Squid Games, scandal and boredom.
Being on vacation, I was able to watch with the girls of Squid Games. In theory I have violated the German rules, since in Germany it is forbidden to minors under 16, and here we are talking about 14.
On the other hand, one of the girls has started studying Japanese as a hobby and plans to take the N1, and therefore already knows the best of the Japanese production of more or less gruesome manga. Both girls are fanatics of BTS and Korean TV series, more or less gory. And I'm VERY bloody, from ghouls up.
But what I didn't expect is such a level of boredom. It is not the first very oriental thing I see with them, and I must say that Squid Games has caught the most obvious, boring, intellectually banal and conceptually empty content of the production.
It's like the first Western film to hit Korea was, I know, Battlefield Earth starring John Travolta. We would have asked ourselves a few questions about the Koreans. Not that I don't ask them, but here, in all the gigantic Korean production, going to take Squid Games is really wanting to kill Korean cinema.
THE CONCEPTS.
On concepts, the void is total. If I want to observe people who kill themselves to get out of an unsustainable economic situation and escape debt (to the benefit of the rich) I just have to photograph the guy who delivers pizza by bicycle, or the exploited workers of the pig slaughterhouses. There is no need to build all that show: in the film the competitors to that Russian roulette offer themselves because they think that things are identical outside. And it's true: for this very reason it makes no sense to watch the film. Outside it's the same.
Have you ever heard that rich people are bored and need cruel and violent things to feel emotions, because they have too much money? That is, apart from "Even the Rich Cry", "Zardoz", and a hundred other titles since the 1970s , have you ever heard of rich people who do not get bored and do not do despicable things to get out of the boredom of their condition? Here, the first topos is this. A concept that has now been so exploited that even Valentina Nappi's ass disgusts it: now it's cool. Oh, how disgusting it sucks to be a billionaire in Korea (which then seems to be a global situation, judging by the rich): you really have to play deadly games where you see poor people risking their lives to escape debt and misery. They could walk into their own companies and see it happen 24/7,
GAMES.
You can spend your time discussing the symbolic value of children's games in Korea, which are not that different from Western ones, or so it seems. Except that we would never have called that drawing "Squid", but they obviously do drugs with rice, and they call it that.
The point is, those games seem to come straight out of here:
only the comic at least makes you laugh. (And winning in the comic is not a loser).
They have not even tried to invent more "fraggy" weapons or to use bigger calibers to get more blood. You will tell me that that was not the purpose of the film: bullshit. Aside from the fact that all the killings are shown in detail with a sadistic complacency for the splattering blood , and a certain clear appetite for the mashed brain, if you want me to believe you smart guys make it clear to me what the purpose of the film is: okay, that was not the purpose of the series, but then what stracazzo was the purpose?
However, even the choice of the shooting weapon does not seem to suggest that the purpose is another. Apparently the guards use an S&W Mod 10 when they shoot the losing competitor, while the “managers” use an S&W Mod 19, (noblesse oblige, of course). The same used by the undercover cop, and later described as S&W Mod 60 (M60), which does not exist. This is obviously a large caliber (.357) weapon, which makes a nice mess when it hits. But that's not the point of the film. And since blood is not the aim of the film, the soldiers have a Heckler & Koch MP5A3. Ok.
However, the blood flows by the hectoliters, even if “that's not the purpose of the film”.
THE “LEARNED” REFERENCES / CRITICISM TO KOREAN SOCIETY.
No one in particular. And the only one there (the protagonist's red hair at the end of the film) is not explained. The story could be quietly set in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, and it wouldn't change a bunch of anything. Nothing in the logic of the story is uniquely Korean.
Is it a critique of capitalism? Toh, look, in capitalism the poor kill each other to escape misery. Ever heard, really: Does it only happen in Korea? Is it copied from The Hunger Games? No, come on, we're not malicious.
Then we discover that a protagonist is from North Korea. At home, the actress is a K-Idol, so she'll find a way to rise again in the next series. As far as the Japanese / BTS experts tell me, you can't really take out the Gnocca Major without the fans going into a frenzy. So she's not really dead. Believe me, it will rise again.
Does Squid Games say anything about the plight of North Korean exiles? No. I really don't think they're going to participate in these Russian roulettes, and the only thing we know from the film is that this refugee lives by easily slipping money out of people's pockets. Never heard of it before, really. What an idea! But look at you Koreans, what they make up.
It is clear that she needs the money to bribe the North Koreans and reunite with family members. Ok, this is Korean. But we already know: a poor dictatorship is corrupt by definition, so it's obvious that if you pay you can get people out of North Korea.
