Be Good My Children

Be Good, My Children is an experimental drama about a Korean immigrant family in New York City whose members each have very different ideas about what life should be like in their adopted homeland. The story revolves around the conflict between a hard-working, religious mother and her two grown up children, Judy, an aspiring actress working as a bartender and her younger brother Jimmy, a high school drop-out with a particular fondness for fast cars. Despite the mother’s urgings to secure a stable job, Judy pursues her` acting career encouraged by her alter ego, Mae East, a figure outside of fictional entity who parodies the stereotyped image of Asian women. Mae East’s antithesis is realized in another extra-diegetic commentator named Snow White, an omniscient presence paranoid about the aliens invading parameters of her home town.
Using a combination of actors and non-actors and a narrative strategy that integrates fantasy, drama, along with conventions adapted from musical comedy, Be Good, My Children raises issues affecting many immigrant communities including racism, sexism and representation of Asian Americans in the mainstream media. – C.C.
‘Something funny happened on the way to ‘happily ever after’ in this outrageous parody of the Korean American dream. (Be Good, My Children) is a side-splittingly funny account of a family who travels over the rainbow and lands in Koreatown USA.’ – Programme Notes, 1992 Asian American International Film Festival.