"... that should stop us in our tracks.... Maybe the viewers of 'Squid Game' just thrill to the bold, cartoon-colored shock of it: Its visual and spiritual aesthetic are what you’d get if you crossed an episode of 'Teletubbies' with a highlights reel of Quentin Tarantino at his grisliest.... Then there’s the indiscriminate manner in which a huge hit becomes an even bigger phenomenon — a trend — divorced from its actual content.... The Times also published an article by Vanessa Friedman about how track suits were newly 'hot' because the 'Squid Game' contestants wear them (as a kind of prison uniform, mind you). The Times published another article, by Christina Morales, about the history of dalgona candy, which is a deadly prop in one of the series’s elimination contests. There was a link to instructions, by Genevieve Ko, on how to make it.
In a week and a half, on Halloween, we’ll be bombarded by 'Squid Game' costumes.... To some extent, 'Squid Game' is big because it’s big, its first-burst popularity generating attention that begets even greater popularity as everyone wants in on the action and as a curiosity’s slippery tentacles reach farther and farther into people’s consciousness.
But its commentary on class, greed and savagery is much too central to be incidental... [T]his portrait of life as a sadistic lottery and poverty as a hopeless torture chamber has resonance...."
1. Young people have been watching horror and violence for decades. Consumers have a taste for what they've consumed in the past. It's the kind of thing where to give more of the same, you have to give it more intensely and in a greater dose. The manufacturers of violent material do what they know they need to do to keep shocking.
2. But maybe it's not just a taste for horror and violence. Maybe it's the critique of capitalism that "has resonance." Bruni assumes that viewers begin with a gloomy attitude and that the show is confirming their pessimism. He does not consider the possibility that the show is anti-capitalism propaganda, designed to infect the mind of the young — not just to play with their pre-existing angst, but to direct their thinking.
3. Bruni provides some criticism of the New York Times. Once something is popular, it generates life-style articles that ride on the trend. He gives us some evidence, but doesn't observe the genderedness of this phenomenon. I can't help observing that his examples are articles written by women and the subjects — food and fashion — are stereotypically female.
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Poor frank Bruni,bless his heart.
The thought of him being "terrified" by a movie cracks me up
John Henry
"[T]his portrait of life as a sadistic lottery and poverty as a hopeless torture chamber has resonance...."
The doll's eyes in the Green Light, Red Light segment made it hilarious.
Women are the ones who mostly support systems that won't work, so that's where anti-capitalist stuff turns up. It's good for feelings but doomed to collapse.
It's written for the audience, which because of the ostensive topic would be mostly female.
It terrifies him?
I felt myself foraging to get something out of this even without direct access to the article. See Kevin's post from yesterday, on forging versus foraging. He's right. What could possibly induce me to care what terrifies a NYT columnist? Something new every week, I'm sure.
People are idiots. Our culture has gone to hell. No is surprised by this.
We should all be doing a better job of making the world less terrifying for Frank Bruni...
I've only watched 2 episodes of the Squid Games. To me it's just a variation on The Hunger Games and I don't recall any handwringing about that story of children killing other children for sport or its popularity among children.
I also don't see the critique of capitalism. So far, all the characters are petty criminals and gambling addicts whose bad choices got them into deep holes. Society didn't put them there, capitalism didn't put them there. They put themselves there.
I haven't watched Squid Game. I watch a lot of Korean tv dramas, but my usual tastes range from comedies to romantic comedies -- only occasionally will I watch a more characteristically Korean melodrama (with orphans, wasting diseases, memory loss, etc.) or revenge story when there's an actor or actress I enjoy in the lead. So I speak from a position of ignorance. But as described, it seems like the social criticism, such as it is, comes out of the South Korean frustrations that used to be lumped together under the term "Hell Joseon" (Joseon having been the name of Korea, with brief interruptions, from 1392 until about1945; North Korea is still Joseon, while South Korea is Hanguk).
Here's a Washington Post article about it. Basically, the idea is that life in Korea is hopeless: everything is rigged for the conglomerates, horrible working conditions, no prospects for advancement or family formation, etc. South Korea doesn't show up as especially horrible on most economic metrics -- e.g. on the Global Social Mobility Index, Korea isn't terrible. Marginally better than the US and southern European countries; marginally worse than Japan and Northern Europe. But statistics don't tell the whole story. Other statistics do point to Korea having uniquely severe problems. They have one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world, for example (21 per 100k population vs 12 per 100k population in famously suicide-happy Japan), and their birthrate is catastrophically low (0.92 TFR vs 1.36 for Japan).
