#Squids game helmets series#
In Squid Game, Seong’s Dragon Motors backstory gets the series closest to allegorizing capitalism, a stated intent of the writer-director. All this makes for a perfect site of rebellious fantasy. (Most K-dramas, which are even more popular around the world, do this in spades, though usually with a bootstrap twist.) We are eager to project ourselves into these stories, and South Korea appears to be just the right distance away: Strongly influenced (some would say “occupied”) by the United States, the country is high-tech and hyper-capitalist yet appears to retain Old World values (filial piety and clannish loyalty).
#Squids game helmets tv#
Many of the Korean films and TV shows that have broken through in the West- Parasite, The Handmaiden, now Squid Game-are gory parables about class. Critics in the United States have praised the show in weirdly Brechtian terms for using genre conventions to satirize capitalism and offered comparisons to the Academy Award–winning Parasite. Viewers in South Korea have used Squid Game as shorthand to discuss joblessness and real estate scandals and to parody the economic promises of President Moon Jae-in. With superlative ratings has come an avalanche of commentary. In its first 10 days, it ranked number one in 90 countries and was so popular in its home nation that it strained the Internet’s infrastructure, leading the service provider SK Broadband to file suit against Netflix. S quid Game is the most popular Netflix show ever made. The art director, Chae Kyoung-sun, said that she wanted to build a “storybook” world-a child’s late-capitalist hell-and she has done so brilliantly. But the show redeems itself with its memorable characters (all archetypal strugglers) and its bright, video-game-inspired design.
Each episode moves from one game to the next, in a series that, by the end, combined with some awkward English-language dialogue, feels hopelessly strained. Capitalism is bloody and mean and relentless it yells. Squid Game is not a subtle show, either in its politics or plot. The show’s writer-director, Hwang Dong-hyuk, knows something about the do-or-die marketplace: He tried to get the series made for a decade and lost six teeth from the stress. The world’s wealthiest men gather to watch the players compete. Swarms of armed enforcers regulate their six rounds of play and keep them generally in line. With their consent (sort of), they are drugged and ferried to the secret island, a literal manifestation of Jackson Lears’s capitalist casino.
These players-there are 456 of them-are plucked from the streets of South Korea on account of their desperation. He places bet after losing bet at the horse races and goes into debt to loan sharks, which is how he ends up on Squid Game Island. His marriage implodes, and he moves into a half-basement apartment (remember Parasite?) with his mother, a low-wage street vendor.
#Squids game helmets driver#
After losing his factory job, he becomes a gig driver and tries and fails to run one of South Korea’s ubiquitous fried chicken restaurants.
For years afterward, the surviving workers sought reinstatement and compensation in the courts, and 30 employees and several of their spouses died, mostly by suicide. In response, nearly a thousand employees went on strike, some for as long as 77 days, occupying the factory site and facing a violent assault by Pinkerton-style security forces and Korean police. In 2009, the carmaker Ssangyong (“Twin Dragon”) Motors pleaded poverty and laid off 2,646 employees at its headquarters plant in Pyeongtaek, a city south of Seoul. The company fired us, saying they had no money.” Much like the Squid Game, real life in South Korea is a zero-sum fight.Īll but the youngest Koreans will recognize this lightly fictionalized reference to a labor confrontation seared in the country’s memory. He had worked at the Dragon Motors auto plant and gone on strike. When Seong is startled back to earth by one of his teammates, he explains what he’s seen. “Gi-hun!” the man cries out before an officer cracks his skull. A man in a hard hat and red bandanna, the uniform of labor protest in South Korea, dodges a flurry of police batons. He sees canisters slide across the gymnasium floor, spewing orange smoke. The following night, the series’ main protagonist, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), a gambling addict and delinquent dad and son, hallucinates while he is on watch.
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