There are references to Korea, as many as there are to Italy in Ocean's twelve. If you want to be intellectuals who have understood things about Korea by watching this film, then you have to explain to me why the protagonist dyes his hair carmine red in the end.
Come on, come on, did you want the bicycle?
THE PROTAGONISTS
In Star Trek TOS, those who were going to die you recognized them by the red jackets. Here the mechanism is similar, but you recognize them by how much you know about them.
It is absolutely clear that the loser will win, because you know everything about him. You don't waste all that time showing a guy I would call "a pathetic pate" if you get him out of the way in the second episode.
Anyway, in the end the pathetic-flavored pate wins. And the other protagonists? So, there's a cop running around on his own, and he's an idol. (they are called this also in Korea). And since it is an Idol, it does NOT die. You BELIEVE he's dead, but in the world of yellow cinema you can't kill him like that. It is true that they have framed it much and even better in all its beauty (imagine Twilight, but of Koreans), but one like this is like the chick from North Korea. It seems dead, but then the fans begin to bully the shit until a gimmick of those that only Koreans know brings them back to life.
Of the other characters stand out: The Pakistani Pirla. I don't know if in Korea it is normal to consider Pakistanis as good-natured, honest and kind idiots, but the PP is exactly that. An irregular immigrant who is good, but is not paid and goes into debt to live, to the point of dying of debt. It ends like a fool.
The Opportunist Troy. Okay, this girl's lifestyle is to offer herself to anyone who has a decent chance to survive. It is not beautiful and it is not clear why it works once, and the time it does it also chooses the wrong type. If that's her skill, she died too well.
The bright guy who went to cool school, became a manager and lost a lot of money on the stock market. He is someone you know very little about him during the series, so it's not clear why he gets so far ahead. But okay.
The old man with brain cancer. Now, why a guy with terminal brain cancer has to "risk his life" in a game where he has exactly zero chance of succeeding is obviously the first thing you suspect in the game. In fact it's suspicious, and the reason is … RONF, ZZZZZZZ. How boring.
The Christian of the situation. Sure, you've gotten yourself into a carnage for money, and you're praying to God that someone else will end up with their brains pulverized at every turn, but if this is a criticism of the hypocrisy of Christians, it could have been better. Also because, they've done worse.
The Korean thug. If the korean thug is like this, or like that, the korean police are officially a pile of idiots. They are so stereotyped that they could directly arrest them for their looks and tattoos. Imagine the mafia driving around with cars that have “Cosa Nostra” on the side of the door, like the police. There. It doesn't take long to find them, right? There.
THE PLOT.
To make it interesting a plot that would otherwise be Hunger Games mixed with Zardoz mixed with “Let's gut ourselves with Bauli”, they tried to put sub-stories into it. Then an organ trafficking appears, and the twilight policeman appears in search of his brother.
But both sub-stories disappear suddenly, and without a trace. We must also give work to idols, right?
THE MORAL.
the last episode tries to give a moral to the game. The problem is that the result is so contradictory and confusing that I expected at any moment "The moral is always the same, have a snack with Girella". It would have made more sense.
The debate.
Once, at the university, it happened that a girl who fucked very badly (according to about seventy people I met later) convinced me to go and see a Pasolini trilogy in an D'Essai cinema. There was the final debate, filled with DAMS folks and a series of academic trombones who, judging by the responses, had been watching the football match the whole time.
Moral of the story: the debate exists because there are professionals of the debate, paid to make the debate.
So: Can Squid Games Teach Bullying Your Kids? I would not say. Apart from the gang of thugs that forms among the competitors, it is not a particular glorification of bullying. The only bullying at most would be the rich people who kill people to save themselves from misery, but it is not a content that can be assimilated at the level of the bully.
Can you teach violence? In reality it is not that there is so much violence that it is possible to glorify (except when competitors kill each other because they are hungry), it is mainly summary executions . They look ugly, but a uniformed dude shooting an unarmed dude completely lacks the epic it takes for kids to find him cool.
Can he earn tokens for the Essai cinema trombones who no longer have Pasolini to comment on? Sure, very much. Can it unleash the ire of the MOIGE? Well, of course: everything arouses the ire of the MOIGE. Can you get an excommunication from Codacons? Of course, those always come.
Can it unleash unlikely pseudosocialist reflections on the idea that the poor kill themselves or let themselves be killed for misery? It will for sure, as long as some TV pays an attendance fee to the usual "intellectuals".
VALUE OF THE SERIES
It oscillates between "Anal Size My Wife III" and "Slutwife CarSex Dogging in London".
Trivial, empty, irrelevant, devoid of any content, and the purpose of the film is (without a shadow of a doubt) to show that if you shoot a person with a .357 on the other side, a lot of blood comes out.
Which, modestly, I already knew.