ABOUT US

Guilt Free Features is a podcast born out of Karen Wang and Janet Kim’s immense love of cinema— specifically films that have been historically dismissed as “guilty pleasure movies.” Contrary to films that have been canonized by cultural gatekeepers over the last century, guilty pleasure movies are works whose consumption has been typically attached to some form of collective shame or embarrassment. In reality, they are genre films that cater to the tastes of moviegoers deemed “less important” by society, namely: adolescents, women, and communities of color. They are the films we regard today with great sentiment or nostalgia; films that elicit highly emotional responses, but require qualifiers, such as “I just like to watch stuff get blown up!” or “We used to watch that at every slumber party!”

As second-generation Asian Americans, Karen and Janet found that growing up in a pre-politically-correct era conjured some very complicated feelings around the films they watched as kids. Most Hollywood films during the 1980s, ‘90s, and ‘00s were geared specifically toward white audiences; and if they weren’t, they inevitably catered to Black audiences instead. There was virtually no in-between. Just as the Korean storeowner Sonny in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing (1989) is forced to erase his own racial identity by asserting that he is Black, that he and his Bed-Stuy neighbors are “the same,” oftentimes young Karen and Janet were forced to internalize their own self-erasure within American pop culture and the media.

Now as adults and as filmmakers themselves, Karen and Janet are revisiting the films that helped to shape their view of the world and their respective places within it. They hope that folks will come along with them on this journey toward deconstructing the patriarchy and white supremacy, one guilty pleasure movie at a time.