PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Media, Creative, and Cultural Industries
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1684881
This article is part of the Research TopicReframing Transnational Cinema: Evolving Definitions, Regional Perspectives, and Cultural IntersectionsView all 5 articles
To Love or To Eat the Super-Pig: Bong Joon-Ho's Okja (2017)—An Ecocritical and Transnational Perspective
Provisionally accepted
- Xiamen University Malaysia, Sepang, Malaysia
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This article analyses Bong Joon-ho's Okja (2017), a co-production between South Korea and the United States, from the perspective of ecocriticism and its transnational nature within the context of film studies and animal ethics. Bong uses a compelling narrative about the relationship between a rural teenage girl, Mija, and her porcine companion, the genetically modified (GM) super-pig, Okja, to prompt a critical reflection on the ethical implications of meat consumption and capitalism. It sparks the dilemma of whether to eat or love the creature. The significance of Bong's Okja in the discourse surrounding human-animal relationships stems from a dialectical perspective—it simultaneously critiques human exceptionalism within a capitalist framework while also embracing the technological depiction of livestock and the advantage of global distribution facilitated by the giant streaming platform, Netflix. This article does not advocate an absolute resolution to human-animal reconciliation; rather, it offers an ecocriticism and perspective on film culture in relation to animal ethics. It explores the film from a seemingly biophilic and de-centring anthropocentric point of view. The question of animals transcends geographical and cultural boundaries.
Keywords: Transnationalism, Ecocriticism, Ecocinema, film studies, Animal Ethics
Received: 13 Aug 2025; Accepted: 19 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Bin Yee Ang, binyee.ang@xmu.edu.my
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