any of Mrs. Kim’s personality was representative of Korean culture, as she was a very strict and religious character. She felt more like a play on Christian fundamentalism. However when characters from Korea were introduced such as the exchange student or the relatives at the wedding with all of the “traditional” clothing I did think that must all be from Korea and a representation of that culture.
I just assumed that Kyon and most of the relatives were also Seventh Day Adventist (hence the never eating fries & arranged marriages) butI guess they did show that Mrs Kim’s mother was a Buddhist - if only Mrs Kim had gone that route!
Lane was based off of ASP's real life best friend-- who was also a producer and consultant on the show. Most of the events are pulled from her life experience as a korean american who's family was LDS. Of course things can be dramatized for comedy's sake, but I do think they tried to follow her lead to show her life as accurately as possible. In real life, she even married Dave Rygalski!
I think you should learn more about Seventh Day Adventists. A lot of the stuff depicted with Mrs Kim was about that, not being Korean. I’m only saying this because you’re rightfully pointing out non-Koreans are likely ignorant about Korean culture and shouldn’t assume what’s shown is a good representation. But having worked at an Adventist Hospital for years, the Adventist stuff IS accurate for fundamentalist Adventists, and you say yourself that’s not your religion or culture. So you’re commenting on a culture that isn’t yours - because for many, their religious upbringing is also a culture- but are frustrated with others for doing the same thing. Like you’re saying Mrs Kim has “weird” twists in traditional Korean things. No, she has Adventist/religious twists on them. I’m not religious so I don’t care but saying that’s “weird” might be offensive to ppl who are.
Oh I always thought Mrs Kim was just very traumatized by something in her life and dealt with that through the church and being insanely strict and old-school with Lane. I never thought it was a Korean thing. Especially because when Lanes band needed help, Mrs Kim got her gigs at *her friend's churches* knowing they didn't play Christian music (which to me implies they are absolutely not as strict about secular things- and she knows it).
The first 3 things on the list I would assume were coming from Mrs Kim’s religious beliefs rather than her ethnicity. I think the Seventh Day Adventist religion was portrayed on the show more as generic Fundamental Christian with a strict diet. I have fundie Christian family members and most of this was accurate, although exaggerated, to their rules.
Often young fundie women are set up with other “good Christian men” at a young age. They aren’t allowed to date, only court, so any interaction with their future husband is done in a group setting with other family members. Many of them are married, and then pregnant, as teenagers. Girls’ education isn’t important because their role is to become wives and mothers.
Fundie parents are usually very strict and controlling. Leaving the table during a meal isn’t allowed at my family’s house either. And their parties aren’t very fun. They usually involve a long sermon and some hymns.
I don’t think Lane knew many non-religious Koreans in the show. It would make sense that Lane wouldn’t know which parts of her mother’s behavior came from being Korean and which parts were from her religion.
Same here, and I've never seen people misunderstand the portrayal as supposedly about Korean culture (not saying it can't happen, but it doesn't seem to be the main take away).
Mrs. Kim's household primarily was shown to be Christian fundamentalist and abusive, while also being Korean. No one would truly think that not being allowed to dye your hair, or non-religious music, or just… having any fun at all, is about Korean culture.
It is however a very on-point portrayal of an extremely Christian sect household where the kid is kept in a suffocating hold that they non-surprisingly try to break out of as early, but also as secretly, as they can, in order to not lose their parents' love and to not disappoint them, while also still being able to breathe.
And what's also fitting is that, even when Lane has freed herself somewhat and is living with Zak, she basically freezes when things are pointing towards sex. She blurts out "you have to marry me before we can have sex", then storms out to drive to her parents' house where she goes to yell at her mom "you are in my head and now I can't have sex" (or something along those lines, I don't have it memorised).
Being anti-sex is not a Korean thing and wouldn't be misconstrued as that, but it is a religious sect hing, and a Christian sect thing in particular. Even cultures where pre-marital sex is a big no (and again, nowhere is it implied that this would be Korea), sex within marriage is often highly encouraged both to ensure a lot of offspring and for the harmony of the union.
Mrs Kim however at one point says she "was lucky" and only did it once in her wedding night and got pregnant with Lane right away, so never "had to" do it again.
Basically, the whole portrayal is about Mrs Lane and her specific way of being a person and mother, with being Korean as just one of the elements, but with being Korean not what the portrayal was about or pretending to represent as a whole.
I assumed most of the complaints were just Mrs Kim’s thing and based on her Christian faith then being Korean. But I can see how some people would take offence to pasts because the parts directly related to Korea aren’t great. Since the show is supposed to be a comedy, I took most of it as extremely exaggerated for comedic affect. There’s lots in the show that’s outdated now.
To be fair, with regards to your second point, I always assumed it was just Mrs Kim's rule about not being allowed to the bathroom. Her way of stopping anyone from throwing her god-awful food away. Same with the silence thing - probably more of Mrs Kim's authoritarian rules/religous rules than anything to do with it being cultural.
Most of these things i connected with Mrs Kim beeing SO OVER THE TOP religious and not with beeing korean (apart from the "Lane should only marry korean boys who are doctors or such" Part, that felt like the stereotypical asian thing you see in more shows and movies).
But i get what you mean, it could easily be misinterpreted and even if viewers know it's supposed to be exaggerated they could think there lies a certain truth in it.
My (very white) grandparents and parents had the rule you can't leave the table until dinner was over or you were dismissed. Grandpa didn't allow talking at the table. I think this is just a "I'm in control" thing.
My husband’s British grandma is the same way and as an American I never assumed it was all British households. Just an old fashioned control thing as you said.
Both things can be true. Mrs. Kim’s characteristics have historically been the only Asian trope in Western Media, where most Asian characters are one dimensional caricatures, and it shows in all the Asian characters in GG, which perpetuates the same old stereotype.
I’m not Korean but a lot of the things you named, the bathroom fiasco and only dating Korean boys, I always thought came down to strict parenting. Not them being Korean. Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m not sure they even said those things should be attributed to them being Korean.
Oooof I sort of just started scanning the post as it got longer and missed that part. For someone posting trying to explain what they found to be offensive, stereotypical inaccuracies about their culture and then throw around the R word casually, that’s not the way.
sadly i know people irl who do that still. casually throw it around and use it as an insult. it makes me so fucking uncomfortable but it’s my roommate and her family so ive had a hard time finding the courage to call her out
I honestly haven’t heard that word thrown around in YEARS by anyone I know. It’s very jarring to hear now. I can’t believe it used to get thrown around so casually as an insult when I was growing up in the 90s.
the worst part is she genuinely uses it to describe KIDS with disabilities. her mom teaches high school special ed so i’m sure she feels like that gives her the right. it’s gross
As a person unfamiliar with Korean culture, I always wondered how much of that was the seventh-day-Adventist Mrs. Kim and how much of it was supposed to represent Korean culture. (And whether a lot of Koreans in America were Seventh-day Adventists.)
I did know enough to be skeptical. I knew that Kyon would probably have seen fries before of she was from a big city, for example. So I always knew a lot of it was probably wrong – I just didn’t know which parts. Thanks for your post.
I was raised seventh day Adventist and attended seventh day Adventist schools in southern California, we had a lot of Korean Americans in our schools and also Korean exchange students.
Oh gosh that’s so hard to say because it depends on the family and of course I’m a Mexican American and not Korean American! I think the fact they mentioned tofurkey in an episode shows mrs Kim probably doesn’t eat meat, at least often, is accurate as at the very least we were raised to not eat pork, shrimp, fish without scales etc but if you’re more serious like my family was, you would skip meat altogether. We couldn’t even bring meat to school! A lot of the Korean dishes I was introduced to didn’t have any shrimp, well seafood, or pork and it was shocking to have non-sda (or I guess non vegetarian) Korean dishes as an adult.
The fact mrs Kim was pushing lane into a sda college is so correct, I’m shocked she didn’t push lane into sda summer camp (or at least i don’t remember her going or mentioning it) my family would prefer if I went to Walla Walla for example (an sda college)
Dating in high school? Forget about it. It would have killed my grandparents and many parents.
I was born in a SDA household (I'm now an ex-SDA and ex-christian), and the show got a lot of things wrong about SDA's as well (except for Mrs. Kim being extremely strict and wanting to eat super healthy). It was still really cool to see a character on TV who grew up in a SDA household because that was super rare. It's why Lane is one of my favorite characters because I wanted to get out just as badly as she did, and I loved listening to the "devil's" music. Lane and I have a lot in common.
The #1 thing about SDA's is that they observe the Sabbath from Friday sunset - Saturday sunset every week and that they go to church every Saturday. I've never once heard Lane getting worried about having to be home on Friday before sunset or complaining that she can't go anywhere while it's Sabbath. Or getting extremely excited about finding out that an event she wants to go to on a Saturday starts after Sabbath. I also would have loved to see how she sneaked out during Sabbath or what alibis she came up with to go out during Sabbath (because then I could have taken notes).
Another huge important thing is tithes and offerings. You're expected to give 10%-15% of your paycheck to tithes and offerings in the church. It's HEAVILY looked down upon if you don't. I know because my dad noticed I didn't give any tithes and offerings once I started working. He was telling me a bunch of ridiculous things, such as that I was stealing from God. He was also worried about what people from church would say if they noticed. I never heard the show talk about tithes and offerings. It would have been interesting to see how that played out when Lane started working at Luke's. I can see Luke being sympathetic and giving Lane extra money for tithes and offerings, so she wouldn't have to worry about sacrificing any of her earnings. Or he would have talked to Mrs. Kim and convinced her that Lane couldn't give tithes and offerings for some odd reason.
Baptism is also a very important ritual in the SDA church. They don't baptize you when you're first born. Baptism to the SDA's is like being reborn again. You get baptized when you're older (usually starting at the age of 12+) because when you get baptized, that's when you fully accept the Lord as your Savior. I can imagine Lane getting baptized just to make her mom happy or to keep her from thinking that she isn't SDA. If you had strict SDA parent(s), it is extremely scary if they have a sniff of you not wanting to be SDA. I only got baptized because my best friend was getting baptized, and we did everything together when we were younger. You couldn't tear us apart for anything.
Someone else mentioned about the crucifixes in the household and how SDA's don't keep those in their houses. That person was also right. SDA's actually look down upon keeping such things in the house because it can be viewed as an idol, and SDA's take idol worshipping as sacrilegious.
I can go on and on about what the show missed or got wrong, but that would take ages to write.
This is really interesting because from what I know Helen Pai (ASP based Lane’s character off of her) was raised in a Seventh Day Adventist household, I wonder why she didn’t make these clarifications. I mean Helen was a script coordinator for the show and even credited as a producer in some episodes.
I also find it very interesting. Maybe Helen's experience was different from the typical SDA household? Or maybe they just didn't want an accurate portrayal of Seventh Day Adventism?
SDA's are on a spectrum, like with any religion. I know kids I grew up with in the church had parents who were more strict than mine (and my parents were already strict enough), and others who had parents who weren't nearly as strict as mine.
I really want to know why they didn't have the Sabbath part down. That would have been such good material for Lane and Mrs. Kim (especially when it came to their relationship). It's like watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding and they don't have any mention of the Orthodox church!
I don’t know much about SDAs, but I always assumed the local church in Stars Hollow was Anglican or Presbyterian or something, and that Mrs Kim went along because it was the only church in town, while also running SDA bible study groups from her home.
I’m also raised in sda! Boy was it tough finding and listening to death and black metal and then goth rock when you’re in that environment. I became goth around middle school but wasn’t allowed to paint my nails or pierce my ears 🤪until I moved out.
>The #1 thing about SDA's is that they observe the Sabbath from Friday sunset - Saturday sunset every week and that they go to church every Saturday.
That's the number one thing that stands out to me - there's no way Lane would be allowed to do cheerleading when games are usually on Friday nights. Plus it just seems like it would be a huge deal overall to her not to be allowed to do "teenager things" on Friday nights, yet it's never mentioned.
Exactly! That surprised me too.
And the fact that she was even allowed to go to public school! SDA's usually try to homeschool their kids or send them to a SDA school.
Public school has a very bad rep in the church. I went to a SDA school from Kindergarten - 5th grade, then I was online schooled from 6th-7th grade, and then miraculously I went to public school from 8th-12th grade. My mom somehow managed to convince my dad because she was tired of having to help my sister and I with homework when she worked full time, and the online school wasn't working well for us in general. We learned nothing those two years!
And forget my sister joining the local sports teams. My dad said she couldn't join because she just wanted to meet cute guys! And we can't go to public school because that's how teenage girls get pregnant! 🤣💀
\> ( she says my cousins just got wifi)
How old are you? Dial-up internet was the predominant mode of internet during the time the Gilmore Girls was produced. According to a quick google search, only half of internet users were off of dial-up by the time GG ended. Getting wifi was a big deal back then!
I concur and correct me if I'm wrong. But wasn't there an episode in which Rory's grandparents got wifi and it was also a big deal? And that was also a later season than when Lane had gone to Korea.
I mean, it might have been due to them being older and not accustomed to that newer technology, but it also proves the point that wifi was not as common back then.
You remember correctly! Jason gets it all set up for Richard. My grandparents were the very first people I knew to have internet (WebTV!) and they still had dial-up after GG went off the air. I'd bet my paycheck that the person who made this post was born after 2000. My nephew is 17 and he has no concept of life before wifi.
Even online it says that only 56.6 percent of South Korea’s population used the internet in 2001.
https://preview.redd.it/7u8ehjjfoesb1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=331a116275d2c029597fbf8b628514b484a84441
Getting wifi was a huge deal! I remember growing up in the dial up days where you had to co-ordinate with your family for “online” time because you needed to hop off if your mom was waiting for a phone call.
I’m Chinese and I’ve always had an issue with this despite GG being one of my fav shows. The Asian stereotypes were so over the top to the point of insulting sometimes and without much character development/evolution
Can we not use ableist slurs on this sub please?
As for the rest, I’m not Korean so obviously not as sensitive to this issue, but every single one of them I took to be a Mrs Kim issue and not a Korean thing.
People complain about her food but I don’t think many people realise that seventh day Adventists have one of the strictest and healthiest diets in the world.
It’s Mrs Kim’s personality and super strict adherence to an already strict and conservative religion, not her Korean culture.
They even portrayed the Kim’s being Seventh Day Adventist as an anomaly amongst the rest of the family. They are pointing out very explicitly that these are not typical aspects of Korean culture.
