Contemplating the Happy Ending in "Okja"
First thing first, I have never found hippopotami cute. Not even the ballerina hippo in front of the Lincoln Center makes me go "awwwwww..." But Okja made me do that a few minutes into the movie. To be clear, Okja is a "super pig," genetically modified by a food company named Mirando. For me, Okja resembles a hippopotamus more than any other existing animals. Yet, a few minutes into watching Okja, I could not help but wish this star-cross'd duo: an orphan named Mija and her companion Okja. Her behavior was not too different from dogs that I am crazy about. (Can you imagine this movie would have jerked so many buckets of tear if Okja behaved like a cat?)
In any case, Okja made me desperately wish a "happy ending" for Okja and Mija and also think about imperfection of "happy endings."
Some picture book fairy tales have brainwashed me as a child that "happy endings" need to be perfectly happy. A beautiful girl marries a prince and they live happily ever after; siblings get away from their wicked stepmother and reunites with their father who now denounces his wife; a knight slays a dragon and marries the princess. The evil are punished and the good are rewarded. The good always get a "perfect" happy ending.
Okja and her human friend Mija do not get a spick-and -span happy ending. It's bruised black and blue.
Like most movies with animals, the friendship between a human child and an animal is threatened by the adult (in this movie, most of all, metropolitan corporate) world. Okja was not born in this idyllic mountains in South Korea. She was genetically modified by an American company named Mirando. From birth, Okja was an object of transaction. Mirando Corporation gave a super piglet to Mija's grandfather to raise it for a stock animal beauty pageant which would happen 10 years later. Not having any other human friends or parents and having no idea about how Okja was created, Mija bonds with Okja like a friend and sister. She does know that Okja was bought from Mirando Corporation. She thinks that her grandfather payed all the money they owed to Mirando so that Okja could be "ours."
10 years pass and it turns out that Mija's grandfather never paid for Okja. Okja is to be sent to New York. That only friend Mija has! Her grandfather gives Mija a pig figurine made of pure gold to replace Okja. But for Mija, that gold pig doesn't mean anything. Mija launches this single-minded odyssey all the way to the United States to get Okja back, no matter the cost.
Does she achieve her goal? I'm happy to report that she does. Mija finds herself in the grimmest slaughterhouse imaginable. It's so far from the green mountains we saw in the earlier part in the movie. It almost makes you want to rewind to the beginning of the movie to see Mija and Okja frolicking near a waterfall, eating persimmons. And of course, the butcher is just about to electronically shock Okja to death when Mija finally finds Okja among all the other super pigs.
But saving Okja comes at a cost. First, Mija needs to pay the price for Okja. Good thing that her grandfather gave her a gold pig figurine. Then there's another moral price they need to pay up. Leaving the inhumane farm in New Jersey, they have to make a tough call. Should they risk their own "happily ever after" and attempt to rescue the other super pigs? Or should they just bite the bullet and go forth, never looking back? Knowing fully well what is to happen to the other super pigs, Mija and Okja take their steps forward.
After heart-wrenching moments that make you want to shriek in pain, we finally go back to the mountains in South Korea. Her grandfather has gone back to a more traditional way of farming. Instead of raising genetically modified animals, funded by big American corporations, he raises indigenous Korean chickens. Mija and Okja return to their beloved waterfall. But this time, with a piglet that they saved from the slaughterhouse. They've done the best they could do. They saved their "happy ending" and saved another super pig. In this all too realistic world of Okja, this flawed, imperfect happy ending is the best they could hope for. Far, far away from the cries of other super pigs butchered at Nancy Mirando's business decision.
