Bloody classes for hard times – the phenomenon of the series “Squid Game”

To everyone’s surprise, the biggest hit in Netflix’s history was an inconspicuous South Korean thriller – Squid Game . A month after the premiere, the website boasted an audience of 150 million views, and in November – the second season was confirmed. So we decided to look at the phenomenon of the series.

The text contains spoilers!

How to win in capitalism

In around 2008, 37-year-old Hwang Dong-hyuk unsuccessfully tried to obtain funding that would allow him to implement one of the scripts he wrote. The professional downturn, which was also affected by the global economic crisis, forced the young artist and his family to take out a few loans that would enable them to survive the harder times. This experience – close to a large part of Korean society – along with the manga he read at the time: Liar Game , Gambling Apocalypse and the cult Battle Royale, inspired Hwang to create a story about a murderous tournament, in which the prize will be the amount enabling immediate social promotion, and the stake – life. The stories of individual characters were to reflect quite real tragedies of people on the verge of poverty for various reasons, while the concept of a deadly tournament – in a metaphorical way to present the machinations ruling contemporary capitalist societies. Early versions of the script (then planned as a full-length film) were ready in 2009, but at that time, however, as the author had predicted, none of the Korean studios was interested in the “grotesque and unrealistic” plot. So the project stayed in a drawer for another ten years.

The Hwang script was given a second life by the owners of the Netflix platform, who, after the success of the website outside the United States, decided to expand internationally and invest in local productions. Hwang, who has since gained some recognition in the region through several full-length films he has directed and written, contacted Kim Minyoung, the local representative of the company, who offered to collaborate on the spot. A decade after the end of the work on the first version of the script, the story seemed to the creator even more relevant – the debt of Koreans alone has increased, approaching the country’s GDP, and social inequalities are noticeable with the naked eye – especially in large cities, where slums can be separated from wealthy districts. suddenly a bridge or a road. The crisis was only aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the series was filmed. All these factors made what seemed absurdly unrealistic to producers in 2009 – the stories of economically excluded people desperate enough to give their own lives for a potentially better chance – become dangerously probable in 2020. And, as the distributional success has shownSquid Game , depressingly versatile.

A land of contrasts

It seems that the creators of Squid Game managed to tick off all the points on the list of mandatory elements characterizing content produced for streaming distribution: the enigmatic title and iconography are to intrigue the user and distinguish the title from several hundred other tiles available in the menu; the survival nature of the ongoing game and the elimination structure of the following episodes are a great source of attention, and the next story twists stimulate the appetite for the next episode – they are therefore perfectly tailored to the so-called binge-watching. Finally, the original pleasure of following the formula of a murderous tournament, in which the heroes literally kill each other to keep our attention – entertainment, the genesis of which should be sought even in ancient times, and of which a prominent example would be, for example, in the past Roman gladiatorial fights, and today the unflagging popularity of boxing shows or MMA. A few thousand years later, we still do not need much more than bread and games – this addictive formula has a chance to stop random recipients, opening the widest possible audience to Hwang’s second bottom.

The Korean’s scenario ideologically fits in the trend of criticizing the assumptions of hard capitalism and the consequences and pathologies associated with it, which is gaining popularity. In recent memory, one can find at least a dozen titles dealing with the issues of exploitation and class inequalities, originating – what is important and significant – from various countries and cultural contexts. First come to mind, of course, paintings compatriot Hwang, Bong Joon-ho: loud Parasite and a bit older Snowpiercer , but German Who I am Baran Bo Odara, surreal Sorry to Bother You by Boots Riley, and also Joker, Hustlers, Knives Out , TV series Mr. Robot and Atlanta … Also in Poland, just before the first pandemic lockdown, there was a continuation of the famous Suicide Room – Hejter by Jan Komasa. This topic has ceased to concern only independent filmmakers on the periphery of cinema, having entered the cultural mainstream with all their impetus. This results in two ways: the interest of authors who are close to the subject matter, but also a whole series of superficial diagnoses arising from the wave of popularity of the topic. Either way, it’s hard to deny that being anti- is trendy today.