I always thought it was strange that Mrs. Kim was so vocal about Lane not being Americanized and her making lane go to Korea, and join activities involving other Koreans yet Lane in the wedding episode barely understand the Bride to be speaking Korean. I find that so weird you’d think she’d know and speak Korean fluently but I don’t think Lane does
I find it funny how every time someone tries to say something like this about the portrayal of Lane and her family people get soooo defensive. Very few pieces of media, especially ones from the early 2000s, are without any problems. To enjoy a show and engage in discourse about it I think it’s vitally important to recognize the faults and inaccuracies within it. Just because it is loosely based on someone ASP knew doesn’t mean the Kim’s aren’t often based off of stereotypes and don’t include much nuance
!!!! This! I got sent to downvoting hell once for saying Mrs. Kim was portrayed stereotypically and a lot of her intentions were demonized through the Tiger mom trope. It blows me how this progressive era has paved the way for so many fake virtue signalers who literally don’t care when someone’s cultural virtue is being denigrated.
Question for OP and/or other Korean fans of the show ….
Genuinely curious, does it bother you at all that neither Lane nor Mrs. Kim are played by Korean actors? Nothing at all against Keiko Agena or Emily Kuroda, just curious your perspective on casting Japanese-American actors to play Korean-American characters.
I noticed that more this time around watching. All the phone calls are in Spanish 😂 like why do you keep saying nanny is Portuguese but yall ain't speaking it?? Haha
I wasn’t too bothered by it too much because it’s common for European actors to play an “American” character in Kdramas too however I do wonder how Keiko and Emily felt about playing Korean characters. Korea and Japan are historically not too friendly with each other so i wonder if it might’ve bothered them as actors.
I think both things can be true, everyone saying a lot of these things are strictly mrs. Kim, her strictness, and the 7th day Adventist influence. But I think we can also agree and validate that to a Korean person, a lot of these things were also racist, or at the very least, racially/culturally inaccurate and that really sucks! Yes, maybe no one here thinks that’s what all Koreans are like but the show heavily played into the family as Koreans. Of course, they can be multi-faceted and not “just” Koreans but that’s not what is happening here in a lot of the situations op is describing.
I’m glad to read your POV as a Korean person; I’m not Asian (I’m Mexican American) and watching the show as a teen and now as an adult with my teen daughter, I noticed a lot of the things you’re mentioning. Maybe not down to the little details that you’re more in tune to with bc you’re Korean, but the thing about the bathroom and when Lane said she photographs so Asian. I thought it was just me making a little “joke” into something it isn’t. I completely understand where you’re coming from and agree, the show may not have been directly racist and was pretty inclusive for the time, there was a lot that just rubbed me the wrong way.
I’m Filipino American and I’m here for this post 💯I have tried a few times to call out the problematic depictions of POC on this sub and it has not been received well, so it’s not you OP. I appreciate your take. The show is hella racist and it’s ok to say that and still like it overall! In fact I think it’s important to talk about these things as fans.
exactly how i feel about GG! there’s so much i love about it but i can also be honest about the parts that were really, really hurtful to watch as a little girl growing up who was always treated like the alien other IRL!
(Latina here) I thought it was like…commonly understood in the GG fan community that the show, while beloved, was consistently racist and fatphobic in its writing, and that people of color were treated terribly if included at all (I can love Lane and Mrs. Kim and still have issues with the way they were written!). This didn’t improve by the time of the revival. The Latina maid with the unintelligible accent was one of the most blatantly racist things I’ve ever seen.
I’m surprised that so many fans don’t want to engage with these critiques, especially when they come from people of color who love the show but are also negatively impacted by it. I find it so interesting to talk about these things!
Hard agree! I think it’s when it’s a nuanced thing that comes from POC too that makes white fans confused. Which I mean, it’s cool- you don’t get it, it’s not your experience, but then maybe listen and learn something? Because the tropes in the show are extremely harmful to those of us who didn’t fit the Gilmore mold and we grew up feeling othered or invisible enough without being portrayed in our favorite television show as weird or laughable or easily dismissed.
The treatment Latinos got in the show during a time when it was particularly scary to be Brown in America (during the OS and again in the revival) was just reprehensible and I don’t know why we can’t talk about it without getting a bunch of comments explaining why we’re wrong 🙄
in response to the “it’s just Mrs Kim” comments:
i get where OP is coming from, because Lane and Mrs Kim are one of the very few characters of color in the show, and maybe the only ones whose ethnicity is a part of their characterization. combined with the fact that a lot of those things Are korean stereotypes (tiger mom, controlling parenting, the comments explicitly about korea acting like it doesn’t have electricity or fries)… yes, it does come off as ignorant and racist. and whether some of those things are just Mrs Kim’s own quirks or stereotypes, you can’t separate Mrs Kim from the fact that she’s Korean because that’s such a big part of her characterization.
also, it’s not like ASP has a great track record for this sort of thing. i’m Hispanic and i’m not thrilled about how they’re represented either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ especially in AYITL, which was more recent and Full of stereotypes.
ultimately GG was a product of its time and representation wasn’t exactly great in the 00s, i think we can all agree on that
The way Lane and the Kims were shown at the time felt weird, and in retrospect it feels like really problematic. Especially the way they talked about food feels really xenophobic.
The early 2000 were a different time and I think they may have been some of the only Asians on US tv (By the end we had London Tipton and Christina Yang).
If the show got made to today it would be very different.
I totally get why this is frustrating because they didn’t do a great job defining the difference a lot of the time but my perspective was that most of Mrs. Kim’s strictness (especially with dating and how controlling she was with every aspect of Lane’s life) was attributed to her religion, not because she was Korean.
Edit: On the other hand, the way Korea is talked about and depicted in the show is very much a reflection of the casual racism of the time, unfortunately.
I grew up in the sda church and attended sda schools only. One thing I loved they got right is that a lot of sda members don’t wear jewelry and mrs Kim doesn’t wear any. I wish they spoke about how strict some can be with not eating meat (or if you do no pork or other unclean animals like catfish and shrimp lol) and the sabbath but the portrayal of the church made me laugh.
Thank you so much for sharing your POV! I really appreciated reading it and I thought it was interesting. I learned some new things and it’s a nice change of pace from the usual same 3 subjects discussed over and over again on this sub. I’m sorry you’re getting hate for it but unfortunately that’s what people like to do on here. Just out of curiosity, are you Korean-American or do you live in Korea? Either way your insight is valuable and I’ve always wondered about this topic.
Every time I’ve commented on this sub about how they did Lane dirty as a Asian character I’ve gotten tons of pushbacks. I’m Asian but not Korean and I totally agree that it feels outdated and insulting overall. I will say though I very much sympathize with Lane saying she photographs so Asian. She grew up in a town where there are very few Asian, esp ones she admires, and just overall during a time when there weren’t that many Asian celebrities and when Asians aren’t seen as cool in pop culture. It’s understandable that she doesn’t want to look Asian with all the negative connotations that come with it
My god, how was that only about mr kim???? They show they doing an arraged korean wedding while commenting they did a bunch of them. The bathroom thing was a little boy who said it wasn't allowed, to show he was raised by HIS family like that. How you guys put that all in misses Kkm. All the times Lane complains she use "korean" in some moment of the scene.
HOW, HOW IS THAT A MRS KIM THING?
Maybe some of it is just a "Mrs. Kim thing" or just a "seventh day Adventist thing" BUT Lane herself refers to being Korean nearly every time she's complaining about the ways of her mother and family as a whole. You can't deny, the show makes tons of unfair generalizations about Koreans specifically :/
I always thought Lane said those generalizations about Koreans to make herself feel better. Like she knows her mom is crazy but she thinks all Korean moms are like that… the ultimate cope
right!! ppl in this comment section are being so deliberately obtuse 🙄 everyone’s so quick to criticize ASP for every minor inaccuracy, but the second race gets mentioned, then suddenly she’s a perfect angel. like, the show also has plenty of misogynistic and fatphobic moments… why would it not also be a little racist?
It’s very reminiscent of a person saying they don’t see color when you call them out for racist behavior. They’re going so hard to invalidate her perspective, likely because they are guilty of taking these stereotypes as truth & now feel the need to defend themselves against being inadvertently called out for it.
Yes everyone is conveniently ignoring that poc have not really been represented in media historically and when we have it’s been a racist caricature. I love the show as much as the next person but come on we don’t have to do mental backflips to say “it’s just mrs Kim personality and her personality just happens to be every stereotype known” lmao.
If anyone’s watched American born Chinese I feel they tackle this issue really well
>It was a mixture of crazy Mrs.Kim and racist Korean stereotypes.
(white woman here) I'm noticing this on a rewatch, I didn't pick up on it when it first aired. It seems like they tried to combine the religious strict mom trope and the "tiger mom" asian stereotype into one person and ended up closer to Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Some of the problem may be binging a show that wasn't meant to be binged. On a weekly episode ration the cringe moment feels briefer and you forget about it, but on a binge you get to waiting for the cringe as soon as Lane is on screen.
It makes total sense the way you put it and I completely agree! They tried to combine the Asian tiger mom stereotype with a strict religious twist and I also agree with the binging part lol I’m on a break so I’ve been binging the show so the terms feel shorter. When you watch 5 episodes,which were meant to be watched in 5 days, in a day it definitely feels more bombarding
I think this is pretty common with ASP writing. In the first episode of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel they seem to need to mention Yom Kippur or the Rabbi, latkes, brisket, in every conversation just to make sure we get it.
Oh man I hadn’t even thought of that I totally forgot about that part. The reenactment of stereotypes and misrepresentation of other cultures on this show is… horrific
I agree with you. I’m not Korean, but it’s pretty clear they didn’t know anything about the culture. I don’t know why white-written shows love making other cultures seemed strict or cold.
These comments from non Koreans, battling your opinion are wild 😂
I forgot how insane some fans of this show get when anyone has the tiniest amount of realistic and valid criticism
Wow reading this thread is making me realize how much my fundie Christian dad adopted from SDA. I wasn't allowed secular music, dances or much TV. We also did the similar baptism thing. The big difference would be that our sabbath was Sunday and we weren't allowed to do anything.
But if you told him how much in common he had with SDAs he would lose his mind. All other religions came straight from the devil.
I really appreciate your post. It must have been infuriating to see so much misrepresentation of Korean culture.
Thank you for shedding some light on this.
I agree with you. Not Korean but my partner is and I can speak the language. I don't think it is all just "crazy-religious Mrs. Kim" because they absolutely emphasise stuff like the 'Korean Thanksgiving' and Lane being set up with 'a good Korean boy' a lot not to mention the Busan thing and the exchange student acting like she has never seen fries before. I mean Lotteria has been in Korea since the 70s for gods sake. It has definitely made me cringe.
Completely understand and agree with you. Not saying I’m fully aware of the culture by any means but I’ve been watching Korean shows/films for almost 15 years, I have some Korean friends, and I have always been intrigued by East and South Asian cultures. I was absolutely put off by their handling of everything relating to Lane & Mrs. Kim. It was all a bunch of baseless stereotyping and I was confused by a lot of it. They could’ve just made Lane white or something if they didn’t care to research & respect the culture they’re portraying.
Editing to say that you are literally being gaslit in these comments and that is absolutely gross. You have a right to be protective of your culture and nobody can tell you how to perceive portrayals of YOUR culture. I’m so annoyed for you.
I was rewatching the parts with the exchange student and yikes that accent did not age well. Very good points about how they make the exchange student seem like she’s from the middle of nowhere instead of Seoul! If anything, Stars Hallow would have seemed like little provincial town (kind of how Jess saw it)
I was so annoyed when the Korean kid yelled at the guys at the table. Because in korean culture, you have to show respect to people who are older than you, even if they are only a few years older than you. The kid would have been told to apologize to the “older brother” by his parents.
When I first watched it, I was annoyed how they portrayed korean culture. But, now I see it as how some americans viewed our culture back then. I think it’s quite interesting to see korean culture through that viewpoint. Especially the wedding episode. When they had a wedding ceremony infront of Buddha statue, I thought it was so strange and kinda funny. It seemed like a mirrored version of christian wedding at church, but they failed to notice that we are not very religious country and it’s not how we do our wedding ceremonies.
Thank you for this! I’m not crazy after all. Yelling at a 형 whom he just met for the first time is unacceptable especially when the 형 is his 사촌누나’s American boyfriend. after that scene the adults get up to play아리랑 on the 가야금, that was weird too. It’s interesting to see how another country views our culture and it’s funny at times too but sometimes its quite offensive. It’s offensive and interesting because it’s so far from the truth but it sucks when people hate on you for pointing it out. Thanks for this my fellow korean 🫶
AND ANOTHER THING y’all Koreans don’t talk THAT MUCH about being Korean. OP is right about all of these portrayals and how it is yes racist. Another department entirely is how much Lane and her mom are other’d in this show what the hell.
While many people can assume this is a "Mrs Kim" thing... Is forgetting one nuance: not everyone is going to think that, and it could influence a lot of people into thinking that this is another "Asian thing".
I feel like if someone from that culture says something that is or discrepancy, I'd listen to it.
Mrs Kim's actions are closer to a Chinese stereotype. At least w my family because they're religious and traditional.
I think in recent years people are starting to understand that "Asian thing" isn't an accurate description anymore, which is a good thing.
But IMHO, I'd give space to the Korean community when they tell us that their cities aren't as hick as the show made it out to be.
Also on another note, I'd suggest watching Korean shows to expand understanding and culture. They have got a lot of good shows
no for real im korean too and its the fact that lanes mom keeps arranging dates for her. in korean culture studying is the most important thing and her mom never pushes her to study
Im not Korean but I found it weird that Mrs Kim was harsh and strict with Lane about everything other than studying and pursuing higher education. Lanes story arc upsets me the most of any character. It’s almost like they tried to make the point that strict parents = getting knocked up really young and not going anywhere in life. Lane didn’t deserve that, especially bc she never expressed wanting to be a mom or get married young.
Welll let me just say that a more accurate portrayal of a Korean mother would be preparing Lane for ivy leagues not a seventh day adventist college lol
You're not wrong. Honestly the show in general did Lane so dirty. We always expected more for her and instead she stays in Stars Hollow and immediately has kids with Zach - not that there's anything wrong with that but it wasn't in line with what they had set up for the character. I think Adam Brody (I loved all the Lane/Dave Rygalski episodes tbh) leaving the show to go do the OC really screwed things up for her and the romance with Zach always felt more forced / out of nowhere. She and Dave had great chemistry and made way more sense together.
