I suppose I did not have high expectations as I decided to make the better choice of streaming the Korean pop girl group’s new Nickelodeon movie, The Wonder Girls, over homework on a Saturday afternoon. The trailer was not promising, as it featured one of the girls, Lim, exclaiming “Fo’shizzle!” (I cringed). Still, I thought I would watch “The Wonder Girls” anyway out of sheer curiosity. It’s not every day you see a Korean girl group on a self-titled movie on TeenNick, is it?
The synopsis goes a little like this: The Wonder Girls arrive in New York for their world tour. Excited to be in the city, the five girls go behind their manager, JYP’s, back and sneak off to the Apollo all starry-eyed and giddy. In a flurry of emotions, they find themselves competing in an amateur talent show that happened to be occurring that night. Introduced as “the Asian invasion,” the Wonder Girls show off their singing and dancing on stage. They fare well in the competition and are met with enthusiastic applause from the audience as well as some animosity by the reigning amateurs, School Gyrls. When they go back to their hotel from their wild night, they decide to pursue the competition even further. Along comes a brief group dispute, a romance between Yenny and DJ Skillz amongst some classy chicken and waffles, and a face-off at the club with the School Gyrls once again. But the Girls decide to pursue the competition after all after a nice, big “Wonder Girls hug” and enter the competition behind JY’s back, wins it, and then admits that they’re actually huge superstars in Korea and forfeits the win to the School Gyrls like a boss. And in the end, School Gyrls and Wonder Girls hug it out and even join them for their worldwide tour. Oh, and DJ Skillz can come too.
In all honesty, the movie had its all-around good moments. In spite of myself, I found myself laughing at JY’s sassy accent (the Wonder Girls’ on-screen manager and real-life label owner). I thought the Girls’ English wasn’t half-bad either, and I was rather proud of their endeavor to enter the American market (again) through the teen stream. Yes, the movie was all sorts of cheesy and had its share of cringe-worthy moments, but as with any teen-targeted movie, it was the kind of “bad” that we love to watch.
The movie’s bad parts were what you would typically expect - the unnecessary fling with DJ Skillz, the overexcessive clapping and giggling, and so on. But mostly, I was looking out for the racial implications that could possibly be embedded within the movie. There were some, more apparent than others. I swear, the phrase “the Asian invasion!!!” was used at least five times throughout the movie. And there were the misinterpretations such as their tour guide saying, “It’s off the chain,” and one of the girls responding, “But we’re not wearing any chains!” (Ba-dam-chi!) But the part that got me was the final cat fight between the School Gyrls and the Wonder Girls. As the School Gyrls try to bring down their competition, the Filipino member in the School Gyrls (Monica Parales) tells her fellow members to cut it out with the Asian jokes. “Hey, I’m Asian too,” she says. Then she turns to the Wonder Girls and wishes them a hearty good luck and a smile, but she’s the only one. She even lingers for a half second as her fellow members turn their backs to the Wonder Girls with sassy finesse.
What bothered me was not so much the need to emphasize the Wonder Girls’ foreignness. In fact, this was an incremental part of the plot. But for ones of the lines from the School Gyrls to be, “You don’t belong here,” carried racist tones. In fact, one moment from the scene went:
“Where are you guys from anyway?”
“Korea.”
“Well ya’ll need to go back.”
Why did this amateur singing contest turn into some sort of arena for racist undertones? Since when was this “diva-off” between the two girl groups turn into some sort of deeper outsider-insider-type confrontation? Forgive me if I’m being too sensitive, but the scriptwriters needed to be more careful about the sort of implications they were sending out to their preteen market.
It’s as if it’s not enough that stereotypes of colored people are ridden in our everyday lives. There was no real need to bring to pit the Asians against the non-Asians in this innocent context. What had built up to be a contest of dance moves and vocals turned into a weird, tense racial confrontation. It was really odd how fast this innocent teen movie had turned sour for a few minutes. Maybe it was just me, but maybe it wasn’t. While I could forgive the “Asian invasion”-s, this sort of dialogue was a bit too weird for me.
Nonetheless, it was exciting to see the Wonder Girls in mainstream television. It’ll be interesting to see where they go from here. I’d say watch the movie and judge for yourselves, if you haven’t streamed it already.
