Image Courtesy of Netflix
Jenifer Pan is an only child of Vietnamese immigrants living in Markham, Toronto Canada. One night she reports to 911 a home breakage by three men.
Hann Pan the dad is shot and in a coma while mum, Bich Ha Pan is shot dead.
Back story. Jennifer lied to her parents for four years that she was in university studying pharmacy. She did not qualify for university.
Jennifer Pan was an average student. She did not perform well in school. She was a constant disappointment to her parents.
They did not trust her to make the right decisions. One of her bad decisions was a relationship with Danny Wong a fellow school band member. She started dating Danny in high school and the relationship was not approved. Her parents were restrictive. They did not want her to date him because Daniel Wong had become a drug dealer and probably not anything close to the son-in-law they had hoped for.
This Netflix documentary tells the story of what Jennifer did. Sadly, after interrogation by detectives, her story of events of the night do not add up and she is soon arrested and accused of her Mum's murder and her Dad's attempted murder. She is charged along with her ex-boyfriend.
It turns out that she had planned the murder of her parents to get out of a situation she found herself in. She had lied about her grades in 12th grade. Which led to another lie about her four years in college.
She did not tell her parents that she failed her 12th Grade maths and did not graduate high school but she made a fake diploma. She fakes her University admission and 4 years later they believe her. She lied that she got a full scholarship to study pharmacy.
No one knows where she spent her school hours for 4 years. She perfected the art of lying and faking her life. She even faked moving closer to Toronto University to be near school for her final two years. Supposedly she is living with her female friend but in reality she is living with her drug-dealing boyfriend. They fake the graduation certificate too.
For me, the big questions are; were the parents too strict and controlling? The Dad expected her to be a doctor despite her low grades. She wanted to study kinesiology but she did not have the freedom to choose. They wanted her to get into Toronto University but she did not get the necessary grades. Ryerson University was her only choice but even that was too steep for her and she was not admitted.
There is a likelihood that Jennifer may have had a genetic disposition to lie or be dishonest. We may not know this because the documentary does not explore that line. She may even have inherited that from one of her parents but that is not the angle taken by the writers of the
documentary.
Pressure to succed from parents.
My take, is that the girl may have acted the way she did because of pressure to excel exerted by her parents. It is common for Chinese, Indian, African or Latina immigrant children to excel and dominate in some sectors in Western countries.
The same is common in Africa and specifically in Kenya. Some parents set very high bars for their children. Some children are prepared from early ages to aim for courses like medicine, engineering, technology, law and so on.
If such children do not have the requisite IQ or inclination to pursue the chosen courses, many suffer from resentment, abandon the courses and opt for different courses or drop out of school altogether.
Sad as it is that a life was lost and a family broken forever, this is a good documentary to watch for parents and prospective parents.
Let me know what lessons you take from this.
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