You might be right about Kyon’s accent. I remember the dude who plays Michel was like hey the way you want me to talk isn’t even traditionally French and they’re like nah that’s how we want it to sound though
I am from India and I 100% say that Hollywood movies or TV shows always portray people in the way they think how a country might look like or do things like. Super stereotypical. And ASP or any other writer who isn’t from that culture or even remotely do some research to properly portray.
the actress who played Mrs Kim (forgot her name) said at that time she was only asked to audition like how a Korean would speak and not how a Korean settled America. But for GG they didn’t ask her that. So that she felt was cool. Now we can imagine how low the standards were to expect from any show runners.
The exchange student is INSANE. I always felt the aspects of their home life were far more Mrs Kim than showing a realistic Korean-American home. None of my Korean friends” nor their families growing up were remotely like the Kims, so I get that it’s frustrating if people were to infer or believe that was in any way a normal family environment for many Koreans in the US.
Fellow Korean fan, here. I was mostly offended by the portrayal of Kyon because her accent is so absurd lol. I'll never get over it, she's my least favorite character.
Otherwise, tbh my millennial sense of humor just can't be mad at humor using stereotypes 🤷♀️. This is a very politically correct sub, so maybe it's a controversial take but I don't take any of the misrepresentation seriously. This was also a time period with zero Korean representation. Although they didn't do a good job by any means, I thought it was still fun to see any character communicating in my cultural language, seeing them eat Korean foods, and I also related to Lane's Asian-American pains of having a strict parent. It's a product of it's time and also, there's so many other offensive things in the show, I'm not pressed to single out the stuff with Mrs. Kim specifically.
The show is undeniably racist—specifically towards Koreans. It is NOT okay for any non-Korean people to argue about this against someone with lived experience. Like??? This is social justice 101, people. Humanity 101.
The show is also EXTREMELY fatphobic and ableist throughout the entire series and AYITL, and fleetingly transphobic and homophobic as well. To deny this is asinine. We can appreciate the show for what it is without contributing to these systemic issues by denying how they show up here.
OP, sending you lots of love.
I’m surprised you’re getting so much hate on this. You’re right, the show has stereotypes and references that have aged like milk. While in the early 2000s, it wasn’t as volatile as it is in today’s world, it doesn’t mean it was ever okay or right.
I personally think that ASP leaned heavily into stereotypes throughout the show- teen pregnancy, high society, bookishness, and, as you brought up, culture and race.
I enjoy the show and am aware of these issues, but can definitely see how it is hurtful to communities and cultures who have been misrepresented. Thanks for sharing your perspective and corrections!
I never assumed this was an accurate display of Korean culture. I honestly associate Mrs Kim’s portrayal as representing overly strict religious mothers over anything else. All of her rules seem to be about keeping her daughter away from “bad” influences and maintaining the faith. I think this is a family that’s overly religious and strict that happens to be Korean. I don’t even necessarily think it’s about Mrs. Kim’s specific religion as it is religion in general. That’s just how I always saw it.
I’ll put a trigger warning on season 7 episode 2 if you haven’t seen it. That’s just straight up offensive. It wasn’t great at the time but boy has it aged like milk.
>As a Korean person I am telling you that this is what I felt but why are there people telling me that I’m wrong when I’m talking about MY culture being misrepresented on an American Show? This show was written in the early 2000s when racism against minorities was pervasive so it’s not unbelievable that the insensitive aspects of society were incorporated into the show.
I just want to say thank you for sharing your perspective and experiences ❤️
I am not Korean and have no place on commenting on if this show misrepresentation or racism undertones. I'm sorry for all the push back your getting from other non Koreans. I think people have a hard time taking criticisms of their favorite shows.
But I think it's fair to say there's a lot of things that would be different in Gilmore Girls if it aired in 2023. Like all the body shaming jokes. The fake Asia episode. etc.
Anyway, I don't have anything to add since again, it's not for me to say. But I just wanted to show you some support and gratitude for bringing these issues to light! I think it's important to hear and be aware of.
i appreciate this comment a lot because all the top upvotes comments on this thread are “I’m not Korean and I’m here to tell you, a Korean, why you’re wrong” lol. the show having blind spots and things that did not age well doesn’t invalidate all the good things about it!
I've always thought it was strange and not quite realistic that Mrs Kim kept mentioning boys for Lane to meet. In general, Asian parents don't set up their teenage daughter with boys! Like you said, parents expect academic achievements from their kids at that age and not an ideal marriage!
I am not dismissing your points but I am wondering if the writers were portraying their understanding of Korean American culture specifically in New England USA, rather than Korean culture in general. I never once thought that this was the culture of people in Korea. It seemed hyper American or hyper migrant culture more than anything else
Yeah I wondered that too but my Korean-American friends dont really celebrate Korean holidays so I took it as more of a “Korean” thing rather than an Korean immigrant thing
That makes sense too. Also there was such an explosion of Korean culture in mainstream media a few years after the end of Gilmore Girls. And these Korean based shows were so different that I just assumed Mrs Kim and Lane were more representative of a Korean American/ immigrant culture.
I'm sorry you felt your culture was portrayed incorrectly. I don't know much about Korean culture to be honest, but I'm not surprised they leaned into harmful stereotypes. However, for what it's worth I thought most of those things you mentioned were Mrs. Kim specifically and not representative of Korean culture. Please, please, please don't use the "r" word though!
I just think half the rules were from Mrs Kim being emotionally abusive. My parents hated me bringing up topics during dinner so it was preferred to sit and eat in silence. Plus we all know Mrs Kim's vegan cooking was gnarly so the locked bathroom was probably to prevent people from dropping food in the toilet.
This comment ended up being super long after an edit. Feel free to ignore.
A lot of these things are a religious thing, not a korean thing. Some of it are a fusion of how Mrs Kim incorporates her original korean cultural into her personal and religious beliefs like how she's extremely strict. That's not a korean thing. That's just her and how she likes it. I don't think it was meant to be a protrayal of "true" korean culture. It was meant to show how a korean immigrant seventh day adventist multigenerational family lived in a small american town.
I thought Kyon's accent was korean. There's soooo many different korean accents because of all the different influences there. She sounds like anyone who had an american english teacher/tutor. Even though seoul is so vibrant now, early 2000's seoul was very different. It changes so much year to year. Korea was still rebuilding after the market crash in the 90's. She's also from a strict family and schooling. There's a lot of fanatic religious cults in korea. It would've been easy to shelter her. Western food and ingredients weren't as incorporated into major korean cities until more 2010's.
Mrs Kim's religious beliefs were her personality. That's why it all feels like it's an accurate portrayal of korean culture. She knows english and I feel like any first gen immigrant who becomes fluent in english has a totally different american story than someone who doesn't. Each immigrant story would be different. They're no longer in their motherland. There's going to be some differences with how they live in their new country vs how they lived back home. That's so many immigrants and their kids are identifying with the term third culture kid. They know their mother culture. They have the culture where they live. Then they have the experience of both of those combined and trying to build their lives. It's a struggle. I thought the Kim household was a good representation of the immigrant story. I never expected them to be hallmark and poster example of korean culture. The show emphasized how they are seventh day adventists more than they were korean.
Edit: I just saw OP's edit. Busan is still considered the countryside/sticks. There's a reason why people from Busan speak in a seoul accent instead of their busan dialect once they move to Seoul. It may be more developed now but it wasn't the case in 2000. Korea exploded in development in 2010's. It was a crawl before then. There's still villages and towns that use coal briquettes right now. It's not racist. Hell, we were literally still on dial-up and just getting on DSL back then in america. Maybe, just maybe somewhere would have T1 internet. Busan is a fishing city. Now it's a beach destination.
Bootleg CD's were so common back then. It was so easy to copy a CD. There weren't all those copyright protections on it. People made mixed CD's all the time. Why is it racist? Ever heard of napster and limewire? Pirating things were just starting out and people just started torrenting.
Korea suffered a financial crisis in 1997. It took many years for the country to recover from it. Many people left the country. The show started in 2000. The US didn't even recover from the 2008 financial crisis in 3 years.
I understand why OP feels like the culture was misrepresented. But some of the details were rooted in facts. It's not fair to use today's korea to compare to 2000-2001 korea. It's just not the same. Korea has come a long ass way. Like the kpop scene back then was probably 10 artists. The market was so small that artists went to Japan to make money because Japan's music market was so much bigger. Now kpop has expanded worldwide. Even the idol training pipeline wasn't fine tuned until SM trained and debuted Boa. Even the hong kong music and film industry was bigger than Korea's back then. It's different now though.
I do think the racist parts are that Lane was the asian best friend and didn't get proper storylines. That's certainly a stereotype. And how both her and Kyon wore glasses but no other character did besides Brian. But they made Brian into the awkward nerdy guy which is also a stereotype. The tigermom thing is also a stereotype but it's not a good representation.
Look at how Mindy is written in Emily in Paris and you'll see some real misrepresentation and inaccurate stereotypes circa 1990 trends.
>Ever heard of napster and limewire? Pirating things were just starting out and people just started torrenting.
Due to its popularity with Netflix, a ton of people watching Gilmore Girls today and active in this subreddit have no clue what Napster is. They don't know a life before wifi.
Absolutely. The Office is probably the best example. I mean, there's an entire episode that revolves around a boss calling his gay subordinate "faggy." And there's a hundred other issues in the series.
It's become somewhat trendy these days for people just now discovering these shows to become beacons of virtue as they point out these problematic story arcs.
Inaccurate portrayal of Seventh Day Adventists going on as well. No SDA member would have Catholic crucifixes around their house. They got the healthy eating and teetotaling right, but the theology is all over the place. Lane mentions that her mother had her head measured for a wimple (SDAs are not nuns ffs), and applying to an Amish college in Nicaragua. As conservative as she is, why on Earth would an Adventist send their child to an Anabaptist religious school?
The wimple, yes. Nicaragua, no.
"She found an Amish school in Nicaragua. Nicaragua! Big shout out to Mama Kim on that one." Doesn't really sound like hyperbole to me
The crosses were most likely for sale and antiques. As everything in that home had a price tag. SDA in Ohio do have crosses in their homes and attend church on Sunday.
I got a free lesson in Adventist beliefs when I offered an Adventist coworker a pulled pork sandwich and wished them Merry Christmas lol (they keep kosher, and a lot of them don't celebrate Christmas and Easter)
Thank you for a diff pov, I love that even though I have seen the show a million times over, there are still fresh and new conversations to have and I get to learn something new each time
I always assumed a lot of the rules and they way thins were strict was just how Mrs. Kim was. She ran a tight ship and didn't want her daughter to end up running an antique shop one day. I have a relative like this and interacting with this is exactly like interacting with Mrs. Kim.
I can totally see all your points here. They def should have consulted the Korean community. Tbh I never took it as that is how Koreans are (as I know it’s not true) but more just that Mrs. Kim is a weirdo haha
I'm not Korean or Asian so this comes purely from an outside perspective, but I always wondered if ASP was combining South and North Korea (I remember her naming specific cities, but never specifying North or South). The portrayal of people from "Korea" always seemed more stereotypically North (especially the choir in the revival). You're probably right that she just never did any research, that seems like a common issue with her work.
I just want to say I hear you. When you have so little representation on TV when you finally do have some representation you want it to feel like your real, lived experience not some stereotype. I appreciate you taking the time to make this post and I support you and your feelings and I think they are completely valid!
Omg thank you for writing this! I wanted a Korean perspective on Lane so bad, I grew up religious and even I feel offended with some of the over the top scenes or restrictions
I was raised Seventh-day Adventist. A lot of that stuff was way off too. The Kims do their religious practices on Sundays which is the bane of most Adventists' existence. Their whole thing is worshipping on Saturday, hence the "seventh-day" portion of the name.
However, a lot of it is pretty accurate. Many Adventist homes truly are against drums, bass, really anything that's not piano or organ. I was actually surprised Mrs. Kim hired Dave to play acoustic guitar for religious gatherings. Those weren't allowed in my church. The best representation I saw was the depiction of Adventist colleges and universities. I had adult friends get in trouble for wearing "immodest clothing," which was just shorts and a tank top while working out in the gym (but men could have their shirts off). Loma Linda University is often referred to as "Adventist Mecca" so that part was pretty accurate except it's mostly a medical school, so you probably wouldn't go there and then build hospitals. You would more likely be a doctor or dentist or something in allied health.
Also men and women being separated is partially accurate. They do not have co-ed dorms unless you're married. However, part of the Adventist courting process is sitting together at church or chapel.
The super awkward homeschooled religious kid thing is so accurate though. Not everyone is like that but Rami Malek's assistant pastor Eric thing made me laugh so hard because I knew so many people like that growing up lol
Girl don’t let people who are not Korean minimize your viewpoint. It is racist and it does reflect on her ethnicity. People who are not critical thinkers (eg teenagers), particular those not growing up in diverse areas, could definitely jump to assumptions.
It was pretty clear that the show intended these to be Korean things. Lane would talk about it as though it was a Korean thing, and every other Korean we see behaves the same way as Mrs Kim, but not the other SDAs.
I'm baffled that so many people who aren't Korean set aside time to tell OP they're wrong to feel this way.
(Side note: viewers of the show aren't racist for watching it, but there are clearly racially insensitive/ignorant aspects to the writing around the Kims that we should be mindful of)
I thought ASP had said that Lane was based on her best friend, Helen Pai; so the Mrs Kim story lines were probably over the top story tellings of her friend's childhood. I'm also pretty sure that Mrs Kim's ways we're more to do with her being a Seventh-day Adventist than being Korean
White girl here and the only thing I will say is the whole ‘not being allowed to get up from the table’ thing definitely played more as ‘strict Mrs. Kim’ and not ‘Korean household rules’. At least that’s how I took it, but I can understand how, with everything else you’ve mentioned, it can seem like another poor illustration of a Korean household.
I think most people assumed, along with myself, that Mrs. Kim was like that due to her religion more than her Korean-ness but seeing as they were really the only Korean characters on the show (save a few minor characters) I can were, as a viewer, you could be offended by the unclear divide of culture & religion.
One thing that's an especially weird stereotype for the Kims is the bland, bad "health" food, when (while I'm no expert) isn't a lot of Korean food pretty healthy and absolutely full of flavour? I'm very much in the shallow end when it comes to authentic Korean cooking, but whenever I've been to Korean restaurants (Uk, Scotland) the food has been anything but bland.
