![]() ![]() ![]() What emerges is not a neat fable about the importance of being kind to others but rather a story about an indifferent universe where fortune is meted out arbitrarily. When against all odds Gi-hun prevails, there’s no clear suggestion that his kind behavior has paid off: He succeeded far more through luck than strategic savvy or competence. He chooses to team up with players who are weak because he likes them, even though he knows he can't save them, and it could guarantee his death. He fantasizes about winning with his friends and splitting up the cash prize as a way to motivate them to stay in the game, even though he knows it’s an impossibility according to the rules of the game. He leads an alliance - a tenuously held-together group in which trust is scarce and often betrayed - and is constantly encouraging camaraderie and cooperation that he knows cannot be reciprocated as the contestant pool is winnowed down and even allies are forced to take each other out. Can an action be called voluntary if a gun is pointed at your head from every direction? “Squid Game” forces us to meditate on this question.Ī kind of willful delusion is required for Gi-hun to act virtuously. In this scenario, the operators of the game are an analogue to predatory loan sharks - ostensibly offering a lifeline to desperate people who have no other choice, if they wish to remain housed and fed. The players find themselves crushed by financial desperation and shame, and they opt to return to the tournament. Only then, back in the real world, life doesn't seem much better. The plot that seems to lie ahead is a straightforward survival tale.īut after the first game, the participants make use of a contract clause allowing for the suspension of the games if a majority of players desire it, and the players return home, causing an unexpected break in the rhythm of the show. A wide-ranging collection of desperate and debt-burdened Koreans, as well as a migrant worker from Pakistan, are seduced into joining a tournament for a huge cash prize only to learn that being eliminated from any game results in being summarily executed. Amid some clichéd band-of-brothers tropes lie some subtle points about consent, cooperation and power that make the show more complex than it might seem at first blush.Īt first, “Squid Game” seems headed in a very obvious direction. While the political position of “Squid Game” is as in-your-face as the shocking gore of the show, its ideas extend beyond pointing out that capitalism entails barbarism. ![]()
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