The Netflix show “Beef” has been praised for its accurate depiction of the Korean American church experience, particularly its portrayal of praise music. To film an authentic worship experience, the showrunner of Beef reached out to Jason Min, lead pastor of Citizens LA, an Asian American church in Downtown Los Angeles.
Zachary Lee of Christianity Today interviewed Jason Min, and we wanted to publish an excerpt for you to read. In this section, they discuss the impact of that scene on Korean American viewers and the discussion around whether or not praise music is “emotional manipulation.”
Zachary Lee: While the church scenes in Beef have been praised for their authenticity, it has also triggered some who feel that the church (and especially praise music) is a site of emotional manipulation and the ways the Korean American church is culpable in a lot of that. As a praise leader yourself, do you think this is accurate? Or what nuance might be missing?
Jason Min: I am grateful that people have shared honestly. I think so much of our experience in the church (and I say this as a pastor) has been manipulative. At the very least, those who have told me that they have been triggered by those scenes have used them as a good avenue for conversation about their experiences.
To address the idea that the Asian American church was just a whole bunch of emotional manipulation—I mentioned this also on the Off the Pulpit podcast, but Jason Chu, a friend of mine who is a musician, created a video about this exact thing. He said that all art is manipulation. All artists are trying to make you feel something, whether it’s music or preaching or any element of church. So much of it is trying to connect the head and the heart.
If you’re asking if we are being manipulated in church, I would say yes we are. Yet we’re being manipulated everywhere. We’re being manipulated every time we go to a concert, a museum, at whenever we experience any kind of art. What he said was so poignant because the question was not whether you are being manipulated but do you trust the person who is creating? Do you trust them to be moving you in a direction you actually want to go?
I think a lot of times churches do use manipulation to get you to fill that offering basket or submit to authority. Those are the moments where manipulation becomes harmful and traumatic for people.
Every time I go to preach a sermon, I wouldn’t want to use the word manipulation, but I am praying that I can present the gospel in a compelling way that takes it from just being pure content and head knowledge to something that resonates in your heart.
Zachary Lee: It reminds me of what you shared in that Off the Pulpit episode about how we shouldn’t necessarily shy away from our emotions when practicing faith … and that the rejection of emotion may be a byproduct in some way of Asian American assimilation to a type of mind-driven, logical, and rational Christianity perpetuated by white Christians.
Jason Min: Yeah, and what I loved about Beef was that it revealed all those suppressed parts of the Asian American experience, both inside and outside the church. You just realize how uncomfortable our generation, our culture, has been with expressing emotions.
Read the rest of the interview at Christianity Today.