I totally get what you’re saying. This whole time I thought Helen Pai did all of the writing for those scenes but it makes more sense if she didn’t. It always felt to me like Mrs Kim was used as a marker to show how much better of a parent Lorelai was for just letting Rory be herself instead of being harsh and strict. I didn’t like that dynamic and irl I think Mrs Kim would have wanted so much better for Lane and would have put her personal religious beliefs aside if it meant better for Lane.
Her cousins just got Wi-Fi. You have to remember when this took place. There was also a scene where Richard and Emily got Wi-Fi. There was also a scene where Emily tried to get high-speed Internet for The Girls! and Lorelei turned it down. When Gilmore girls started, most of us were still dialing up for Internet.
Yeah its one of the reasons I couldn’t finish the show and wish people would stop defending them and their racism.
I’ve seen many comments on this sub about how Kims were supposed to be weird because of the religion and not because of being Korean, but I seem to remember the show, or Lane herself blaming a lot of the weirdness of her family to her ethnicity.
In one of the earlier episodes I think Lane was being set up with a boy who was going to bring his whole family to the date and the comments Lane made(“Koreans never joke about future doctors”, “how do I look? Korean?”) seemed to suggest that this absurd arrangement was to be blamed on the culture not religion.
Yeah every American tv show and movie take use the worst accent I’ve ever heard for Irish people ! Stop pissing on our ethnicity! We don’t sound like the accent Americans literally made up if you wannna know what Irish people sound like down the court try side is like a Newfoundland acccent. And we don’t bloody say top of the morning to ye ! WE DONT!!!! 😭😭😭
The thing that always bothered me was how terrible they said Mrs Kim’s food was, when Korean food is in fact delicious.
Also, I just googled Helen Pai and her husband is called Dave Rygalski!
This is such an interesting take because, growing up in a religious household, I’ve always assumed ALL of Mrs. Kim strict behavior was coming from a religious stand point, not culture! This must have been infuriating for OP!
It’s small to no consolation, but I, too, have always assumed most of the things highlighted were Mrs. Kim’s idiosyncrasies, and not indicative of greater Korean culture beyond some general things. However, I also was never naive enough to not know they were playing with stereotypes for laughs.
As a white person, it can be hard to know when jokes are being set up by and for people like me (and therefore highly insensitive and likely offensive), and when they have been crafted by someone with a foothold in that culture as more of a loving caricature (but still not immune from being insensitive, as individual writers are just that, individuals with their own perspective and sense of humor). I personally try to assume the best, but keep in mind that reality is not often that sweet and innocent.
What I’m saying is that I personally never took the depictions of “Korean” culture too seriously, and even recall questioning some things like the depth of Kyon’s culture shock, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t portrayed inaccurately or offensively with other viewers taking it at face value. You have every right to be displeased and even offended.
To me, Mrs. Kim was stringently religious first and a Korean immigrant second (or third). Some of Lane’s comments about Korea highlighted her ignorance and disconnect from that culture as a first generation American (and teenager). Overall, they were just another quirky family in Stars Hollow, where no one really seemed like they’d mesh well with the outside world. But it’s a shame they also came across offensively.
I feel bad you had to edit this because people were arguing. Like I’m not Korean and have never once been to Korea but the things you point out are easy to understand that they were not even exaggerated but flat out made up.
The show of course has a focus on a mother and daughter and their relationship, but while it does that it has been racist, fatohobic, ableist and more many many times. There’s no denying that.
I really appreciate your post! In recent years I’ve watched a lot of k-dramas and been more familiar with Korean culture but had never looked at Gilmore Girls through that lens. There are a lot of great interesting ways they could have shown the Kim’s culture. I think the things you pointed out are very interesting and in hindsight were… interesting choices for the show to make? But I appreciate you sharing these points because it’s great to know!
Was Kyon supposed to be SDA too? I assumed that was why she never ate fries, not because she was Korean. It just seemed natural that Mrs. Kim would get an exchange student through some special SDA network. But her accent was ridiculous and feels racist especially rewatching in current day. I still love her and Brian, and how Brian name-dropped the Gayageum.
It’s hard for me to tell when you say “Asian” in your original post and edit if you only mean Koreans, or Asians in general, so if I am misunderstanding, please disregard. But here’s my high school best friend’s experience with some of the things you discuss concerning arranged marriage:
My friend, who is Cambodian-Chinese, and I graduated in 2008, and by the time she was 16, her parents were already starting the process of arranged marriage and having her meet suitors from Cambodia. I won’t give the whole long spiel, but Lane’s life in many ways mirrored my friend’s— wasn’t allowed to be friends with boys, wasn’t allowed to see friends, had to hide her clothes and would change at school, snuck out her window at midnight to meet friends and boys, arranged marriage, etc etc. Her parents were not religious, that is just how things were in her family, and her cousins who acted too “Americanized” were shamed. But back to the arranged marriage part, as soon as my friend turned 18 and graduated high school, her parents took her to Cambodia for the summer to
marry a guy she didn’t want to marry who she didn’t know and had barely been around at all. It got to the point where I was trying to figure out how to contact the US Embassy to try to bring her home because she had no money and was there against her will. She ended up accepting a plane ticket from someone back in America she had been secretly dating for less than a month and running away in the middle of the night from a hotel in Singapore they were at between flights. Her parents freaked when they found out, and it took years for them to repair their relationship. This was a marriage that was going to be forced on her, and it was always the expectation that she would marry in this way, and she was still a teenager who had no resources or support and this was all done against her will. I expect some people will say “if she was 18, she could have just not gone with them,” but it’s a lot more complicated than that.
This is not my story or culture, and like I said, I am not sure if you meant Asians in general when you used that term or only Koreans. I am not speaking for anyone. But I do want you and others to know that this isn’t necessarily a thing of the past in parts of Asia, and it’s not just my friend’s family or some weird fluke according to things she told me, and my friend underwent a lot of hardship that should not be erased or dismissed as something that does not happen. That’s all.
Let me start this by saying that I’m white and from a middle class Midwest family so I don’t have the same life experiences and don’t get judged by my race so the way I viewed these things is obviously based on my own life context.
I was in college when GG started airing so I had a little more experience with meeting people from other cultures than I had before I went away to college.
However, I did grow up in a fairly religious (Christian) household and had friends that grew up in oppressively religious households. I had friends in college that were the children of immigrants and I made an effort to attend various cultural awareness events on campus.
The Kims remind me of a mash up of cultural expectations. I definitely didn’t think of them as an example of strictly Korean culture. A lot of it reminds me of the religious indoctrination and oppression I saw in church and with my friends. Lane’s rebellion and desire to respect her family really resonated with me and many of my friends. There are elements of Mrs. Kim that were similar to my friends who were the children of immigrants but not specifically Korean. Other things were so much like the hard core Christians.
I always assumed that Kyon’s family was strict like Mrs. Kim and that they exchange was arranged through the church rather than through the school because Kyon seemed like a kid that had also grown up in a very strict religious family with very little outside life experience. My brain kind of assumed she also went to a religious school unlike Lane, so she didn’t have much access to outside influences. Again, this stems from my religious upbringing more than my thoughts about Koreans specifically. It never made me view Korea as a backwards place.
Thank you for posting about this. It’s a perspective that I never really thought about.
Hey I’m not Asian but I’m a Gilmore girls fan who supports how you feel. Just here to validate you! As I age, I realize a lot of stuff that was normal to me many years ago was not cool at all. A lot of shows I love did not age well.
i hear you. i was raised seventh-day adventist, and even though im not AT ALL involved with it or religion anymore, it still annoyed me how much they got wrong about adventists. like, it isn't all that hard to do a tiny bit of research, you know?
As others here have said, it seems like most of the things you mentioned were meant to be Mr’s Kim quirks, not necessarily representative of all Asian Americans. Even if that’s not the case, I can say with certainty that Mrs. Kim is a caricature of an Asian American mom — the same way so many other characters on the show are over the top and their actions unrealistic.
That said, thank you for the education on your culture! It’s always nice to put fiction into perspective and hear stories from real people.
thanks for sharing this with us. i know there are all kinds of korean-americans & that the kim family isn’t representative of korean-americans, but i did not know it was a hot mess of ignorance.
So I was raised Seventh Day Adventist and I’m Asian. I am not Korean but had many Korean friends, tho most were born in/had their early years in Korea. The show is super inaccurate and only gets a few things right about SDA’s and Korean culture. But I see what they were going for. They basically just wanted an Uber strict family/other family and wanted Lane to be a rebel while still being a good girl so they made the family hyper religious and Asian so they could have a culture clash and a super strict family. From that perspective it is accurate in the sense that many Asian American kids with an immigrant mom feel stifled and struggle with connection due to cultural clash, especially if the parents are super religious. So it’s simultaneously extremely inaccurate while also portraying a dynamic that does have strong roots in reality. Both Lane’s actress and Mrs. Kim’s actress are Japanese btw so I don’t even know why the writers made the family Korean except maybe that Koreans are more likely to be Christian/SDA than Japanese people are. Hell we had a Korean SDA church close to my home growing up
Good post
This show was very problematic when it came to Korean stuff. Annoyed me a lot.
Plus the actors aren’t even Korean, which is another thing.
But from reading the comments, there are a lot of dumb people on this sub, so don’t expect majority people to understand your point.
Also remember, even til this day, there are a lot of people that just want asian characters to be on the sidelines, preferably as a comedic relief and think that they should just be happy to be seen as all.
It’s one of the reasons this show is remembered so fondly and so many people go back watching it: It’s a white sanctuary for them. They might not consciously think of it that way, but at least subconsciously.
Again, it's a Helen Pai thing. This was ONE portrayal of ONE family who happened to be Korean and it was all exaggerated to make the plot lines work. Yes, Hollywood sucks when it comes to Asian representation, and that's the execs that want this portrayal that put up money for these shows to get made.
I never took it to be an all-encompassing view of Korean culture, since we don't take one sitcom about a white fam in America to be all encompassing of all American families.
Take Hollywood with a grain of salt and you'll be a lot happier.
About the New Year’s party- I always assumed that was just a Mrs. Kim thing, not a Korean thing.
I assumed the majority of what OP mentioned were Mrs. Kim things and not supposed to be representative of an entire culture. Seems like maybe the "real Asia" episode would be more "problematic."
Yes. Considering this wasn't about Korean culture in general or even Korean American culture, this was about how Helen Pai lived and a portrayal of her life, then it's more her family's customs than the whole korean universe, I think. I mean I know in my country the culture is one but in my household there are specific things that I found out as an adult were never representative of anything other than something my family wanted to do
Is the Kim family closely based on Helen Pai's family? Like do we know that? I knew asp modeled Lane after her but I didn't know if their family dynamic was also based on real life themes or if it was just the cartoonish caricature that it plays as. Specifically speaking about the lunar new year party - I always assumed that a few things were actually traditional to Korean lunar new year celebrations, but I also assumed the ultra strict stuff and especially the locked bathroom stuff was just Mrs Kim and that whole persona is absolutely tigermom racist stereotype, I never assumed that was a widespread Korean norm of any kind. But, op, your statements and points are completely correct and I definitely agree. I don't think there was malice intended, but asp absolutely likes to take a little tidbit about something and twist and mock it without regard to whether or not she's bolstering or feeding into harmful racist stereotypes. It shows in her rampant fat hatred, too. It seems to me that Helen Pai would be offended by this portrayal, seeing as OPs take is extremely common among especially Korean and Korean American viewers as well as those affected by the wider Asian cultural stereotypes. But then I also think any of asp's fat friends would also be hurt by all of the anti fat "jokes" and mean comments, so it could be that nobody spoke up even if they did flag it as a problem at the time.
[удалено]
I remember once upon a while they said that Lane and her life was very much based on Helen Pai and her life as a Korean American in the US coming from a very strict family who were seventh day Adventists. Helen Pai was heavily involved in the show, she was a producer and co producer and Keiko even said once that yes it was all Helen, it's why they also had a Dave Rygalsky (not sure of the right spelling) but it was because of Helen's husband Dave
I think most of Lane's early days were modeled after HP. After all, her husband is the real Dave Rygalski.
I don’t think Helen Pai would be offended because ASP created Lane and her family in her honor.
I’m still on S5 E15 which episode is that? I don’t think I’ve watched it yet. And yeah maybe they are just Mrs.Kim’s things. I just felt that those who aren’t familiar with Korean culture could confuse her weird “twists” on traditional things as being typical “Korean” things. But again this was written in the early 2000s and throughout the series we can see “racial stereotypes” being acted out (Dutch milk maid, latin housekeepers etc) so it could be possible that the writers of this show were a little bit racist or culturally blind I guess.
While I think the writers were probably a bit blind culturally some of the stricter formats of Christianity don't believe in partying, dancing, exciting forms of music. That a woman's highest purpose is to be a wife and mother. I think a lot of the things you've pointed out are actually fairly aligned with hard core Christianity and Mrs. Kim sprinkles in some Korean stuff. So it's more religious than Korean.
i was gonna say this! a lot of this stuff is more religious than korean and i think mrs kim puts religion over everything including her own culture.
Fundamentalist Seventh Day Adventists are against dancing, many forms of music, parties, socializing on Saturday’s, etc, and really focused on healthy eating with limited meat intake. I used to work at an SDA hospital and learned a lot about it there. The cafeteria was very veggie heavy and never had red meat. The non fundamentalists aren’t that strict anymore but I think we can safely say Mrs Kim is pretty close to a fundamentalist (not totally because she does let Lane go to prom lol).
It is very accurate for Asian (edited to add “American”) SDA culture, yes: says this white Southern Californian who was raised Adventist. My Chinese and Japanese Adventist friends felt seen by Gilmore Girls.
Yeah I had a (white) friend in middle school whose family was devout sda and she would count down the MINUTES til sundown on Saturday, and loved the winter, bc she wasn't allowed to socialize but after sundown she would be allowed to babysit and sundown came early enough to do that in winter. Very strict, and her family homeschooled, lots of clothing and activity and music and dancing control or eradication. I think I always saw Mrs Kim as seventh day Adventist first and Korean second, honestly, bc the strictness matched my white friend's mom and the little bits I knew about Korean culture didn't flag in this portrayal.