As the wikipedia notes, Hell Joseon has apparently been supplanted by the term "Dal-Jo" or escape/flee Joseon. And the proportion of the population who want to leave Korea is kind of mindboggling:
According to the presentation, eight out of 10 South Koreans aged 19 to 34 viewed South Korea as “a hell,” while 7.5 out of 10 said they hoped to leave. In contrast, 6.4 out of 10 members of the older generation (aged 35 to 59) viewed South Korea as “a hell” and 6.5 reported wanting to leave.
Hankyoreh is a leftist paper, but biased though it may be, I don't think it's making this up. There's a real problem here. Young Americans may be trying to map specifically American concerns onto that template, but almost anything they complain about is actually a lot worse in Korea.
Didn't the Sopranos bring back the track suit for guys who no longer fit into the pants in the closet? Or was that strictly a male phenomenon?
If I was giving an elevator briefing to the person from Mars on "Hollywood," I'd say "woman undressing on the one hand, violence on the other." Truly graphic violence--showing what happens to the human body under various kinds of violence--was elevated in the 60. Arguably the old Westerns had a romantic idea that how you handle violence and death is more important than autopsy-type details. The soul over the body. All-powerful crime organizations or governments plus extreme violence may leave us with the belief that we have no freedom at all, other than to submit or resort to futile violence of our own. The ending of Peckinpah's "Wild Bunch."
SG is very disconcerting. I stopped halfway through, but ended up finishing because it does calm down a little towards the end. Insanely well-done though, from a production values standpoint.
Regarding points 1 and 2, is this series so different from "The Running Man" of the eighties or the "Hunger Games" of the zeros?
And regarding point 3, aren't food and fashion more important than economics and politics? So it's right to focus on them (the way women do).
--- He does not consider the possibility that the show is anti-capitalism propaganda, designed to infect the mind of the young — not just to play with their pre-existing angst, but to direct their thinking. [AA]
I foraged a little more, and this comment by hostess draws me in. Not knowing what Squid Game is about, I can only say it would not surprise me that Althouse's suggestion is the truth. And this financial cycle has reached such an extreme, it is worrisome to consider just how nasty events and especially people's attitudes will get when the cycle turns and asset values shrink.
That's how FDR and his USSR-loving advisers and officials went for the New Deal, a few cycles back. If the sugary extremes the Federal Reserve has baked into this cake produce the normal historical result of an even somewhat comparable shock reversal, there will be pain registering at high decibels. Opportunistic politicians will use any such "crisis" for whatever purpose they think they can sell. The Democrats hate our system so God help us if they find any way to retain power.
The one element that does not lend itself to leftist depradation is that China is already beginning to unravel financially. Large property companies have started to default, as headlines have been telling us. Their super-leveraged economic structure will do extremely poorly under the pressure of reversal, compounded by Xi's peculiarities and preferences. So they will not provide a positive example for anti-capitalists here, would seem to be the logical conclusion.
Maybe we'll rediscover some of the older virtues our relaxed polity has been ignoring over the last couple of decades. It will cost us, whatever the next cycle brings, so let wise people keep their heads. Frank Bruni and his ilk surely will not.
I've watched 1 episode of 'Squid Game' and I can say that it was not horrible. I can also say it wasn't great. It was good enough that it held my curiosity and made me want to see the next episode. On the other hand, it's been two weeks since I watched the first episode and I've not gotten around to viewing it again, so I guess you could say it was more or less...meh to me. Not bad, not great. Though I did think a couple of the actors were very good.
As for the violence and any social commentary, I take the tack that people who make horror/terror movies these days have to raise the bar on their cruelty and violence just to outdo what the young people see every day of their lives on the streets or on the news. This is the world we live in today. People doing drugs in parks next to schools, a woman getting raped on the train in Philly, another woman having her head cut off in Afghanistan. We read and see about all of this stuff daily. How's a screenwriter supposed to compete with that?
Sometimes or shows reflect who we are, or who we aspire to be, or what we used to be. Sometimes they predict the future, sometimes they over do it and guess wrong. But never in our history have we had so many people tied to each other through social media. So individuals now think as part of the groupthink, no longer as individuals. And if the group is into Squid Games and Squid Gamey things, this has to run it's course. It's like watching people take part in Pokemon Go. I never understood adults running around cities holding their phones up to click on make-believe anime characters.
This too shall pass.
How is Squid Game a critique of capitalism specifically, other than simply saying it is?
"it generates life-style articles that ride on the trend"
We have a winner.
"doesn't observe the genderedness of this phenomenon"
Which is bad? The genderedness or the non-observance? Aren't you stereotyping a gay man for being oblivious to the second sex?
"I can't help observing that his examples are articles written by women and the subjects — food and fashion — are stereotypically female"
So, the stereotypes are, once again, correct? What exactly is the issue?
