Squid Game Is Your Next Netflix Binge, And With Good Reason

Screenshot: Netflix / Kotaku

There is a scene near the start of the first episode of the Korean phenomenon Netflix Squid Game where the main character, Seong Gi-hun, tries several times and fails to get a prize from a claw machine. He’s just been beaten up, lost gambling winnings he had only had for a few minutes, and he’s trying to win one last birthday present for his daughter. It’s an iconic moment of everything Squid Game means.

It’s a joy to see a Korean subtitled horror TV show being the number one show on Netflix in the United States. As anyone who’s watched will tell you, Squid Game is an extraordinary creation, far more than the “Battle Royale-lite” its trailers involved. It’s one of the most satirical comments on 21st century urban poverty, as you’re likely to see, presented as if Wes Anderson had remade Audition. It also comes full circle on a circle that started with the 2000 Battle Royale movie and then kind of reached Fortnite.

For the avoidance of doubt, spoilers for Squid Game are coming. While I won’t be discussing anything specific that happens after the first episode, much of the show will be a spoiled surprise for anyone just released from the trailer. It’s an insanely good program, and if you’re good at excessively gory violence, go watch it now.

The series, while featuring hundreds of characters, mostly focuses on one man: Seong Gi-hun of Ssangmun-dong (as he comes across), who is a superbly complicated character. He’s an absolute tramp, divorced father of a child, living with and without his elderly mother, stealing her to play. He gives his daughter a birthday present by asking another child to win him something from a claw machine, then takes her to buy the cheapest fast food. He steals his mother’s credit card to empty his account. He flees – and lies, begs and crawls to – his rogue creditors. And yet, like he does everything, he is so likeable. Much of this is thanks to the stunning portrayal of Jung-jae Lee, instantly switching between sympathetic goofy smiles and furious spit explosions. But it is also thanks to the truth in writing that people who constantly screw up can also be capable of moments of decency.

Gi-hun is eventually approached by an elegantly dressed and strikingly handsome man on the subway, offering to pay him huge sums of money for winning a Korean children’s game, Ddakji. It is about throwing a piece of folded paper on the piece of the opponent, lying on the ground. If you can return it, you win the round. (Think origami Pogs.) If he wins a round he gets 100,000 won ($ 84), if he loses he gets slapped. Once he is badly injured but with a handful of money, he is given a card and told to call if he wants to make more money by playing more games. It turns out that this is the 456th person to be invited.

Screenshot: Netflix / Kotaku

Of course he calls. He’s so in debt, has spent all of his sick mother’s money, is hated by his ex-wife and new partner, and has nowhere to turn. He has much less than nothing and neither has the wit nor the skill to find another way out. It is, as the coordinators of the Squid Game want to point out, always his choice. But that’s not the choice either.

After being asleep in the back of the car sent to retrieve him, he wakes up to find himself in a mixed dormitory, five story bunk beds, with the other 455 players disoriented and immediately thrown into their first game: Red Light, green light.

It’s quite similar to the playground version, just instead of being “out” if you move around when you are looked at you are dejected.

By the end of the first episode, it becomes very clear that there is much more to Squid Game than wacky deaths. It is first and foremost a poverty program, and although it is specifically about South Korean poverty, it is widely applicable everywhere. Where BR spoke of so-called “delinquent” children in the hands of a totalitarian government, SG does not demand such a leap into the fictitious near future to justify its premise. It’s a show about the desperation born out of desperation that comes with insurmountable debt. So, yes, despite Squid Game’s striking colors, extraordinary settings, and game show quality, it’s no comedy. It’s often funny, but if there’s one mood that permeates her creation, it’s anger.

Screenshot: Netflix / Kotaku

Obviously, game show formats as punishment / justification are not a new idea. Stephen King’s The Running Man was first released in 1982, and the rather loosely adapted Schwarzenegger film was released in ’87. This was long preceded by Das Millionenspiel, a 1970 German TV movie in which contestants must flee from gang murderers to earn a million marks. But even that was based on Robert Sheckley’s 1958 book The Prize Of Peril. This is not new territory, that is the point. Granted, Battle Royale and Squid Game don’t have a studio or an audience, but they are replaced by the much more modern concept of surveillance, with their every move being watched by a faceless army (literally, with SG masks on). .

Something that sets Squid Game’s approach to Game Show Elements as unlike anything that has come before is the video game-like appearance in much of what goes on. The number of players playing is always displayed on a large dashboard in the dorm, with the available cash prize below. By episode four, it hit 34 billion won ($ 28 million).) These numbers spin with the chime of an arcade hall, while so many details of the series are illustrated and marked with aesthetic appeal. similar to that of a video game. And it is no coincidence that the entire project (both in fiction and in its exterior presentation) uses the pattern of a square, triangle and circle, three quarters of the way trademark of Sony, the X presumably omitted to avoid a lawsuit.

Screenshot: Netflix / Kotaku

What follows is much more complex and nuanced than the one-concept show that it easily could have been. We dive into the lives of so many of these characters, understanding why they might agree to a series of deadly games, just for the slightest chance of financial support. Granted, as the episodes unfold, it falls back on somewhat less sober explanations of what’s going on, but it definitely nails the landing when it’s done.

The games they play are based on Korean childhood games, some universal, some not at all. Even though they are unfamiliar, they all have instant meaning. We all played games when we were kids, we know the logic, the rules. This is, you may have noticed, the direction that multiplayer gaming has taken since the rise of the battle royale genre. Especially when it is associated with sets in garish and whimsical colors. Think especially of Fall Guys, Gang Beats, Pummel Party. Think about the different events that happened in Fortnite (Live at Riskey, Cosmic Summer …), and of course Among us, the distillation of everything from hide and seek to Mafia .. These are playground games like adult entertainment, yet fiercely competitive, at times brutally violent.

Screenshot: Netflix / Kotaku

On the program, this is combined with a strong presence of gacha. The claw machine scene – and its follow-up when his daughter finds the woefully inappropriate gift inside of what he earns – that foreshadows the whole premise of Squid Game. Unjust and childish games, intentionally engaged, for prices you might not want, are never worth the cost of playing. It seems fitting to conceive of it as a warning for video games, along with its more deliberately austere prophetic allegory for shattered societies.

Squid Game undeniably delivers on the explosive gore it is sold on. It’s fantastic, disgusting, and will have you hiding behind your arms. However, what is more extraordinary is that his inflexible and angry commentary on the growing global divide between the rich and the poor is by far the most horrific element.