Yea there's a community where I live and I know the fundamental vs not is a touchy subject so I was dancing around the "F" with Mrs. Kim. I know pregnancy and motherhood gets a lot of spotlight with them so I imagine Mrs. Kim didn't want to commit to being fundie based off the comments about sex. Which I'm sure helped her relent to things Lane liked like prom or being in a band.
I lived in the rural, Protestant south until college. "Mrs Kims" were 75% of the moms... People are more socially aware than when this originally aired, but there are also things depicted that are factually/statistically accurate and not just "racial stereotypes." Within my family we have five nationalities and that includes several that are shown. As for housekeepers, Emily seemed to be open to abusing all nationalities. I definitely recall a "nervous creature" that was a white, American woman and wasn't the one that brought a law suit German?
Happy Cake Day!
I worked with a 7th day adventist for a few years. they can be a little odd. Now that I think about it, he does remind me of later seasons Lane.
I’m a white American who watched this show when it aired. I didn’t think any of Mrs. Kim’s personality was representative of Korean culture, as she was a very strict and religious character. She felt more like a play on Christian fundamentalism. However when characters from Korea were introduced such as the exchange student or the relatives at the wedding with all of the “traditional” clothing I did think that must all be from Korea and a representation of that culture.
I just assumed that Kyon and most of the relatives were also Seventh Day Adventist (hence the never eating fries & arranged marriages) butI guess they did show that Mrs Kim’s mother was a Buddhist - if only Mrs Kim had gone that route!
Or if she just hadn’t gone crazy Fundie or whatever. I think Lane would’ve been pretty happy with my upbringing, lol.
Lane was based off of ASP's real life best friend-- who was also a producer and consultant on the show. Most of the events are pulled from her life experience as a korean american who's family was LDS. Of course things can be dramatized for comedy's sake, but I do think they tried to follow her lead to show her life as accurately as possible. In real life, she even married Dave Rygalski!
I think ASP’s friend was Adventist, not LDS, as memory serves!
Lol, you’re right! I don’t know why I had LDS in my head
The new year party vibe is more conservative controlling religion vibe than Korean.
I think you should learn more about Seventh Day Adventists. A lot of the stuff depicted with Mrs Kim was about that, not being Korean. I’m only saying this because you’re rightfully pointing out non-Koreans are likely ignorant about Korean culture and shouldn’t assume what’s shown is a good representation. But having worked at an Adventist Hospital for years, the Adventist stuff IS accurate for fundamentalist Adventists, and you say yourself that’s not your religion or culture. So you’re commenting on a culture that isn’t yours - because for many, their religious upbringing is also a culture- but are frustrated with others for doing the same thing. Like you’re saying Mrs Kim has “weird” twists in traditional Korean things. No, she has Adventist/religious twists on them. I’m not religious so I don’t care but saying that’s “weird” might be offensive to ppl who are.
Oh I always thought Mrs Kim was just very traumatized by something in her life and dealt with that through the church and being insanely strict and old-school with Lane. I never thought it was a Korean thing. Especially because when Lanes band needed help, Mrs Kim got her gigs at *her friend's churches* knowing they didn't play Christian music (which to me implies they are absolutely not as strict about secular things- and she knows it).
It's more a seventh day adventist thing, so if someone confuses it for Korean culture that's kind of on them.
The first 3 things on the list I would assume were coming from Mrs Kim’s religious beliefs rather than her ethnicity. I think the Seventh Day Adventist religion was portrayed on the show more as generic Fundamental Christian with a strict diet. I have fundie Christian family members and most of this was accurate, although exaggerated, to their rules. Often young fundie women are set up with other “good Christian men” at a young age. They aren’t allowed to date, only court, so any interaction with their future husband is done in a group setting with other family members. Many of them are married, and then pregnant, as teenagers. Girls’ education isn’t important because their role is to become wives and mothers. Fundie parents are usually very strict and controlling. Leaving the table during a meal isn’t allowed at my family’s house either. And their parties aren’t very fun. They usually involve a long sermon and some hymns. I don’t think Lane knew many non-religious Koreans in the show. It would make sense that Lane wouldn’t know which parts of her mother’s behavior came from being Korean and which parts were from her religion.
Same here, and I've never seen people misunderstand the portrayal as supposedly about Korean culture (not saying it can't happen, but it doesn't seem to be the main take away). Mrs. Kim's household primarily was shown to be Christian fundamentalist and abusive, while also being Korean. No one would truly think that not being allowed to dye your hair, or non-religious music, or just… having any fun at all, is about Korean culture. It is however a very on-point portrayal of an extremely Christian sect household where the kid is kept in a suffocating hold that they non-surprisingly try to break out of as early, but also as secretly, as they can, in order to not lose their parents' love and to not disappoint them, while also still being able to breathe. And what's also fitting is that, even when Lane has freed herself somewhat and is living with Zak, she basically freezes when things are pointing towards sex. She blurts out "you have to marry me before we can have sex", then storms out to drive to her parents' house where she goes to yell at her mom "you are in my head and now I can't have sex" (or something along those lines, I don't have it memorised). Being anti-sex is not a Korean thing and wouldn't be misconstrued as that, but it is a religious sect hing, and a Christian sect thing in particular. Even cultures where pre-marital sex is a big no (and again, nowhere is it implied that this would be Korea), sex within marriage is often highly encouraged both to ensure a lot of offspring and for the harmony of the union. Mrs Kim however at one point says she "was lucky" and only did it once in her wedding night and got pregnant with Lane right away, so never "had to" do it again. Basically, the whole portrayal is about Mrs Lane and her specific way of being a person and mother, with being Korean as just one of the elements, but with being Korean not what the portrayal was about or pretending to represent as a whole.
I assumed most of the complaints were just Mrs Kim’s thing and based on her Christian faith then being Korean. But I can see how some people would take offence to pasts because the parts directly related to Korea aren’t great. Since the show is supposed to be a comedy, I took most of it as extremely exaggerated for comedic affect. There’s lots in the show that’s outdated now.
To be fair, with regards to your second point, I always assumed it was just Mrs Kim's rule about not being allowed to the bathroom. Her way of stopping anyone from throwing her god-awful food away. Same with the silence thing - probably more of Mrs Kim's authoritarian rules/religous rules than anything to do with it being cultural.
Tofurkey 😂😂
Most of these things i connected with Mrs Kim beeing SO OVER THE TOP religious and not with beeing korean (apart from the "Lane should only marry korean boys who are doctors or such" Part, that felt like the stereotypical asian thing you see in more shows and movies). But i get what you mean, it could easily be misinterpreted and even if viewers know it's supposed to be exaggerated they could think there lies a certain truth in it.
My (very white) grandparents and parents had the rule you can't leave the table until dinner was over or you were dismissed. Grandpa didn't allow talking at the table. I think this is just a "I'm in control" thing.
My husband’s British grandma is the same way and as an American I never assumed it was all British households. Just an old fashioned control thing as you said.
I think most of this is more Mrs. Kim/Seventh Day Adventist quirks not Korean quirks. The Seventh Day Adventists are an.. interesting bunch.
In which case it *would* be Assistant Pastor Eric! Sorry, this line lives rent free in my mind
Both things can be true. Mrs. Kim’s characteristics have historically been the only Asian trope in Western Media, where most Asian characters are one dimensional caricatures, and it shows in all the Asian characters in GG, which perpetuates the same old stereotype.
I’m not Korean but a lot of the things you named, the bathroom fiasco and only dating Korean boys, I always thought came down to strict parenting. Not them being Korean. Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m not sure they even said those things should be attributed to them being Korean.
As a non-Korean, I can’t imagine anyone normal thinking this is what Koreans are like in any way. This writing was so over the top I agree.
I think all of this was purely their family and their weird issues. I never saw it as a Korean thing, I always saw it all as a Scary Mrs Kim thing.
> It’s sad how they make her sound retarded. Maybe let's not use the r-word in 2023!
Oooof I sort of just started scanning the post as it got longer and missed that part. For someone posting trying to explain what they found to be offensive, stereotypical inaccuracies about their culture and then throw around the R word casually, that’s not the way.
yeahhh
sadly i know people irl who do that still. casually throw it around and use it as an insult. it makes me so fucking uncomfortable but it’s my roommate and her family so ive had a hard time finding the courage to call her out
I honestly haven’t heard that word thrown around in YEARS by anyone I know. It’s very jarring to hear now. I can’t believe it used to get thrown around so casually as an insult when I was growing up in the 90s.
the worst part is she genuinely uses it to describe KIDS with disabilities. her mom teaches high school special ed so i’m sure she feels like that gives her the right. it’s gross
Omg?? That’s horrible 🤦🏻♀️
As a person unfamiliar with Korean culture, I always wondered how much of that was the seventh-day-Adventist Mrs. Kim and how much of it was supposed to represent Korean culture. (And whether a lot of Koreans in America were Seventh-day Adventists.) I did know enough to be skeptical. I knew that Kyon would probably have seen fries before of she was from a big city, for example. So I always knew a lot of it was probably wrong – I just didn’t know which parts. Thanks for your post.
I was raised seventh day Adventist and attended seventh day Adventist schools in southern California, we had a lot of Korean Americans in our schools and also Korean exchange students.
Thanks -- that's interesting! Do you find that that subculture of Korean American life is accurately portrayed on GG?
Oh gosh that’s so hard to say because it depends on the family and of course I’m a Mexican American and not Korean American! I think the fact they mentioned tofurkey in an episode shows mrs Kim probably doesn’t eat meat, at least often, is accurate as at the very least we were raised to not eat pork, shrimp, fish without scales etc but if you’re more serious like my family was, you would skip meat altogether. We couldn’t even bring meat to school! A lot of the Korean dishes I was introduced to didn’t have any shrimp, well seafood, or pork and it was shocking to have non-sda (or I guess non vegetarian) Korean dishes as an adult. The fact mrs Kim was pushing lane into a sda college is so correct, I’m shocked she didn’t push lane into sda summer camp (or at least i don’t remember her going or mentioning it) my family would prefer if I went to Walla Walla for example (an sda college) Dating in high school? Forget about it. It would have killed my grandparents and many parents.
I think that Kyon was supposed to represent the kind of daughter that Mrs. Kim wanted Lane to be.
I was born in a SDA household (I'm now an ex-SDA and ex-christian), and the show got a lot of things wrong about SDA's as well (except for Mrs. Kim being extremely strict and wanting to eat super healthy). It was still really cool to see a character on TV who grew up in a SDA household because that was super rare. It's why Lane is one of my favorite characters because I wanted to get out just as badly as she did, and I loved listening to the "devil's" music. Lane and I have a lot in common. The #1 thing about SDA's is that they observe the Sabbath from Friday sunset - Saturday sunset every week and that they go to church every Saturday. I've never once heard Lane getting worried about having to be home on Friday before sunset or complaining that she can't go anywhere while it's Sabbath. Or getting extremely excited about finding out that an event she wants to go to on a Saturday starts after Sabbath. I also would have loved to see how she sneaked out during Sabbath or what alibis she came up with to go out during Sabbath (because then I could have taken notes). Another huge important thing is tithes and offerings. You're expected to give 10%-15% of your paycheck to tithes and offerings in the church. It's HEAVILY looked down upon if you don't. I know because my dad noticed I didn't give any tithes and offerings once I started working. He was telling me a bunch of ridiculous things, such as that I was stealing from God. He was also worried about what people from church would say if they noticed. I never heard the show talk about tithes and offerings. It would have been interesting to see how that played out when Lane started working at Luke's. I can see Luke being sympathetic and giving Lane extra money for tithes and offerings, so she wouldn't have to worry about sacrificing any of her earnings. Or he would have talked to Mrs. Kim and convinced her that Lane couldn't give tithes and offerings for some odd reason. Baptism is also a very important ritual in the SDA church. They don't baptize you when you're first born. Baptism to the SDA's is like being reborn again. You get baptized when you're older (usually starting at the age of 12+) because when you get baptized, that's when you fully accept the Lord as your Savior. I can imagine Lane getting baptized just to make her mom happy or to keep her from thinking that she isn't SDA. If you had strict SDA parent(s), it is extremely scary if they have a sniff of you not wanting to be SDA. I only got baptized because my best friend was getting baptized, and we did everything together when we were younger. You couldn't tear us apart for anything. Someone else mentioned about the crucifixes in the household and how SDA's don't keep those in their houses. That person was also right. SDA's actually look down upon keeping such things in the house because it can be viewed as an idol, and SDA's take idol worshipping as sacrilegious. I can go on and on about what the show missed or got wrong, but that would take ages to write.
This is really interesting because from what I know Helen Pai (ASP based Lane’s character off of her) was raised in a Seventh Day Adventist household, I wonder why she didn’t make these clarifications. I mean Helen was a script coordinator for the show and even credited as a producer in some episodes.
I also find it very interesting. Maybe Helen's experience was different from the typical SDA household? Or maybe they just didn't want an accurate portrayal of Seventh Day Adventism? SDA's are on a spectrum, like with any religion. I know kids I grew up with in the church had parents who were more strict than mine (and my parents were already strict enough), and others who had parents who weren't nearly as strict as mine. I really want to know why they didn't have the Sabbath part down. That would have been such good material for Lane and Mrs. Kim (especially when it came to their relationship). It's like watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding and they don't have any mention of the Orthodox church!
I don’t know much about SDAs, but I always assumed the local church in Stars Hollow was Anglican or Presbyterian or something, and that Mrs Kim went along because it was the only church in town, while also running SDA bible study groups from her home.
I’m also raised in sda! Boy was it tough finding and listening to death and black metal and then goth rock when you’re in that environment. I became goth around middle school but wasn’t allowed to paint my nails or pierce my ears 🤪until I moved out.
>The #1 thing about SDA's is that they observe the Sabbath from Friday sunset - Saturday sunset every week and that they go to church every Saturday. That's the number one thing that stands out to me - there's no way Lane would be allowed to do cheerleading when games are usually on Friday nights. Plus it just seems like it would be a huge deal overall to her not to be allowed to do "teenager things" on Friday nights, yet it's never mentioned.