The Grapes of Wrath was pretty hard on capitalism, too, yet oddly enough capitalism survived that critique and all others since. I suspect the South Korean economy and the fine people of Good Korea will survive this critique of its supposed horrors, just as the US recently survived the Hunger Games, Handmaid's Tale, and even Bob Woodward books, shows and movies.
How many films, plays, TV shows, radio dramas or puppet acts critical of the Kim family have been produced and seen in North Korea since 1945? Would a show accurately documenting the lives of the Kim family, freely made, distributed and watched, have a smaller or larger effect on the opinions of the North Korean populace? If the North Korean Army didn't protect the Kim family, how many minutes/hours/days would the last member stay alive?
Of course, capitalism and free markets have lifted more people out of poverty than any other system. It must be the magic of voluntary exchange, with people deciding for themselves.
Funny, that.
I enjoyed the SNL parody of the Squid Game more than thus article or the part of the episode I watched.
Like Joe Exotic, this flash in the pan will be over soon.
"We should all be doing a better job of making the world less terrifying for Frank Bruni..." Making the world less accessible for Frank Bruni would also work.
Some Netflix employees protested The Closer, and no Netflix employees have protested Squid Game? Huh.
Amadeus 48 said...Of course, capitalism and free markets have lifted more people out of poverty than any other system
A leftist is someone for whom the phrase "give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime" is an argument to give a man a fish.
It's torture porn masquerading as a critique of capitalism. The "VIPs" being rich, Trumpy Americans is such a strange and stupid plot turn that it must have been added for a certain American audience -- if you make the "real villains" rich, white, clueless republicans, the elite here will endorse anything, however sick and gruesome it is.
The one element that does not lend itself to leftist depradation is that China is already beginning to unravel financially. Large property companies have started to default, as headlines have been telling us.
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inflation-fueled non-performing loans? strike a few zeros off for both borrower and lender should fix it?!
I watched approximately 10 minutes of the opener before deciding it held no interest for me.
Man up, Fwank!
Bruni thinks 'Squid Game' is like a highlights reel of Quentin Tarantino at his grisliest? Either I didn't see the right 'Squid Game' or Bruni hasn't seen much Tarantino.
"Snowpiercer" was an xlnt hate-the-upper-class hit but it didn't increase train travel.
>Iman said...
I watched approximately 10 minutes of the opener before deciding it held no interest for me.<
That's like looking at a woman's little toe and deciding that she holds no interest for you. Trust me, you didn't have the vaguest idea whether 'Squid Game' interested you or not.
Re: Cacambo:
The "VIPs" being rich, Trumpy Americans is such a strange and stupid plot turn that it must have been added for a certain American audience
Are they? If so, sure, maybe it's for an American audience, but there's a strong, strong strain of anti-Americanism in Korea today. And it's not at all uncommon for the villains in Korean movies either to be foreigners or Koreans who foolishly or maliciously allied with foreigners. Even when, in historical dramas, the foreigners are Chinese, sometimes they're obviously just parodies of Americans.
Politics in Korea is not like politics in the US. For example, the Left candidate for President in the upcoming election (Lee Jaemyung) took aggressive measures against coronavirus. One of his signature moves? Require all the foreigners in his province to get tested. Because of course -- you know what foreigners are like.
Making foreigners the villains is an common, obvious, and cheap move in the Korean market. It's more remarkable that one of the protagonists was a sympathetic non-Korean character than that the villains turned out to be a bunch of foreigners and rich collborators exploiting the Koreans.
I remember a 1987 Schwarzenegger movie - The Running Man based apparently on a Steven King story and The 10th Victim from the 60's (Marcello Mastrioni and Ursula Andress) based on Sheckley story. Both were set in the 21st century.
This doesn't consider loads of adventure stories going back at least to the 1880's like "The Most Dangerous Game" or "The Lady or the Tiger." I wouldn't read too much into 100 million out of 200 million subscribers checking out a show with a colorful trailer.
I snuck into a showing of the original "Dawn of the Dead" as a 12 year old. I turned out just fine......I think.
Frank Bruni probably doesn't kill the spiders in his home himself.
The first episode delivers a jolt. It's a fresh new take on mass murder. It's cartoonish, but, beyond that, surreal. And Korean surrealism is its own kind of surrealism....I lost interest halfway through, but then when the series became a big thing, I went back to viewing it....It's a surreal world and in such a world you're more forgiving of the unexpected plot twists and the flamboyant gore......For those who enjoy a more civilized form of murder, I would recommend Only Murders In The Building. The plot is as incredible as that of the Squid Game, but the jokes are funny and, for the most part, the stabbings and shootings are done in a tasteful way and the corpses are more decorative than gory....I read Balfegor's comments above about Korea. The South Koreans apparently have a pretty dour view on life. I would think that the people in North Korea, especially those in the process of starving to death, have an even more dour view, but they don't get to make television shows that dramatize their objections to Communist Utopias.
