Wealth is worth? Questioning the immigrant experience

Garnering yet more awards, TV series Beef expertly explores identities. Krish Kandiah revisits the K-wave drama.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

in a dim room a couple stand off against each other.

Steven Yeun and Ali Wong play Daniel and Amy.

Not since the ground-breaking series Breaking Bad can I remember such a captivating opening sequence. A road rage incident escalates. And escalates. And escalates. Just when you think things can’t get any worse in this dark Netflix comedy, the vicious consequences of the feud unravels further. I couldn’t stop watching, and soon Beef had me firmly dragged into the world of two protagonists, who may have had very different experiences of the Korean American dream but were more alike than they would ever dare to admit.

I am a huge fan of the global Korean cultural renaissance known as the K-wave. For me it started with Psy, the breakout Korean singing superstar hitting number one in the UK charts with Gangnam Style in 2012. Then there was BTS, the Korean Take That equivalent, who duetted with Coldplay and became the best-selling band in the world. Parasite was a remarkable movie, that grabbed multiple awards at the Academy Awards of 2020. Squid Game took the concepts of battle royale and Hunger Games to a whole new level and became a Netflix number one global download hit in 2021. Throughout the K-wave decade I have also been an ardent devotee of Samsung, the biggest brand in mobile phone innovation.

Something important is happening with the global recognition of Korean culture. Beef represents another step forward showcasing the Korean diaspora cultural ascendence. At this year’s Emmy Awards it is the third most nominations. It follows on from the Canadian comedy series Mr Kim, which offered an affectionate and amusing exploration of the experience of a second-generation Korean family coming to terms with life in Toronto. Beef similarly presents the US-Korean cultural experience without explanation or apology. It is powerfully assumed that this is legitimate and normal. There is no embarrassment, no exposition: just a cultural and narrative world that the viewer has to catch up with as soon as possible before they miss something.

Beef is Korean and American. It is a comedy and a tragedy. It is also, ultimately, a morality and immorality play. It explores three main issues: anger, identity and aspiration and how they interact with one another – for good and for evil.

But the rage runs deep. It is toxic to everyone it touches. What can break its power?

The instigating event in the show is a road rage incident between Daniel, a second-generation Korean immigrant to the US whose family faced financial ruin when a relative used their motel for illegal activity, and Amy, also a second-generation Korean immigrant, who is on the cusp of banking a multi-million dollar deal. Everything Daniel attempts he fails at. He can’t even manage to successfully end his own life, or even return the faulty suicide equipment to the hardware store he bought it from. Amy, despite outward appearances is also struggling. She is estranged from her parents, stuck in a superficial relationship with her husband, and dealing with a demanding and dismissive mother-in-law and a daughter she hardly sees. The near miss in the car park comes at a pivotal moment for both of these strangers and flips a switch in them that they cannot let go.

The feud escalates between Amy and Daniel with increasingly high stakes and terrible consequences. The more we get to know about our two protagonists the more we understand why they have reacted in the extreme ways they have and how much they both have to lose. I found myself watching through my fingers as I was invested in the characters and was longing for some kind of forgiveness, repentance or reconciliation. At some points faith seemed tantalisingly close to providing an antidote to the beef, holding out hope even in the very last episode. At other points it seemed that love would find a way to stop the tide of anger and revenge. But the rage runs deep. It is toxic to everyone it touches. What can break its power?

If the church were to face up to its own identity issues, perhaps it could be of more help to individuals who brush shoulders with it.

The more we are drawn into the lives of Amy and Daniel, the more we realise that they are both wrestling with major issues of identity. Daniel is seemingly willing to go to any lengths to win the approval of his parents while also clinging so tightly to his brother that he stifles him. Amy too wrestles with a series of strained relationships. Both are lonely, feel unseen and misunderstood. They both carry dark secrets. They both are crippled by feelings of worthlessness and guilt. Amy’s sexual intimacy is inhibited by the sense of betrayal that was caused by her father’s infidelity. Daniel’s work quality is compromised because of the weight of despair and shame. While they both present to the world as successful and strong, inside they experience anxiety, purposelessness and anger.

Beef therefore provides a powerful exploration of identity issues. Male and female, rich and poor, married and single - no-one is exempt from the struggles of knowing who we are and where we fit in. There are moments in the series where the church looks like it has the answer. Going to church is normalised in the show as part of the Korean experience, which appears to be a culturally confident move. But the church is shown to be struggling with its own identity crisis. It accurately portrays the experience of ethnic-specific churches in the West. Yet despite being made up of diaspora communities, more often than not their liturgies, governance structures and forms and language of worship, are based on white western norms. The Korean cultural renaissance has not worked its way into our expression of faith yet. If the church were to face up to its own identity issues, perhaps it could be of more help to individuals who brush shoulders with it.

Beef offers a challenge to the prevailing aspirational culture often normalised by immigrant communities – if you work hard enough you can succeed.

What Dan and Amy have in common is their belief that value or worth in the world comes through the amount of money they have access to. They both graft and strive and lie and steal in order to gain the economic success their parents failed to achieve. Their competitiveness at work spills over into a drive to win at all costs. Riches is righteousness. Financial security is salvation. Wealth is worth. Annihilating the competition is victory. Yet the wealthy people in the show all come to realise the truth of what Jesus taught: “what good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”

Daniel is clearly faced with this choice right at the beginning of the series. He is at church when the words of a song seem to move him:

“Have you come to the end of yourself?