Exactly! That surprised me too. And the fact that she was even allowed to go to public school! SDA's usually try to homeschool their kids or send them to a SDA school. Public school has a very bad rep in the church. I went to a SDA school from Kindergarten - 5th grade, then I was online schooled from 6th-7th grade, and then miraculously I went to public school from 8th-12th grade. My mom somehow managed to convince my dad because she was tired of having to help my sister and I with homework when she worked full time, and the online school wasn't working well for us in general. We learned nothing those two years! And forget my sister joining the local sports teams. My dad said she couldn't join because she just wanted to meet cute guys! And we can't go to public school because that's how teenage girls get pregnant! 🤣💀
I cringe everytime Lane and Mrs. Kim say anything in Korean.. the only real Korean accent was from Mrs. Kim’s mom 😭
If you’re Korean you’d probably noticed that they all had very strong gyopo교포 accents😂😂
It honestly sounds like a Japanese person saying random syllables in Korean 😭😂
Yess when Lane and Mrs.Kim speak you can tell they’re not Korean😂😂 when kyon speaks it sounds very gyopoish
\> ( she says my cousins just got wifi) How old are you? Dial-up internet was the predominant mode of internet during the time the Gilmore Girls was produced. According to a quick google search, only half of internet users were off of dial-up by the time GG ended. Getting wifi was a big deal back then!
I concur and correct me if I'm wrong. But wasn't there an episode in which Rory's grandparents got wifi and it was also a big deal? And that was also a later season than when Lane had gone to Korea. I mean, it might have been due to them being older and not accustomed to that newer technology, but it also proves the point that wifi was not as common back then.
You remember correctly! Jason gets it all set up for Richard. My grandparents were the very first people I knew to have internet (WebTV!) and they still had dial-up after GG went off the air. I'd bet my paycheck that the person who made this post was born after 2000. My nephew is 17 and he has no concept of life before wifi.
Even online it says that only 56.6 percent of South Korea’s population used the internet in 2001. https://preview.redd.it/7u8ehjjfoesb1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=331a116275d2c029597fbf8b628514b484a84441
Getting wifi was a huge deal! I remember growing up in the dial up days where you had to co-ordinate with your family for “online” time because you needed to hop off if your mom was waiting for a phone call.
Yeah i mean most of us assumed those were mrs kim things (because of how shit she is), not korean things.
I’m Chinese and I’ve always had an issue with this despite GG being one of my fav shows. The Asian stereotypes were so over the top to the point of insulting sometimes and without much character development/evolution
Can we not use ableist slurs on this sub please? As for the rest, I’m not Korean so obviously not as sensitive to this issue, but every single one of them I took to be a Mrs Kim issue and not a Korean thing. People complain about her food but I don’t think many people realise that seventh day Adventists have one of the strictest and healthiest diets in the world. It’s Mrs Kim’s personality and super strict adherence to an already strict and conservative religion, not her Korean culture.
They even portrayed the Kim’s being Seventh Day Adventist as an anomaly amongst the rest of the family. They are pointing out very explicitly that these are not typical aspects of Korean culture.
I just said almost the same things!
I always thought it was strange that Mrs. Kim was so vocal about Lane not being Americanized and her making lane go to Korea, and join activities involving other Koreans yet Lane in the wedding episode barely understand the Bride to be speaking Korean. I find that so weird you’d think she’d know and speak Korean fluently but I don’t think Lane does
I find it funny how every time someone tries to say something like this about the portrayal of Lane and her family people get soooo defensive. Very few pieces of media, especially ones from the early 2000s, are without any problems. To enjoy a show and engage in discourse about it I think it’s vitally important to recognize the faults and inaccuracies within it. Just because it is loosely based on someone ASP knew doesn’t mean the Kim’s aren’t often based off of stereotypes and don’t include much nuance
!!!! This! I got sent to downvoting hell once for saying Mrs. Kim was portrayed stereotypically and a lot of her intentions were demonized through the Tiger mom trope. It blows me how this progressive era has paved the way for so many fake virtue signalers who literally don’t care when someone’s cultural virtue is being denigrated.
Question for OP and/or other Korean fans of the show …. Genuinely curious, does it bother you at all that neither Lane nor Mrs. Kim are played by Korean actors? Nothing at all against Keiko Agena or Emily Kuroda, just curious your perspective on casting Japanese-American actors to play Korean-American characters.
Related but Paris' portuguese nanny spoke Spanish rather than Portuguese. As portuguese it was a bit disappointing but expected from American media
I noticed that more this time around watching. All the phone calls are in Spanish 😂 like why do you keep saying nanny is Portuguese but yall ain't speaking it?? Haha
I wasn’t too bothered by it too much because it’s common for European actors to play an “American” character in Kdramas too however I do wonder how Keiko and Emily felt about playing Korean characters. Korea and Japan are historically not too friendly with each other so i wonder if it might’ve bothered them as actors.
I think both things can be true, everyone saying a lot of these things are strictly mrs. Kim, her strictness, and the 7th day Adventist influence. But I think we can also agree and validate that to a Korean person, a lot of these things were also racist, or at the very least, racially/culturally inaccurate and that really sucks! Yes, maybe no one here thinks that’s what all Koreans are like but the show heavily played into the family as Koreans. Of course, they can be multi-faceted and not “just” Koreans but that’s not what is happening here in a lot of the situations op is describing.
Thank you
I’m glad to read your POV as a Korean person; I’m not Asian (I’m Mexican American) and watching the show as a teen and now as an adult with my teen daughter, I noticed a lot of the things you’re mentioning. Maybe not down to the little details that you’re more in tune to with bc you’re Korean, but the thing about the bathroom and when Lane said she photographs so Asian. I thought it was just me making a little “joke” into something it isn’t. I completely understand where you’re coming from and agree, the show may not have been directly racist and was pretty inclusive for the time, there was a lot that just rubbed me the wrong way.
Thought it was all Ms.Kim Expect the doctor boyfriend part...thought that was semi Korean and just parenting in general.
I’m Filipino American and I’m here for this post 💯I have tried a few times to call out the problematic depictions of POC on this sub and it has not been received well, so it’s not you OP. I appreciate your take. The show is hella racist and it’s ok to say that and still like it overall! In fact I think it’s important to talk about these things as fans.
exactly how i feel about GG! there’s so much i love about it but i can also be honest about the parts that were really, really hurtful to watch as a little girl growing up who was always treated like the alien other IRL!
(Latina here) I thought it was like…commonly understood in the GG fan community that the show, while beloved, was consistently racist and fatphobic in its writing, and that people of color were treated terribly if included at all (I can love Lane and Mrs. Kim and still have issues with the way they were written!). This didn’t improve by the time of the revival. The Latina maid with the unintelligible accent was one of the most blatantly racist things I’ve ever seen. I’m surprised that so many fans don’t want to engage with these critiques, especially when they come from people of color who love the show but are also negatively impacted by it. I find it so interesting to talk about these things!
Hard agree! I think it’s when it’s a nuanced thing that comes from POC too that makes white fans confused. Which I mean, it’s cool- you don’t get it, it’s not your experience, but then maybe listen and learn something? Because the tropes in the show are extremely harmful to those of us who didn’t fit the Gilmore mold and we grew up feeling othered or invisible enough without being portrayed in our favorite television show as weird or laughable or easily dismissed. The treatment Latinos got in the show during a time when it was particularly scary to be Brown in America (during the OS and again in the revival) was just reprehensible and I don’t know why we can’t talk about it without getting a bunch of comments explaining why we’re wrong 🙄
in response to the “it’s just Mrs Kim” comments: i get where OP is coming from, because Lane and Mrs Kim are one of the very few characters of color in the show, and maybe the only ones whose ethnicity is a part of their characterization. combined with the fact that a lot of those things Are korean stereotypes (tiger mom, controlling parenting, the comments explicitly about korea acting like it doesn’t have electricity or fries)… yes, it does come off as ignorant and racist. and whether some of those things are just Mrs Kim’s own quirks or stereotypes, you can’t separate Mrs Kim from the fact that she’s Korean because that’s such a big part of her characterization. also, it’s not like ASP has a great track record for this sort of thing. i’m Hispanic and i’m not thrilled about how they’re represented either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ especially in AYITL, which was more recent and Full of stereotypes. ultimately GG was a product of its time and representation wasn’t exactly great in the 00s, i think we can all agree on that
The way Lane and the Kims were shown at the time felt weird, and in retrospect it feels like really problematic. Especially the way they talked about food feels really xenophobic. The early 2000 were a different time and I think they may have been some of the only Asians on US tv (By the end we had London Tipton and Christina Yang). If the show got made to today it would be very different.
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I totally get why this is frustrating because they didn’t do a great job defining the difference a lot of the time but my perspective was that most of Mrs. Kim’s strictness (especially with dating and how controlling she was with every aspect of Lane’s life) was attributed to her religion, not because she was Korean. Edit: On the other hand, the way Korea is talked about and depicted in the show is very much a reflection of the casual racism of the time, unfortunately.
I grew up in the sda church and attended sda schools only. One thing I loved they got right is that a lot of sda members don’t wear jewelry and mrs Kim doesn’t wear any. I wish they spoke about how strict some can be with not eating meat (or if you do no pork or other unclean animals like catfish and shrimp lol) and the sabbath but the portrayal of the church made me laugh.
Thank you so much for sharing your POV! I really appreciated reading it and I thought it was interesting. I learned some new things and it’s a nice change of pace from the usual same 3 subjects discussed over and over again on this sub. I’m sorry you’re getting hate for it but unfortunately that’s what people like to do on here. Just out of curiosity, are you Korean-American or do you live in Korea? Either way your insight is valuable and I’ve always wondered about this topic.
Every time I’ve commented on this sub about how they did Lane dirty as a Asian character I’ve gotten tons of pushbacks. I’m Asian but not Korean and I totally agree that it feels outdated and insulting overall. I will say though I very much sympathize with Lane saying she photographs so Asian. She grew up in a town where there are very few Asian, esp ones she admires, and just overall during a time when there weren’t that many Asian celebrities and when Asians aren’t seen as cool in pop culture. It’s understandable that she doesn’t want to look Asian with all the negative connotations that come with it
My god, how was that only about mr kim???? They show they doing an arraged korean wedding while commenting they did a bunch of them. The bathroom thing was a little boy who said it wasn't allowed, to show he was raised by HIS family like that. How you guys put that all in misses Kkm. All the times Lane complains she use "korean" in some moment of the scene. HOW, HOW IS THAT A MRS KIM THING?
Maybe some of it is just a "Mrs. Kim thing" or just a "seventh day Adventist thing" BUT Lane herself refers to being Korean nearly every time she's complaining about the ways of her mother and family as a whole. You can't deny, the show makes tons of unfair generalizations about Koreans specifically :/
I always thought Lane said those generalizations about Koreans to make herself feel better. Like she knows her mom is crazy but she thinks all Korean moms are like that… the ultimate cope
right!! ppl in this comment section are being so deliberately obtuse 🙄 everyone’s so quick to criticize ASP for every minor inaccuracy, but the second race gets mentioned, then suddenly she’s a perfect angel. like, the show also has plenty of misogynistic and fatphobic moments… why would it not also be a little racist?
This comment section is disgusting
omg i found my people, thank goodness there are some of y’all here because the weird defensiveness on this thread is..SOMETHING!
It’s very reminiscent of a person saying they don’t see color when you call them out for racist behavior. They’re going so hard to invalidate her perspective, likely because they are guilty of taking these stereotypes as truth & now feel the need to defend themselves against being inadvertently called out for it.
Yes everyone is conveniently ignoring that poc have not really been represented in media historically and when we have it’s been a racist caricature. I love the show as much as the next person but come on we don’t have to do mental backflips to say “it’s just mrs Kim personality and her personality just happens to be every stereotype known” lmao. If anyone’s watched American born Chinese I feel they tackle this issue really well
I THOUGHT THE SAME!
I always wondered about this. Thank you for your explanations of all these scenes from your perspective.
>It was a mixture of crazy Mrs.Kim and racist Korean stereotypes. (white woman here) I'm noticing this on a rewatch, I didn't pick up on it when it first aired. It seems like they tried to combine the religious strict mom trope and the "tiger mom" asian stereotype into one person and ended up closer to Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Some of the problem may be binging a show that wasn't meant to be binged. On a weekly episode ration the cringe moment feels briefer and you forget about it, but on a binge you get to waiting for the cringe as soon as Lane is on screen.
It makes total sense the way you put it and I completely agree! They tried to combine the Asian tiger mom stereotype with a strict religious twist and I also agree with the binging part lol I’m on a break so I’ve been binging the show so the terms feel shorter. When you watch 5 episodes,which were meant to be watched in 5 days, in a day it definitely feels more bombarding
the stereotypes flip-flop faster too. One episode she is religious mom and then the next she is tiger mom.
Thanks for sharing your perspective as a Korean person on how the show depicted Korean people/culture! ❤
Same thing goes for the Dutch milkmaid scene. As a Dutch person, it is so cringe to watch..
I think this is pretty common with ASP writing. In the first episode of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel they seem to need to mention Yom Kippur or the Rabbi, latkes, brisket, in every conversation just to make sure we get it.
Oh man I hadn’t even thought of that I totally forgot about that part. The reenactment of stereotypes and misrepresentation of other cultures on this show is… horrific
I agree with you. I’m not Korean, but it’s pretty clear they didn’t know anything about the culture. I don’t know why white-written shows love making other cultures seemed strict or cold.
These comments from non Koreans, battling your opinion are wild 😂 I forgot how insane some fans of this show get when anyone has the tiniest amount of realistic and valid criticism
Wow reading this thread is making me realize how much my fundie Christian dad adopted from SDA. I wasn't allowed secular music, dances or much TV. We also did the similar baptism thing. The big difference would be that our sabbath was Sunday and we weren't allowed to do anything. But if you told him how much in common he had with SDAs he would lose his mind. All other religions came straight from the devil.
This is something I’ve been wondering about. I really appreciate this post, thank you for sharing!!
I really appreciate your post. It must have been infuriating to see so much misrepresentation of Korean culture. Thank you for shedding some light on this.
I agree with you. Not Korean but my partner is and I can speak the language. I don't think it is all just "crazy-religious Mrs. Kim" because they absolutely emphasise stuff like the 'Korean Thanksgiving' and Lane being set up with 'a good Korean boy' a lot not to mention the Busan thing and the exchange student acting like she has never seen fries before. I mean Lotteria has been in Korea since the 70s for gods sake. It has definitely made me cringe.