My daughter-in-law, an Evangelical Christian in her seventh year in Africa engaged in a job creation mission, tells me her friends are going Democrat for reasons almost entirely connected to leftmedia propaganda aggrandizing Democrats over Republicans. She is in her early thirties.
Their background in public schools has left them too ignorant to discern between fact and fiction. Too bad.
I'm not planning to watch Squid Game for a number of reasons that aren't worth explicating here. I just noticed something amusing in light of the supposed critique of capitalism built into the show. The show itself was made on a relatively small budget and is doing gangbusters. So, they took their existing capital and produced something that is generating excess value due to high consumer demand. Feels like there's a name for that.
Though I'm a bit surprised by South Koreans of all people being suspicious of capitalism. If they want to try socialism, they can just cross the 38th parallel. Maybe season 2 of Squid Game will be a critique of North Korea where the winners of the games get killed instead of the losers. And then the losers starve to death.
Frank strikes me as a pearl-clutcher. Ann, your point #1 nails it. I find the popularity of the 'weird, psycho-sexual, rape/torture thriller' stories much more disturbing. No shortage of that type of stuff. And have you SEEN "The Walking Dead"? Talk about bleak.
There is a concerted effort to spread the popularity of Kdrama world wide. "Squid Game" followed a trail already blazed. Some of the best Kdrama is nothing like "Squid Game" at all. Those that liked "Squid Game" will be sorely disappointed in slow-moving masterpieces like "My Mister" or "Misaeng". Most viewers of Kdrama are female - I think the huge success of "Squid Game" is partly due to the male partners of Kdrama viewers tuning in - immediate doubling of viewer numbers!
To answer cwj's question, it's a critique of capitalism because of all the billions of people liquidated under capitalism. Oh, wait a minute. . . .
Two thoughts, Frank:
1. Don’t criticize what you can't understand
2. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Re: Deevs:
Though I'm a bit surprised by South Koreans of all people being suspicious of capitalism. If they want to try socialism, they can just cross the 38th parallel.
South Korea started as anti-communist. Not the same thing as being capitalist. I think South Korea started to overtake North Korea before it really became capitalist. They diverge in the early 1970s, as the economic policies of the Park Chunghee regime began to bear fruit and the communist policies of the North run out of steam.
While Park's policies certainly weren't socialist, neither were they really capitalist. I might describe them as "fascist," but really, they're derived from the economic development policy implemented by the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria, which Park and other members of his government had the opportunity to observe as young army cadets in Manchuria during the 1930s.
The IJA was not anti-capitalist -- well, it sort of was, but after future Japanese prime minister Nobusuke Kishi joined the puppet government in Manchuria, the army entrusted economic development to the conglomerates (zaibatsu; chaebol in Korean), primarily a gigantic JV between the Nissan Group and the Manchurian government. Similarly, the Park regime sponsored industrial development through chaebol like Hyundai, Samsung, and LG.
Crucially, much like Manchuria, where classic "comparative advantage" would have relegated them to low margin work like agriculture and textiles, the Park regime went all in on building heavy industry from the ground up (Japanese industrial development in Korea had been concentrated in the North, near the border with Manchuria, so South Korea really was starting from ~0). The military government lasted until 1987 or 1992, depending on how you count it. The economy didn't really open up until the 1990s.
While young Koreans probably aren't exactly waxing nostalgic about being ruled by a bunch of ex-Imperial Army officers, I think an awful lot of them are quite ambivalent about capitalism. Korea isn't actually much more unequal than other developed countries; nor is social mobility particularly limited. But the impudence of wealth and power, as it were, feels a lot more blatant than it is in most of the US. Both in conspicuous consumption and in sheer bad/illegal behaviour.
And there is, in turn, a lot of resentment.
Won't be seeing SG (no Netflix subscription; no cable either), but the pearl-clutching reminds me of "The Warriors," the '70s movie. It came out with an R rating and rumors of fights in the theaters.
If you saw it today, you'd wonder what all the fuss was about.
(And if you point to SG's gorefest, I'll suggest looking up "Titus Andronicus" and Grand Guignol)
And while I'm going on and on about Korea, I do think that some Koreans (many?) associate unfettered capitalism with things like the Sampoong Department Store collapse or, more recently, the Sewol ferry disaster, both of which featured owners trying to eke out a little more profit by cheaping out on safety. They were willing to take big risks for big profits, but lost the roll of the dice, and their customers paid with their lives.
There's an amusing and interesting ~9 minute video review of The Squid Game by a YouTube personality known as "The Critical Drinker." (Caution: the review contains profanity, very graphic violence, and major spoilers.)
Having now watched the first 6 episodes I would say Mr. Bruni is confusing MBA finance guys with capitalism. Pretty harsh on those.
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