“Everyone here has insurmountably large loans and stands at the precipice of life, Do you want to go home and live the rest of your life like garbage, being chased by creditors? Or do you want to grab this last opportunity, which we are presenting?” - an anonymous game organizer in a mask and pink uniform tells the assembled players in the first episode.
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The hit Korean show “Squid Game,” where working-class contestants are given a chance to win billions, or literally die trying. It also breathes life to an allegory of capitalism rooted in the alienation of the working class. Also, it never makes its action look glamorous. Squid Game is directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk. The core theme of the series is a group of contesters getting into battle royale style games to win prize money. The show tries to tell us how humans show their true nature when put in extreme situations. on the other hand, it also shows participants actualizing their most human powers — solidarity, tenderness, and empathy. What the show really tries to tell is the dehumanization that the system is capable of.
“I wanted to write a story that was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist society, something that depicts an extreme competition, somewhat like the extreme competition of life.” - Hwang Dong-hyuk
Let us examine various aspects of human society in Squid Game. Stop here if you haven't watched the show. SPOILER ALET!
Capitalism induced Structural Poverty
All the contesters are victims of structural poverty and are working-class people, except for Il-Nam. The protagonist is a 40+-year-old gambling addict life is consumed by unpayable debt that leads him to sign up to sell his organs to the Korean mafia. However uncommon it may seem to us, his situation is not uncommon in South Korea. As presented at the end of the season - Korea has the world’s second-highest level of household debt, which is rapidly increasing. Unlike Parasite, which showcases the vast class differences. The “players” in Squid Game can only exist because of capitalism and the structural poverty it produces. It also additionally explores desperation to escape poverty and power imbalances along with this.
The Dehumanization & Alienation
In the show, it is mentioned that the game has a history of 32 years with 14,000+ participants altogether, while there can only be one winner. The recruitment process, carried out through a Korean game called ddakji, consists essentially of alienating yourself from your pain and your body (Getting slapped bet). If you can accomplish this in exchange for money, it will be assumed that “you can use your body to pay up”.
Dehumanizing starts from the very beginning. In the first game- red light green light, only the participants who didn't flinch at the fellow participants' death are won. Between the second and third games, the organization provokes a fight by purposefully giving the participants less food. This leads to distrust and further dehumanization among the participants as they see each other as imminent dangers. In one of the episodes, participants are compared to racehorses to be bet on. Of course, the main character resorts to “evading” some of these processes of alienation, but his case is unusual and only made possible by the solidarity and personal relationship he was able to build with Oh Il-nam. Player 001/Il-Nam was the producer of the whole operation and a key alliance with a powerful and rich player saved his life multiple times.
VIPs and Racehorses
Squid Game shows the sickening conclusion that the enormous division between classes that Human society has produced. This game was created to combat the boredom of obscenely wealthy people, called VIPs in the show. In other words, a system of death is financed for the sake of mere entertainment. The participants’ objectification and dehumanization are obscenely direct. As the leader of the organization mentions in episode 9, “You like horse racing, don’t you? You are horses, horses on the track.” The squid game expresses, in radical fiction, the vast difference between classes produced by capitalist society. The competition that the participants go through is an allegory for the cruel competition experienced by the dispossessed people of the world.
Even without knowing it, all of us are living in the Squid Game.
Class conflict
Local culture observer, Kim Seong Su sees Squid Game as an illustration of the reality of many people's lives today: social class conflicts and the harshness of living in a capitalist system. The owners of capital or financiers will always get richer. The rest are the proletariat who are the wheels of capitalism, who only have the body, energy or the mind to contribute.
Regardless of the country or language, capitalism is the shared villain in Netflix’s global successes. It’s a villain viewers everywhere can identify. This contributed to the wide reception of the show globally. From Robinhood to Professor & Tokyo (money heist), we cheer for them because we understand that they are up against the same forces as the rest of us. No matter the language or location, capitalism makes us all desperate.
Selling Anti-Capitalism back to us
When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use. - Joseph Stalin
We should also be aware that anticapitalism is being remarketed to us by the very billionaires who would be in the Squid Game VIP room. This comes as little surprise when considering the growing shift away from capitalism in recent years, exacerbated by the financial struggles that arose during the global pandemic. It’s why people like Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have risen to political stardom in the premise of "working-class politics". Under capitalism, anything can become a commodity and ultimately be de-radicalized, Hollywood, through corporate America, makes room for these performative gestures that allow people to romanticize the idea of resistance against a violent system. Preventing any actual changes from happening.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos recently proved this point with a tweet saying he "can’t wait" to watch the show. The irony is that Bezos' own workers operate in often unsafe and poor working conditions.
The Illusion of Freewill & Choice
The idea of free will has very effectively been weaponized by white supremacist capitalists to gaslight people into believing that they are responsible for the shitty circumstances including poverty, homelessness and debts. A society that believes in free will also implicitly believes that everyone is responsible for their circumstances and material conditions despite how much they’ve been marginalized and oppressed by said society.
You can be as anticapitalist as you want but at the end of the day you still need to wake up and go to work your ass off or go homeless and starving. There’s no real way that we can opt-out of it and pursue your passion or do the work you love to do. That is free will existing in Capitalist society. This is very clearly showcased by candidates returning to the game after deciding to opt-out.
We’re largely enjoying them because they’re so relatable. Meanwhile, we should also be aware that anticapitalism is being remarketed to us by the very capitalists. And really, by "enjoying" the show, are we any better than the VIPs in the show? Perhaps that's the most disturbing of all. It is the food for thought.
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