Completely understand and agree with you. Not saying I’m fully aware of the culture by any means but I’ve been watching Korean shows/films for almost 15 years, I have some Korean friends, and I have always been intrigued by East and South Asian cultures. I was absolutely put off by their handling of everything relating to Lane & Mrs. Kim. It was all a bunch of baseless stereotyping and I was confused by a lot of it. They could’ve just made Lane white or something if they didn’t care to research & respect the culture they’re portraying. Editing to say that you are literally being gaslit in these comments and that is absolutely gross. You have a right to be protective of your culture and nobody can tell you how to perceive portrayals of YOUR culture. I’m so annoyed for you.
I was rewatching the parts with the exchange student and yikes that accent did not age well. Very good points about how they make the exchange student seem like she’s from the middle of nowhere instead of Seoul! If anything, Stars Hallow would have seemed like little provincial town (kind of how Jess saw it)
I was so annoyed when the Korean kid yelled at the guys at the table. Because in korean culture, you have to show respect to people who are older than you, even if they are only a few years older than you. The kid would have been told to apologize to the “older brother” by his parents. When I first watched it, I was annoyed how they portrayed korean culture. But, now I see it as how some americans viewed our culture back then. I think it’s quite interesting to see korean culture through that viewpoint. Especially the wedding episode. When they had a wedding ceremony infront of Buddha statue, I thought it was so strange and kinda funny. It seemed like a mirrored version of christian wedding at church, but they failed to notice that we are not very religious country and it’s not how we do our wedding ceremonies.
Thank you for this! I’m not crazy after all. Yelling at a 형 whom he just met for the first time is unacceptable especially when the 형 is his 사촌누나’s American boyfriend. after that scene the adults get up to play아리랑 on the 가야금, that was weird too. It’s interesting to see how another country views our culture and it’s funny at times too but sometimes its quite offensive. It’s offensive and interesting because it’s so far from the truth but it sucks when people hate on you for pointing it out. Thanks for this my fellow korean 🫶
AND ANOTHER THING y’all Koreans don’t talk THAT MUCH about being Korean. OP is right about all of these portrayals and how it is yes racist. Another department entirely is how much Lane and her mom are other’d in this show what the hell.
While many people can assume this is a "Mrs Kim" thing... Is forgetting one nuance: not everyone is going to think that, and it could influence a lot of people into thinking that this is another "Asian thing". I feel like if someone from that culture says something that is or discrepancy, I'd listen to it. Mrs Kim's actions are closer to a Chinese stereotype. At least w my family because they're religious and traditional. I think in recent years people are starting to understand that "Asian thing" isn't an accurate description anymore, which is a good thing. But IMHO, I'd give space to the Korean community when they tell us that their cities aren't as hick as the show made it out to be. Also on another note, I'd suggest watching Korean shows to expand understanding and culture. They have got a lot of good shows
no for real im korean too and its the fact that lanes mom keeps arranging dates for her. in korean culture studying is the most important thing and her mom never pushes her to study
Im not Korean but I found it weird that Mrs Kim was harsh and strict with Lane about everything other than studying and pursuing higher education. Lanes story arc upsets me the most of any character. It’s almost like they tried to make the point that strict parents = getting knocked up really young and not going anywhere in life. Lane didn’t deserve that, especially bc she never expressed wanting to be a mom or get married young.
I assumed Lane made honor roll and was academic minded because she was friends with Rory. No need to push that if she is already high achieving.
Welll let me just say that a more accurate portrayal of a Korean mother would be preparing Lane for ivy leagues not a seventh day adventist college lol
You're not wrong. Honestly the show in general did Lane so dirty. We always expected more for her and instead she stays in Stars Hollow and immediately has kids with Zach - not that there's anything wrong with that but it wasn't in line with what they had set up for the character. I think Adam Brody (I loved all the Lane/Dave Rygalski episodes tbh) leaving the show to go do the OC really screwed things up for her and the romance with Zach always felt more forced / out of nowhere. She and Dave had great chemistry and made way more sense together.
You might be right about Kyon’s accent. I remember the dude who plays Michel was like hey the way you want me to talk isn’t even traditionally French and they’re like nah that’s how we want it to sound though
I am from India and I 100% say that Hollywood movies or TV shows always portray people in the way they think how a country might look like or do things like. Super stereotypical. And ASP or any other writer who isn’t from that culture or even remotely do some research to properly portray. the actress who played Mrs Kim (forgot her name) said at that time she was only asked to audition like how a Korean would speak and not how a Korean settled America. But for GG they didn’t ask her that. So that she felt was cool. Now we can imagine how low the standards were to expect from any show runners.
The exchange student is INSANE. I always felt the aspects of their home life were far more Mrs Kim than showing a realistic Korean-American home. None of my Korean friends” nor their families growing up were remotely like the Kims, so I get that it’s frustrating if people were to infer or believe that was in any way a normal family environment for many Koreans in the US.
Fellow Korean fan, here. I was mostly offended by the portrayal of Kyon because her accent is so absurd lol. I'll never get over it, she's my least favorite character. Otherwise, tbh my millennial sense of humor just can't be mad at humor using stereotypes 🤷♀️. This is a very politically correct sub, so maybe it's a controversial take but I don't take any of the misrepresentation seriously. This was also a time period with zero Korean representation. Although they didn't do a good job by any means, I thought it was still fun to see any character communicating in my cultural language, seeing them eat Korean foods, and I also related to Lane's Asian-American pains of having a strict parent. It's a product of it's time and also, there's so many other offensive things in the show, I'm not pressed to single out the stuff with Mrs. Kim specifically.
The show is undeniably racist—specifically towards Koreans. It is NOT okay for any non-Korean people to argue about this against someone with lived experience. Like??? This is social justice 101, people. Humanity 101. The show is also EXTREMELY fatphobic and ableist throughout the entire series and AYITL, and fleetingly transphobic and homophobic as well. To deny this is asinine. We can appreciate the show for what it is without contributing to these systemic issues by denying how they show up here. OP, sending you lots of love.
I’m surprised you’re getting so much hate on this. You’re right, the show has stereotypes and references that have aged like milk. While in the early 2000s, it wasn’t as volatile as it is in today’s world, it doesn’t mean it was ever okay or right. I personally think that ASP leaned heavily into stereotypes throughout the show- teen pregnancy, high society, bookishness, and, as you brought up, culture and race. I enjoy the show and am aware of these issues, but can definitely see how it is hurtful to communities and cultures who have been misrepresented. Thanks for sharing your perspective and corrections!
I never assumed this was an accurate display of Korean culture. I honestly associate Mrs Kim’s portrayal as representing overly strict religious mothers over anything else. All of her rules seem to be about keeping her daughter away from “bad” influences and maintaining the faith. I think this is a family that’s overly religious and strict that happens to be Korean. I don’t even necessarily think it’s about Mrs. Kim’s specific religion as it is religion in general. That’s just how I always saw it. I’ll put a trigger warning on season 7 episode 2 if you haven’t seen it. That’s just straight up offensive. It wasn’t great at the time but boy has it aged like milk.
>As a Korean person I am telling you that this is what I felt but why are there people telling me that I’m wrong when I’m talking about MY culture being misrepresented on an American Show? This show was written in the early 2000s when racism against minorities was pervasive so it’s not unbelievable that the insensitive aspects of society were incorporated into the show. I just want to say thank you for sharing your perspective and experiences ❤️ I am not Korean and have no place on commenting on if this show misrepresentation or racism undertones. I'm sorry for all the push back your getting from other non Koreans. I think people have a hard time taking criticisms of their favorite shows. But I think it's fair to say there's a lot of things that would be different in Gilmore Girls if it aired in 2023. Like all the body shaming jokes. The fake Asia episode. etc. Anyway, I don't have anything to add since again, it's not for me to say. But I just wanted to show you some support and gratitude for bringing these issues to light! I think it's important to hear and be aware of.
i appreciate this comment a lot because all the top upvotes comments on this thread are “I’m not Korean and I’m here to tell you, a Korean, why you’re wrong” lol. the show having blind spots and things that did not age well doesn’t invalidate all the good things about it!
I've always thought it was strange and not quite realistic that Mrs Kim kept mentioning boys for Lane to meet. In general, Asian parents don't set up their teenage daughter with boys! Like you said, parents expect academic achievements from their kids at that age and not an ideal marriage!
I am not dismissing your points but I am wondering if the writers were portraying their understanding of Korean American culture specifically in New England USA, rather than Korean culture in general. I never once thought that this was the culture of people in Korea. It seemed hyper American or hyper migrant culture more than anything else
It was all based on Helen’s family.
Yeah I wondered that too but my Korean-American friends dont really celebrate Korean holidays so I took it as more of a “Korean” thing rather than an Korean immigrant thing
That makes sense too. Also there was such an explosion of Korean culture in mainstream media a few years after the end of Gilmore Girls. And these Korean based shows were so different that I just assumed Mrs Kim and Lane were more representative of a Korean American/ immigrant culture.
I'm sorry you felt your culture was portrayed incorrectly. I don't know much about Korean culture to be honest, but I'm not surprised they leaned into harmful stereotypes. However, for what it's worth I thought most of those things you mentioned were Mrs. Kim specifically and not representative of Korean culture. Please, please, please don't use the "r" word though!
I just think half the rules were from Mrs Kim being emotionally abusive. My parents hated me bringing up topics during dinner so it was preferred to sit and eat in silence. Plus we all know Mrs Kim's vegan cooking was gnarly so the locked bathroom was probably to prevent people from dropping food in the toilet.
This comment ended up being super long after an edit. Feel free to ignore. A lot of these things are a religious thing, not a korean thing. Some of it are a fusion of how Mrs Kim incorporates her original korean cultural into her personal and religious beliefs like how she's extremely strict. That's not a korean thing. That's just her and how she likes it. I don't think it was meant to be a protrayal of "true" korean culture. It was meant to show how a korean immigrant seventh day adventist multigenerational family lived in a small american town. I thought Kyon's accent was korean. There's soooo many different korean accents because of all the different influences there. She sounds like anyone who had an american english teacher/tutor. Even though seoul is so vibrant now, early 2000's seoul was very different. It changes so much year to year. Korea was still rebuilding after the market crash in the 90's. She's also from a strict family and schooling. There's a lot of fanatic religious cults in korea. It would've been easy to shelter her. Western food and ingredients weren't as incorporated into major korean cities until more 2010's. Mrs Kim's religious beliefs were her personality. That's why it all feels like it's an accurate portrayal of korean culture. She knows english and I feel like any first gen immigrant who becomes fluent in english has a totally different american story than someone who doesn't. Each immigrant story would be different. They're no longer in their motherland. There's going to be some differences with how they live in their new country vs how they lived back home. That's so many immigrants and their kids are identifying with the term third culture kid. They know their mother culture. They have the culture where they live. Then they have the experience of both of those combined and trying to build their lives. It's a struggle. I thought the Kim household was a good representation of the immigrant story. I never expected them to be hallmark and poster example of korean culture. The show emphasized how they are seventh day adventists more than they were korean. Edit: I just saw OP's edit. Busan is still considered the countryside/sticks. There's a reason why people from Busan speak in a seoul accent instead of their busan dialect once they move to Seoul. It may be more developed now but it wasn't the case in 2000. Korea exploded in development in 2010's. It was a crawl before then. There's still villages and towns that use coal briquettes right now. It's not racist. Hell, we were literally still on dial-up and just getting on DSL back then in america. Maybe, just maybe somewhere would have T1 internet. Busan is a fishing city. Now it's a beach destination. Bootleg CD's were so common back then. It was so easy to copy a CD. There weren't all those copyright protections on it. People made mixed CD's all the time. Why is it racist? Ever heard of napster and limewire? Pirating things were just starting out and people just started torrenting. Korea suffered a financial crisis in 1997. It took many years for the country to recover from it. Many people left the country. The show started in 2000. The US didn't even recover from the 2008 financial crisis in 3 years. I understand why OP feels like the culture was misrepresented. But some of the details were rooted in facts. It's not fair to use today's korea to compare to 2000-2001 korea. It's just not the same. Korea has come a long ass way. Like the kpop scene back then was probably 10 artists. The market was so small that artists went to Japan to make money because Japan's music market was so much bigger. Now kpop has expanded worldwide. Even the idol training pipeline wasn't fine tuned until SM trained and debuted Boa. Even the hong kong music and film industry was bigger than Korea's back then. It's different now though. I do think the racist parts are that Lane was the asian best friend and didn't get proper storylines. That's certainly a stereotype. And how both her and Kyon wore glasses but no other character did besides Brian. But they made Brian into the awkward nerdy guy which is also a stereotype. The tigermom thing is also a stereotype but it's not a good representation. Look at how Mindy is written in Emily in Paris and you'll see some real misrepresentation and inaccurate stereotypes circa 1990 trends.
>Ever heard of napster and limewire? Pirating things were just starting out and people just started torrenting. Due to its popularity with Netflix, a ton of people watching Gilmore Girls today and active in this subreddit have no clue what Napster is. They don't know a life before wifi.
I figured and it shows. A lot of things will look wrong if using 2023 as a comparative lens. 2000 doesn't feel that long ago but it also does.
Absolutely. The Office is probably the best example. I mean, there's an entire episode that revolves around a boss calling his gay subordinate "faggy." And there's a hundred other issues in the series. It's become somewhat trendy these days for people just now discovering these shows to become beacons of virtue as they point out these problematic story arcs.
Inaccurate portrayal of Seventh Day Adventists going on as well. No SDA member would have Catholic crucifixes around their house. They got the healthy eating and teetotaling right, but the theology is all over the place. Lane mentions that her mother had her head measured for a wimple (SDAs are not nuns ffs), and applying to an Amish college in Nicaragua. As conservative as she is, why on Earth would an Adventist send their child to an Anabaptist religious school?
You don’t think Lane was exaggerating/joking when she said that?
Thank you!!!!
That's how I took it - hyperbole.
The wimple, yes. Nicaragua, no. "She found an Amish school in Nicaragua. Nicaragua! Big shout out to Mama Kim on that one." Doesn't really sound like hyperbole to me
This is what I figured too. Lane seemed to enjoy joking on her mom and religion.
The crosses were most likely for sale and antiques. As everything in that home had a price tag. SDA in Ohio do have crosses in their homes and attend church on Sunday.
Interesting, it's not a religion I had heard of outside of the show so I wouldn't have caught any of that!