Jesus is calling.

Come to the Altar…”

This opportunity for a new start is juxtaposed with another. Daniel notices a possibility of ripping the church off financially, luring an ex-girlfriend back and replacing the worship leader. The church becomes the place where he can renounce or receive money, sex and power. He chooses the latter – to his own ultimate downfall.

As a second-generation immigrant, I was told that if I did well at school and set my sights on becoming a doctor or lawyer, then I could earn my place in the world. Qualifications could silence the xenophobes, money could buy me relationships and success could secure my future. Beef offers a challenge to this prevailing aspirational culture so often normalised by immigrant communities – if you work hard enough you can succeed. My Christian faith has changed that perspective for me. It showed me that financial gain was mono-dimensional, that chasing fool’s gold was a fool’s errand. Beef comes to the same conclusion, albeit with stronger language and adult themes. It takes a swipe at the hard- and cold-hearted calculus of personal aspiration, challenges consumptive materialism on its hollowed-out version of life and leaves it in the middle of nowhere to die.

Column

Culture

Football

Humility

Sport

25 July 2024

4 min read

We're pretty useless really

We all fail. Not just Southgate, Biden and Sunak.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A dejected looking football manager ponders his feet while standing beside a pitch.

Southgate contemplates.

The Book of Heroic Failures, published by Stephen Pile in 1979, records a story of the Welsh Dean of St Asaph, Daniel Price, in the late 17th century. Contemporary biographer John Aubrey noted that Price was a “mighty Pontificall proud man.”

So proud that he declined to parade on foot outside his cathedral, but rather rode a mare in full vestments, reading from the Book of Common Prayer. Aubrey with precise economy describes what happened next: “A stallion happened to break loose, and smelled the mare, and ran and leapt her, and held the reverend dean all the time so hard in his embraces, that he could not get off till the horse had done his business.”

Unsurprisingly, Aubrey records that the good Dean “would never ride in procession afterwards.” He had clearly learned a lesson in humility. And one that would not have been taught had his ride passed with pompous dignity.

A question arises, pertinent for events today, as to whether we learn more from the indignity of failure than from the fruits of success. I’d like to suggest that we do, especially about the nature of our human condition.

Humans are pretty useless really and our default position is error and falling short.

No one doubts that had England won the European Football Championship it would have been the crowning adornment to manager Gareth Southgate’s career. England failed to do that, though we failed less than any other team (Spain doesn’t count because they didn’t fail at all). Now that Southgate has resigned and has time to reflect at leisure, perhaps he will learn at least as much and possibly very much more about himself than if he had raised the trophy.

US president Joe Biden would have had an altogether greater reckoning to face if he lost the election to Donald Trump than if he won it. Now he’s quit the race, arguably he has much more to learn from reflecting on his life and achievements. The Conservative Party has many lessons to learn about its 14 years in power from its abject defeat at the polls. Indeed, many parliamentary Tories believe that defeat was a requisite event for its reformation to proceed.

None of this is to suggest that failure of itself is a virtue. Nor is it just a morality tale that enjoins us to meet triumph and disaster and “treat those two impostors just the same”. A failed marriage, or failing health, or moral failures of a wider variety, cause destructive pain and trauma.

But it is to acknowledge that failure is part of the natural human condition. We’re in the territory of a flawed, fallen humanity here, one that theologians call postlapsarian, that is fallen from an ideal of perfection as dramatically portrayed in the Garden of Eden. Humans are pretty useless really and our default position is error and falling short.

Loss of innocence, injustice and failure meet in unholy alliance at Golgotha.

This isn’t, or should not be, depressing. At least not for people of faith, because it reflects the nature of humanity. Failure, if you will, is a gift of God in a fallen creation. We learn more from our failures than our successes, which is either a biological determinism in evolution or a means through which we strive for a new perfection. There’s a version of that they may be reciting to the England football team right now.

Christian faith sometimes concentrates too often on triumph over death and the idea of a heavenly kingdom where all is well, at the expense of recognising the reality of our world in which most things are very far indeed from well.

We might recognise it in a congregational tendency to skip over Good Friday to Easter morning. If we do so, we neglect to notice what an abject failure the insurgent Jesus movement was on its short journey of break-up from Jerusalem to Calvary. It, literally, dies.

Yes, we know what happens next. Or do we? The first witnesses to it certainly struggle to explain it in a manner that we might comprehend. But, in any event, loss of innocence, injustice and failure meet in unholy alliance at Golgotha.

The theologian John Macquarrie asks what happens if we feel compelled to draw the bottom line under the cross: “Would that destroy the whole fabric of faith in Christ? I do not think so, for the two great distinctive Christian affirmations would remain untouched – God is love, and God is revealed in Jesus Christ. These two affirmations would stand even if there were no mysteries beyond Calvary.”

No, our story doesn’t end there. But we can acknowledge that this is where we live in this world, at the foot of that cross. As the 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal put it, the Christ “will be in agony until the end of the world.”

Let’s not be too miserable, because we do have the “mysteries beyond Calvary”. And let’s celebrate our earthly successes. But let’s also learn to embrace our failures and receive them as a gift, from football to politics.