Looks like Scarlett Johansson is off the hook (for now) as Hollywood’s cultural appropriation punching bag because Rebel Wilson has decided to throw her hat in that problematic ring by making a movie about K-pop.
According to Deadline, Rebel Wilson is writing, producing and starring in a film titled Seoul Girls, which tells the story of a “Korean American high school girl” who enters a competition with her friends to become an opening act for the world’s biggest K-pop boy band (clearly a BTS reference here) and they enlist the help from “an ex-member of a British girl group and a former K-pop trainee” to do it.
Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here.
Having a white Australian woman being the brains behind a film about K-pop isn’t exactly a tick in the cultural sensitivity box. Sure the movie has a Korean female lead and the script was given a “recent revision” by Korean screenwriter Young Il Kim, but based on Hollywood’s history of cultural appropriation, that’s nothing more than a bandaid over the gaping representation wound that threatens to burst open.
That’s not to say that an American-made K-pop film that’ll touch upon themes like cultural appropriation, Asian representation and racism can’t be done well – Crazy Rich Asians pulled it off with aplomb – but is Rebel Wilson and her brand of “humour” the best option to tell a story that’s certainly going to touch upon all those aforementioned issues?
Look, we’re jumping the gun here because we simply don’t know all the details about this K-pop movie yet. It may well turn out to be another Crazy Rich Asians moment that’s had the help of Wilson’s Hollywood clout.
But based on her history and her body of work, the chances of Rebel Wilson making a K-pop film that’s respectful to Asian culture is about as slim as the members of BTS.
This movie is almost certainly going to be made at some point given the K-pop wave that’s washing over the world at the moment and everyone wanting to surf it before it slows down, but Seoul Girls has all the signs of a project that no one asked for or wanted.