Like South Korea itself (but also many other Anno Domini 2021 countries), Squid Gameis defined by contrasts: a juxtaposition of candy scenery, colorful, Escher-like labyrinths with gradually intensified bloodshed, coffins decorated with a large pink bow, incinerated in dark crematoria, and finally equipped with all the luxuries of a VIP box, from which you can watch the terrified, suppressed by the desperate system . Death in the playground. Hwang’s metaphor is perhaps not particularly subtle, but it cannot be denied that it is suggestive. Its core is derived from the assumption underlying social and material stratification: it is status that determines the place of an individual in society. The thesis that we universally and tacitly accept – that it is the wealth of the wallet that determines the value of a man – is legitimized by a myth that is eagerly sustained by memogenic coatch’s pep talks: get up earlier, work harder, and maybe you too will be a winner. IN Squid Game, on the other hand, the author presents a completely different perspective: in his view, capitalism is nothing more than a murderous game, giving participants the illusion of voluntary and fair play . A game that requires you to get rid of morality and ruthlessly exploit the available resources, in which the greatest advantage is often given by pure chance or conditions independent of the players. The game, as shown in the last episode, dehumanizes not only the losers, but also – or perhaps: above all – the privileged, “winners”. Oh, the lottery.

About the player who remained human

So why did the Korean series about the murderous tournament and the inhuman face of the modern economy become so popular in times of global crisis? Well, history shows that it is in difficult times that the demand for dark narratives proves to be highest; the premieres of the first popular horror films coincided with the period of the great economic crisis, the so-called great depression. The collective imagination was then a series of horror films produced and distributed between 1930 and 1934 (a period that will later be called the first golden age of horror) by Universal studio. Small amounts that the poor, affected by the consequences of the world crash, were able to spend for a screening in the cinema, spent to follow the stories about the monster of Frankenstein *, Dracula **, the invisible man and mummy, being able to break away from a much darker reality for a moment. Also the 1970s in the United States – also dominated by the horrors of Ridley Scott, Wes Craven, William Friedkin or Brian De Palma – was a decade marked by an energy crisis, a record-rising crime rate, still taking its toll with the Vietnam war and growing in strength as if in response to a moral revolution (it is no coincidence that the slashers condemn sexual promiscuity). Today, Jordan Peele’s overtly politicized cinema finds fertile ground, which uses artistic means to vent the rage about the still prominent manifestations of systemic racism in the US. William Friedkin or Brian De Palma – this is a decade marked by the energy crisis, the record-rising crime rate, the war in Vietnam still taking its toll and the revolution of manners growing stronger in response to it (it is no coincidence that the slashers condemn sexual promiscuity). Today, Jordan Peele’s overtly politicized cinema finds fertile ground, which uses artistic means to vent the rage about the still prominent manifestations of systemic racism in the US. William Friedkin or Brian De Palma – this is a decade marked by the energy crisis, the record-rising crime rate, the war in Vietnam still taking its toll and the revolution of manners growing stronger in response to it (it is no coincidence that the slashers condemn sexual promiscuity). Today, Jordan Peele’s overtly politicized cinema finds fertile ground, which uses artistic means to vent the rage about the still prominent manifestations of systemic racism in the US.

Communing with this type of narrative is not only escapist, but also cleansing; After all, even the most terrifying stories have their endings – often ambivalent, but often happy in their own way. Most slashers have a final girl who manages to escape from the executioner’s sharp tool, Ellen Ripley turns out to be a worthy opponent for Xenomorph, and Jamie Lee Curtis still plays cat and mouse with Michael Myers. The viewers following the murderous gameplay in Squid Game also find a kind of happy ending: the tournament is won by Gi-hun – a player who, in the course of subsequent games, was framed as the one who managed to keep the remnant of his humanity, making choices in accordance with his own moral compass. The series’ final moments also imply that, after at least partially shaking off the shock caused by his intense contact with death, he will use radical social advancement to do good (referring in turn to another figure of capitalist mythology – the rich man-philanthropist, however, slightly diverging from from the current ideological inclination of history). Will it happen – we will probably find out soon, in the officially announced continuation of the story …

* Subcutaneously symbolizing the betrayed hopes of the proletariat abandoned by the elite.

** In which they could find a narrative about the aristocracy literally sucking the blood of the poor.