“Squid Game” is hardcore and not for the sensitive. It’s gory, it’s grewsome and it will definitely shock you on all levels. But besides the shocking plot, it carries deep ethical meaning.
What to expect from “Squid Game”?
The new Netflix show “Squid Game” is for sure one of the best TV shows of 2021. And it is definitely a show you’d love to see more than once. IF you are not faint-hearted. Then you should not see it at all, because you will see people getting killed. A lot. At the same time, “Squid Game” is in no way voyeuristic by showing death just to stretch the boundaries of good taste. And that’s why it hits us hard.
What makes “Squid Game” so fascinating?
Though “Squid Game” fits perfectly into the genre of live-or-die games like “Rollerball” (1975) and “Hunger Games” (2012), it is yet unprecedented in the history of film. Because it makes no compromises. “Squid Game” is the perfect mixture of the “Hostel”-Series, in which affluent people buy abducted people with the intent to kill them, and a Kafkaesque critique on human nature. The main characters of the show try to survive a capitalistic system that is not made for survival, once you hit rock bottom. And rock bottom means dead end. Without money, there is no scope for action in this world. As a result, people are willing to do anything to get the resource they desperately need.
Already on the brink of death, the participants of the deadly game are loured into playing a physical game with the promise of winning money. Even after realizing that it is very likely for them to get killed in this “physical game”, many of the participants voluntarily come back to play it anyways. Everyone wants to hit the jackpot, meaning literally being the last man/women standing in a series of 6 deadly children’s games, played to entertain the rich and bored V.I.P’s.
“Squid Game”: Criticizing Capitalism
“Squid Game” shows indeed they ugly side of hardcore capitalism. It tells everything without sugar coating: from slave labour to human trafficking, murder, and decadence. But last but not least, it tells us about power structures of money and poverty. Some buy organs to survive a little bit longer, some sell them for the same reasons. People are killing for profit, whereas others kill just because they can.
Yet, a simple critique of late capitalism would have been a flat nightmare of a plot if it were not for the execution. Who wants to see again a self-righteous didactic play about the ugly side of profit making?
Social Criticism at its best
It is surprising that critics are not very impressed with the series. Though it is one of the most hyped series of Netflix ever, hitting Top 10 almost instantly, it is fair to say it has some flaws. The “Squid Game” is for sure not just another over-produced show. Sometimes the dialogues seem forced to add some extra meaning to a plot that would have had transported the massage anyways. The actors appear like they came straight from a theatre stage, considering their play that seems over acted a few times on a TV screen.
But the “Squid Game” is more than its flaws. The characters are deeply driven by the mechanisms of a system, in which money is everything. They struggle to survive in this system, but they never put it into question. As outcasts of society, they are still a necessary part of it. In a rich men’s world, poverty and criminal behaviour is just the ugly side of the capitalistic coin.
The Good, the Ugly and the Evil Side of Mankind
The way “Squid Game” is portraying poverty and it’s damaging effects on people’s self-worth and personal relationships is painful. Because the characters see no other choice in life than betting their own life. Voluntarily choosing death over life is for the participants in the deadly children’s games the only decision they seem to have control over.
Hence, the stories of the main characters are extremely touching. Because all of them are deeply relatable.
There is deceit, murder and lies, but also friendship and humanity. As viewer, you are constantly thrown back to the question: Faced with death – how would you react? Would you try to save your own life, even when it means to kill your best friend?
“Squid Game” is fascinating because its characters are neither good nor evil. As human beings, they have good sides and ugly sides as well. But when confronted with their own mortality, all of them show a deep vulnerability that other films did not manage to transport to the audience. And the message is: No matter of what a person did or did not, or how their status is in life, everyone at least deserves dignity and compassion. Because after all, we are just human. The ugly side of neo liberalistic capitalism is its tendency to degrade human beings into mere objects. Its evil side is to justify that by saying: Its their own fault. They do not deserve better. And isn’t that the mindset of century?
Link to the series: Netflix “Squid Game”
