Squid Game Ramble
Nov. 13th, 2021 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiI understand why this show is such a smash hit. Battle Royale stories are not really my fare, yet I enjoyed this series more than anything else I've watched in quite a while, and I wanted to unpack why. Here are some key factors I'll discuss more under the cut:
* Its characters are really well written and acted (minus the Americans, of course).
* The relationships among the characters are not stereotypical and, thus, feel real.
* Its critique of late-stage capitalism is searing and, metaphorically, accurate.
* It's foreign (to me).
* Its protagonist is about my age, and I relate to that!
(Big spoilers through the end of the season)
Characters and Relationships
I said I'm not a huge fan of Battle Royale stories, but that format may help here. By and large, this is a bunch of strangers flung together in a life or death situation. Because they're strangers, they don't have pre-existing relationships that fit the usual paradigms of family, romance, friend (with a few exceptions). Because it's life or death, they form bonds fast and intensely, but on a level that feels sort of universally human more than falling in love or finding a bestie. This highlights the best of human compassion and the worst of greed and fear. It's very powerful.
The main characters are well fleshed out and contrast each other in a way that provides someone almost anyone can relate to. (Don't get attached though!) Gi-Hun makes an awesome protagonist as someone who is rather a loser in day-to-day life but a genuinely good person, whose care for others, whose basic decency rises higher and higher as the stakes become more desperate. It's an interesting way to highlight his potential and well executed.
Sang-Woo is also one of the best antagonists I've seen in a long time. I confess I was fooled about the direction his arc was going, though the evidence is there from the start. And I was fooled because he's not a bad person, not really. He's a person with a tendency toward self-serving choices, a relatively cold person but with no particular desire to hurt people. In ordinary life, minus his embezzlement plot (which we don't know much about), he probably doesn't do much damage. Gi-Hun remembers him fondly enough as a childhood friend. He seems to have a good-ish relationship with his mother, if too distant and, of course, hiding the embezzlement. But under life and death strain, he becomes murderous, and that says more about social systems than it does about Sang-Woo. People like Sang-Woo will always exist, and they are not a big problem if a society is healthy. It is a sick society that intensifies their sickness. And I yet love how he returns to his conscience in the end, and how Gi-Hun's understandable rage melts back into caring.
Capitalism
This brings us to late-stage capitalism. And I can only say that bored billionaires watching the unfortunate kill either other to alleviate their boredom rings very true as a metaphor. Of course, multibillionaires, in general, aren't literally sadists. But in a world in which it's considered acceptable to let thousands of workers be overworked, impoverished, and injured routinely so that one man can spend eleven minutes in space, we're pretty much there. The pain of the masses funds their games. The death of the world funds their fantasies. It's a shame our global society has let the power imbalance intensify for so long that a few hundred people now control the fate of the world, and they are precisely the few hundred least well positioned to see the real plight we're in or know what to do about it. I wish I had more material hope. Right now, I'm just hoping we can all be brave and support each other for what's coming, like those poor folks in The Grapes of Wrath--or maybe find our inner Gi-Hun.
Foreignness
It's actually been quite a while since I've dived into a foreign series, and I generally don't watch Korean series, so this was nicely different for me. It was very interesting to see both the similarities to the everyday US values I live with and the differences. Similarities included the critique of enmeshment in capitalism, while being enmeshed, and a value placed on egalitarianism, ex. between the sexes. Differences included that higher level of Confucian regard for elders and parents, the closer-knittedness of family, and less emphasis on gender and sexual orientation diversity, though I think there were a few light lesbian overtones. And of course, racial/ethnic dynamics are very different than in the US. Overall, I appreciated how representation worked in this series, just because it's different from what I'm used to, which sometimes feels like box-ticking. Mind you, I would have been quite happy to see gender diversity represented, for example, but the foreignness itself gave me a sense of roles not being forced to fit a mold. They may were quite box-ticky by South Korean standards, I don't know. But the foreignness gave me something I've been missing a lot: a society that genuinely feels different, a kind of diversity outside one particular American/Western narrative.
Middle-Aged Main Characters!
Obviously, this is purely personal, but I loved that Gi-Hun and Sang-Woo are almost exactly my age, and I totally related to their respective feelings of mid-life crisis set against the reality that they have failed to live up to society's expectations of a "successful" person in their mid- to late forties. Boy, do I get that! It's rare to see TV protagonists my age—or if you do see them, they're usually heroes, like the starship captain who's already had a glowing career for twenty years. I really enjoyed the validation that us 40-something folks are still out and kicking, still living lives, having feelings, and trying to solve our problems.
* Its characters are really well written and acted (minus the Americans, of course).
* The relationships among the characters are not stereotypical and, thus, feel real.
* Its critique of late-stage capitalism is searing and, metaphorically, accurate.
