鸡毛蒜皮的事 Indifferent Things鸡毛蒜皮的事 Indifferent Things

“I’m of mixed race.” This is how the movie starts. Obsessed with the perception of homogeneity, Korea tends to play down any international union to a mere mixing of race. This is a story about ‘me’, a child born between a Chinese mother and a Korean father. Whenever bullying occurred due to the mixed racial background, mother didn’t seem very bothered. “Who cares?” “So what?” The film breaks norms in two ways. The undervaluing of one’s situation caused by the gaze of others, due to the indifferent and carefree attitude of the mother and having an independent voice as a member of a multicultural family. Since some time, multiculturalism has been used to represent othering, pity, and victimization instead of understanding and tolerance. Instead of having an independent voice, they spoke through a spokesperson or an agent. In multicultural families, women are often victimized by the patriarchal system, and mothers are portrayed as inadequate to their children for not being able to speak Korean. The film cheerfully disrupts these stereotypes and turns the individual’s ordinary conditions into nothing more than ‘indifferent things’. (LEE Seungmin)