Beyond the 1-Inch-Tall Barrier: Unpacking Parasite’s US Reception

South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s seventh feature, Parasite (2019), made waves in the United States when it became the first non-English-language film to win “Best Picture” at the Oscars. Bong’s acceptance speech encouraged Americans to overcome the “1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles,” sparking discourse in trade publications and on social media about US audiences’ historic reluctance to consume non-English language, subtitled films from other countries, as well as these texts’ institutional exclusion. The subsequent debate illuminated both pessimistic and hopeful attitudes about a changing tide, and several years later, Netflix’s blockbuster South Korean TV series Squid Game re-ignited the conversation. Parasite’s visibility and touted impact on the subject must be contextualized within ongoing transformations to our global mediascape resulting from rising internet ubiquity and streaming. This chapter argues Parasite’s ability to stir subtitles discourse in America may have originated, in part, out of its distinct origins as a South Korean film within the New Korean Cinema movement.