* It's foreign (to me).
* Its protagonist is about my age, and I relate to that!
(Big spoilers through the end of the season)
Characters and Relationships
I said I'm not a huge fan of Battle Royale stories, but that format may help here. By and large, this is a bunch of strangers flung together in a life or death situation. Because they're strangers, they don't have pre-existing relationships that fit the usual paradigms of family, romance, friend (with a few exceptions). Because it's life or death, they form bonds fast and intensely, but on a level that feels sort of universally human more than falling in love or finding a bestie. This highlights the best of human compassion and the worst of greed and fear. It's very powerful.
The main characters are well fleshed out and contrast each other in a way that provides someone almost anyone can relate to. (Don't get attached though!) Gi-Hun makes an awesome protagonist as someone who is rather a loser in day-to-day life but a genuinely good person, whose care for others, whose basic decency rises higher and higher as the stakes become more desperate. It's an interesting way to highlight his potential and well executed.
Sang-Woo is also one of the best antagonists I've seen in a long time. I confess I was fooled about the direction his arc was going, though the evidence is there from the start. And I was fooled because he's not a bad person, not really. He's a person with a tendency toward self-serving choices, a relatively cold person but with no particular desire to hurt people. In ordinary life, minus his embezzlement plot (which we don't know much about), he probably doesn't do much damage. Gi-Hun remembers him fondly enough as a childhood friend. He seems to have a good-ish relationship with his mother, if too distant and, of course, hiding the embezzlement. But under life and death strain, he becomes murderous, and that says more about social systems than it does about Sang-Woo. People like Sang-Woo will always exist, and they are not a big problem if a society is healthy. It is a sick society that intensifies their sickness. And I yet love how he returns to his conscience in the end, and how Gi-Hun's understandable rage melts back into caring.
Capitalism
This brings us to late-stage capitalism. And I can only say that bored billionaires watching the unfortunate kill either other to alleviate their boredom rings very true as a metaphor. Of course, multibillionaires, in general, aren't literally sadists. But in a world in which it's considered acceptable to let thousands of workers be overworked, impoverished, and injured routinely so that one man can spend eleven minutes in space, we're pretty much there. The pain of the masses funds their games. The death of the world funds their fantasies. It's a shame our global society has let the power imbalance intensify for so long that a few hundred people now control the fate of the world, and they are precisely the few hundred least well positioned to see the real plight we're in or know what to do about it. I wish I had more material hope. Right now, I'm just hoping we can all be brave and support each other for what's coming, like those poor folks in The Grapes of Wrath--or maybe find our inner Gi-Hun.
Foreignness
It's actually been quite a while since I've dived into a foreign series, and I generally don't watch Korean series, so this was nicely different for me. It was very interesting to see both the similarities to the everyday US values I live with and the differences. Similarities included the critique of enmeshment in capitalism, while being enmeshed, and a value placed on egalitarianism, ex. between the sexes. Differences included that higher level of Confucian regard for elders and parents, the closer-knittedness of family, and less emphasis on gender and sexual orientation diversity, though I think there were a few light lesbian overtones. And of course, racial/ethnic dynamics are very different than in the US. Overall, I appreciated how representation worked in this series, just because it's different from what I'm used to, which sometimes feels like box-ticking. Mind you, I would have been quite happy to see gender diversity represented, for example, but the foreignness itself gave me a sense of roles not being forced to fit a mold. They may were quite box-ticky by South Korean standards, I don't know. But the foreignness gave me something I've been missing a lot: a society that genuinely feels different, a kind of diversity outside one particular American/Western narrative.
Middle-Aged Main Characters!
Obviously, this is purely personal, but I loved that Gi-Hun and Sang-Woo are almost exactly my age, and I totally related to their respective feelings of mid-life crisis set against the reality that they have failed to live up to society's expectations of a "successful" person in their mid- to late forties. Boy, do I get that! It's rare to see TV protagonists my age—or if you do see them, they're usually heroes, like the starship captain who's already had a glowing career for twenty years. I really enjoyed the validation that us 40-something folks are still out and kicking, still living lives, having feelings, and trying to solve our problems.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-05 06:34 pm (UTC)I am not sure if you have watched the Kaiji anime (the first 2 series) or read the manga. That one is a terrifying depiction of capitalism and human relationship. Hope and survival are small-scale and by the end of each season, they seem to be enough. Absolute horror.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-06 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-17 10:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-27 12:16 am (UTC)[Edit] Markets are not totally fictional: supply and demand actually do exist and always will exist in some form. Markets just don't have to work they way we construct them and should NOT be relied on to either provide basic needs or address sustainability issues.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-27 08:42 am (UTC)I hope to know your opinion on the new Matrix movie if you ever decide to watch and review it.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-08 07:54 pm (UTC)