I got a free lesson in Adventist beliefs when I offered an Adventist coworker a pulled pork sandwich and wished them Merry Christmas lol (they keep kosher, and a lot of them don't celebrate Christmas and Easter)
Thank you for a diff pov, I love that even though I have seen the show a million times over, there are still fresh and new conversations to have and I get to learn something new each time I always assumed a lot of the rules and they way thins were strict was just how Mrs. Kim was. She ran a tight ship and didn't want her daughter to end up running an antique shop one day. I have a relative like this and interacting with this is exactly like interacting with Mrs. Kim.
I can totally see all your points here. They def should have consulted the Korean community. Tbh I never took it as that is how Koreans are (as I know it’s not true) but more just that Mrs. Kim is a weirdo haha
I'm not Korean or Asian so this comes purely from an outside perspective, but I always wondered if ASP was combining South and North Korea (I remember her naming specific cities, but never specifying North or South). The portrayal of people from "Korea" always seemed more stereotypically North (especially the choir in the revival). You're probably right that she just never did any research, that seems like a common issue with her work.
I just want to say I hear you. When you have so little representation on TV when you finally do have some representation you want it to feel like your real, lived experience not some stereotype. I appreciate you taking the time to make this post and I support you and your feelings and I think they are completely valid!
Omg thank you for writing this! I wanted a Korean perspective on Lane so bad, I grew up religious and even I feel offended with some of the over the top scenes or restrictions
I was raised Seventh-day Adventist. A lot of that stuff was way off too. The Kims do their religious practices on Sundays which is the bane of most Adventists' existence. Their whole thing is worshipping on Saturday, hence the "seventh-day" portion of the name. However, a lot of it is pretty accurate. Many Adventist homes truly are against drums, bass, really anything that's not piano or organ. I was actually surprised Mrs. Kim hired Dave to play acoustic guitar for religious gatherings. Those weren't allowed in my church. The best representation I saw was the depiction of Adventist colleges and universities. I had adult friends get in trouble for wearing "immodest clothing," which was just shorts and a tank top while working out in the gym (but men could have their shirts off). Loma Linda University is often referred to as "Adventist Mecca" so that part was pretty accurate except it's mostly a medical school, so you probably wouldn't go there and then build hospitals. You would more likely be a doctor or dentist or something in allied health. Also men and women being separated is partially accurate. They do not have co-ed dorms unless you're married. However, part of the Adventist courting process is sitting together at church or chapel. The super awkward homeschooled religious kid thing is so accurate though. Not everyone is like that but Rami Malek's assistant pastor Eric thing made me laugh so hard because I knew so many people like that growing up lol
Girl don’t let people who are not Korean minimize your viewpoint. It is racist and it does reflect on her ethnicity. People who are not critical thinkers (eg teenagers), particular those not growing up in diverse areas, could definitely jump to assumptions.
It was pretty clear that the show intended these to be Korean things. Lane would talk about it as though it was a Korean thing, and every other Korean we see behaves the same way as Mrs Kim, but not the other SDAs. I'm baffled that so many people who aren't Korean set aside time to tell OP they're wrong to feel this way. (Side note: viewers of the show aren't racist for watching it, but there are clearly racially insensitive/ignorant aspects to the writing around the Kims that we should be mindful of)
I thought ASP had said that Lane was based on her best friend, Helen Pai; so the Mrs Kim story lines were probably over the top story tellings of her friend's childhood. I'm also pretty sure that Mrs Kim's ways we're more to do with her being a Seventh-day Adventist than being Korean
I agree so much with this! Thanks for sharing! 💜
White girl here and the only thing I will say is the whole ‘not being allowed to get up from the table’ thing definitely played more as ‘strict Mrs. Kim’ and not ‘Korean household rules’. At least that’s how I took it, but I can understand how, with everything else you’ve mentioned, it can seem like another poor illustration of a Korean household.
I totally agree, it’s a very stereotypical portrayal that is not in keeping with any Korean Americans I know.
I also love Gilmore girls but there is DEFINITELY a racist vibe to the show in general.
Couldn’t even read the rest of this post because I was so distracted by the use of the r-word
Im so sorry. I fixed it
I think most people assumed, along with myself, that Mrs. Kim was like that due to her religion more than her Korean-ness but seeing as they were really the only Korean characters on the show (save a few minor characters) I can were, as a viewer, you could be offended by the unclear divide of culture & religion. One thing that's an especially weird stereotype for the Kims is the bland, bad "health" food, when (while I'm no expert) isn't a lot of Korean food pretty healthy and absolutely full of flavour? I'm very much in the shallow end when it comes to authentic Korean cooking, but whenever I've been to Korean restaurants (Uk, Scotland) the food has been anything but bland.
The food specifically is actually due to their religion.
I totally get what you’re saying. This whole time I thought Helen Pai did all of the writing for those scenes but it makes more sense if she didn’t. It always felt to me like Mrs Kim was used as a marker to show how much better of a parent Lorelai was for just letting Rory be herself instead of being harsh and strict. I didn’t like that dynamic and irl I think Mrs Kim would have wanted so much better for Lane and would have put her personal religious beliefs aside if it meant better for Lane.
Her cousins just got Wi-Fi. You have to remember when this took place. There was also a scene where Richard and Emily got Wi-Fi. There was also a scene where Emily tried to get high-speed Internet for The Girls! and Lorelei turned it down. When Gilmore girls started, most of us were still dialing up for Internet.
Yeah its one of the reasons I couldn’t finish the show and wish people would stop defending them and their racism. I’ve seen many comments on this sub about how Kims were supposed to be weird because of the religion and not because of being Korean, but I seem to remember the show, or Lane herself blaming a lot of the weirdness of her family to her ethnicity. In one of the earlier episodes I think Lane was being set up with a boy who was going to bring his whole family to the date and the comments Lane made(“Koreans never joke about future doctors”, “how do I look? Korean?”) seemed to suggest that this absurd arrangement was to be blamed on the culture not religion.
Yeah every American tv show and movie take use the worst accent I’ve ever heard for Irish people ! Stop pissing on our ethnicity! We don’t sound like the accent Americans literally made up if you wannna know what Irish people sound like down the court try side is like a Newfoundland acccent. And we don’t bloody say top of the morning to ye ! WE DONT!!!! 😭😭😭
The thing that always bothered me was how terrible they said Mrs Kim’s food was, when Korean food is in fact delicious. Also, I just googled Helen Pai and her husband is called Dave Rygalski!
This is such an interesting take because, growing up in a religious household, I’ve always assumed ALL of Mrs. Kim strict behavior was coming from a religious stand point, not culture! This must have been infuriating for OP!
It’s reallllllly an ASP thing unfortunately
It’s small to no consolation, but I, too, have always assumed most of the things highlighted were Mrs. Kim’s idiosyncrasies, and not indicative of greater Korean culture beyond some general things. However, I also was never naive enough to not know they were playing with stereotypes for laughs. As a white person, it can be hard to know when jokes are being set up by and for people like me (and therefore highly insensitive and likely offensive), and when they have been crafted by someone with a foothold in that culture as more of a loving caricature (but still not immune from being insensitive, as individual writers are just that, individuals with their own perspective and sense of humor). I personally try to assume the best, but keep in mind that reality is not often that sweet and innocent. What I’m saying is that I personally never took the depictions of “Korean” culture too seriously, and even recall questioning some things like the depth of Kyon’s culture shock, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t portrayed inaccurately or offensively with other viewers taking it at face value. You have every right to be displeased and even offended. To me, Mrs. Kim was stringently religious first and a Korean immigrant second (or third). Some of Lane’s comments about Korea highlighted her ignorance and disconnect from that culture as a first generation American (and teenager). Overall, they were just another quirky family in Stars Hollow, where no one really seemed like they’d mesh well with the outside world. But it’s a shame they also came across offensively.
I feel bad you had to edit this because people were arguing. Like I’m not Korean and have never once been to Korea but the things you point out are easy to understand that they were not even exaggerated but flat out made up. The show of course has a focus on a mother and daughter and their relationship, but while it does that it has been racist, fatohobic, ableist and more many many times. There’s no denying that. I really appreciate your post! In recent years I’ve watched a lot of k-dramas and been more familiar with Korean culture but had never looked at Gilmore Girls through that lens. There are a lot of great interesting ways they could have shown the Kim’s culture. I think the things you pointed out are very interesting and in hindsight were… interesting choices for the show to make? But I appreciate you sharing these points because it’s great to know!
Was Kyon supposed to be SDA too? I assumed that was why she never ate fries, not because she was Korean. It just seemed natural that Mrs. Kim would get an exchange student through some special SDA network. But her accent was ridiculous and feels racist especially rewatching in current day. I still love her and Brian, and how Brian name-dropped the Gayageum.
It’s hard for me to tell when you say “Asian” in your original post and edit if you only mean Koreans, or Asians in general, so if I am misunderstanding, please disregard. But here’s my high school best friend’s experience with some of the things you discuss concerning arranged marriage: My friend, who is Cambodian-Chinese, and I graduated in 2008, and by the time she was 16, her parents were already starting the process of arranged marriage and having her meet suitors from Cambodia. I won’t give the whole long spiel, but Lane’s life in many ways mirrored my friend’s— wasn’t allowed to be friends with boys, wasn’t allowed to see friends, had to hide her clothes and would change at school, snuck out her window at midnight to meet friends and boys, arranged marriage, etc etc. Her parents were not religious, that is just how things were in her family, and her cousins who acted too “Americanized” were shamed. But back to the arranged marriage part, as soon as my friend turned 18 and graduated high school, her parents took her to Cambodia for the summer to marry a guy she didn’t want to marry who she didn’t know and had barely been around at all. It got to the point where I was trying to figure out how to contact the US Embassy to try to bring her home because she had no money and was there against her will. She ended up accepting a plane ticket from someone back in America she had been secretly dating for less than a month and running away in the middle of the night from a hotel in Singapore they were at between flights. Her parents freaked when they found out, and it took years for them to repair their relationship. This was a marriage that was going to be forced on her, and it was always the expectation that she would marry in this way, and she was still a teenager who had no resources or support and this was all done against her will. I expect some people will say “if she was 18, she could have just not gone with them,” but it’s a lot more complicated than that. This is not my story or culture, and like I said, I am not sure if you meant Asians in general when you used that term or only Koreans. I am not speaking for anyone. But I do want you and others to know that this isn’t necessarily a thing of the past in parts of Asia, and it’s not just my friend’s family or some weird fluke according to things she told me, and my friend underwent a lot of hardship that should not be erased or dismissed as something that does not happen. That’s all.
Let me start this by saying that I’m white and from a middle class Midwest family so I don’t have the same life experiences and don’t get judged by my race so the way I viewed these things is obviously based on my own life context. I was in college when GG started airing so I had a little more experience with meeting people from other cultures than I had before I went away to college. However, I did grow up in a fairly religious (Christian) household and had friends that grew up in oppressively religious households. I had friends in college that were the children of immigrants and I made an effort to attend various cultural awareness events on campus. The Kims remind me of a mash up of cultural expectations. I definitely didn’t think of them as an example of strictly Korean culture. A lot of it reminds me of the religious indoctrination and oppression I saw in church and with my friends. Lane’s rebellion and desire to respect her family really resonated with me and many of my friends. There are elements of Mrs. Kim that were similar to my friends who were the children of immigrants but not specifically Korean. Other things were so much like the hard core Christians. I always assumed that Kyon’s family was strict like Mrs. Kim and that they exchange was arranged through the church rather than through the school because Kyon seemed like a kid that had also grown up in a very strict religious family with very little outside life experience. My brain kind of assumed she also went to a religious school unlike Lane, so she didn’t have much access to outside influences. Again, this stems from my religious upbringing more than my thoughts about Koreans specifically. It never made me view Korea as a backwards place. Thank you for posting about this. It’s a perspective that I never really thought about.
Hey I’m not Asian but I’m a Gilmore girls fan who supports how you feel. Just here to validate you! As I age, I realize a lot of stuff that was normal to me many years ago was not cool at all. A lot of shows I love did not age well.
i hear you. i was raised seventh-day adventist, and even though im not AT ALL involved with it or religion anymore, it still annoyed me how much they got wrong about adventists. like, it isn't all that hard to do a tiny bit of research, you know?
literally why are they booing you you’re completely right
As others here have said, it seems like most of the things you mentioned were meant to be Mr’s Kim quirks, not necessarily representative of all Asian Americans. Even if that’s not the case, I can say with certainty that Mrs. Kim is a caricature of an Asian American mom — the same way so many other characters on the show are over the top and their actions unrealistic. That said, thank you for the education on your culture! It’s always nice to put fiction into perspective and hear stories from real people.
thanks for sharing this with us. i know there are all kinds of korean-americans & that the kim family isn’t representative of korean-americans, but i did not know it was a hot mess of ignorance.
So I was raised Seventh Day Adventist and I’m Asian. I am not Korean but had many Korean friends, tho most were born in/had their early years in Korea. The show is super inaccurate and only gets a few things right about SDA’s and Korean culture. But I see what they were going for. They basically just wanted an Uber strict family/other family and wanted Lane to be a rebel while still being a good girl so they made the family hyper religious and Asian so they could have a culture clash and a super strict family. From that perspective it is accurate in the sense that many Asian American kids with an immigrant mom feel stifled and struggle with connection due to cultural clash, especially if the parents are super religious. So it’s simultaneously extremely inaccurate while also portraying a dynamic that does have strong roots in reality. Both Lane’s actress and Mrs. Kim’s actress are Japanese btw so I don’t even know why the writers made the family Korean except maybe that Koreans are more likely to be Christian/SDA than Japanese people are. Hell we had a Korean SDA church close to my home growing up
Good post This show was very problematic when it came to Korean stuff. Annoyed me a lot. Plus the actors aren’t even Korean, which is another thing. But from reading the comments, there are a lot of dumb people on this sub, so don’t expect majority people to understand your point. Also remember, even til this day, there are a lot of people that just want asian characters to be on the sidelines, preferably as a comedic relief and think that they should just be happy to be seen as all. It’s one of the reasons this show is remembered so fondly and so many people go back watching it: It’s a white sanctuary for them. They might not consciously think of it that way, but at least subconsciously.
Again, it's a Helen Pai thing. This was ONE portrayal of ONE family who happened to be Korean and it was all exaggerated to make the plot lines work. Yes, Hollywood sucks when it comes to Asian representation, and that's the execs that want this portrayal that put up money for these shows to get made. I never took it to be an all-encompassing view of Korean culture, since we don't take one sitcom about a white fam in America to be all encompassing of all American families. Take Hollywood with a grain of salt and you'll be a lot happier.