My Imaginary Dad Has a Very Real Oscar

My Imaginary Dad Has a Very Real Oscar

Joon-Ho

My father is always away, directing movies to great acclaim. A man throws himself into the jaws of the sea monster that’s kidnapped his daughter. A woman bludgeons a stranger to death and sets his house ablaze to protect her son from imprisonment. You see, says my father through his movies, I understand what it means to love you so much.

A cinematic god, people say, is my father. His latest film garnered worldwide praise. “I’m ready to drink tonight,” he tells reporters at the Oscars after-party. He holds up two of his trophies and clinks their faces to make them kiss.

I lift my glass. Cheers, I say to my television. This toast is in your honor.

Though I don’t possess my father’s drinking abilities, I push through discomfort when there’s cause for celebration.

We’re alike in other ways. For instance, my father is an anti-capitalist. I’ve watched his movies wherein he foregrounds the worker’s struggle. I locate his ethic in the daeri driver, in the kind-hearted girl who befriends the giant, slaughter-bred pig, in the weary face of the basement dweller whose home floods with municipal wastewater.

I know he’s teaching me, specifically, by way of cinema. I tell my friends, He’s a director of and for the people.

You’ve never even met him, my friends remind me.

Soon, I say. Soon, we will meet, and he will recognize exactly who I am.

His beautiful translator follows him onto the Golden Globes press stage. He gazes at her, and she gazes at him, and they smile at each other. The Hollywood Reporter takes their picture.

“She’s perfect,” says my father of his translator. “We all depend on her.”

Of course, I feel his swell of pride in my bones. There she is, beside him on his media tours, ushering forth elegant interpretations of my father’s thoughts such that I might hear his voice as she’s come to know it.

I’m indebted to you, Sharon, I say to my television. You’re helping him in a way I never could. You’re helping me in a way he never could.

“This is so embarrassing,” she says to The Hollywood Reporter. The press crowd laughs, and I laugh too.

When I switch off my television, I return to my mind’s dull present. I feel the sickening threat of a deadline commingling with my want to be somewhere else. Like hunger, my debts grow larger because I continue to live. Thus, at some point I will have to make several crucial decisions, will accept the need to sell my few possessions. I will pawn my television in order to stay in the place I call home. In the end, we all must do what’s best when circumstances demand some type of sacrifice. And the situation is only temporary. I will one day repossess this important medium. Perhaps a nicer screen mounted to a nicer wall I’ve painted yellow. Perhaps by then I’ll have built a family of my own. A family for whom I’d do anything. I can see my life like it’s unfolding right before me.

My friends will gather at my warm apartment for a viewing party, complete with cocktails.

So bourgeois, I’ll say, clinking my glass to another glass.

Turn on the subtitles, my friends will insist.

Shh, I’ll say. The kids are asleep.

The film will delight and move us, will render the world, such as it is, through a dystopian, cautionary fable shot through by moments of stunning humanity.

When the time finally comes, I will whisper, Hello.

The credits will roll, and my friends will rise from the couch.

It’s me, I’ll whisper, my face reflected on the screen. Your new movie is an absolute triumph.