It has high realism precisely because not everyone believes in a dog eat dog world. There are those that sacrifice themselves to save someone else. The immigrant that believes he is inferior simply because he came to the land and you have genuine human elements come to the surface even in the brutal world.
It doesn't lose a second on pointless discussions. It just starts strong and goes on and on until the very end. Substance all the way through. It's not just gore for the sake of gore or for shock value.
Have you seen the episode with the VIPs? They are terrible across the board. Their delivery sounds like NPC background dialogue from a third-rate low-budget video game.
Sounds to me like you understand the appeal of Squid Game perfectly :)
Squid Game is very deep
I don't think many people are saying that Squid Game itself is very deep, rather that it seems to work as a catalyst for many to have deeper conversations about these topics that they haven't really been having before.
Anyway, I loved Squid Game but I wouldn't call it remotely deep. It's a formula. You just need to come up with a few decent characters and it practically writes itself.
IIRC, the maker of Squid Game was quoted as being unable to contemplate what a season 2 would involve. Are you kidding? Just put a new bunch of characters through a new bunch of games, sprinkle a bit of extra plot on it and keep up the production values. People will watch an infinite amount of this.
<DerekJacobi>He will bring them death, and they will love him for it.</DerekJacobi>
Even though you don't see it, I'm pretty sure the creator tried to tell a deeper story in this series. And from that perspective, it's quite obvious why a second season couldn't just be a repeat from season 1.
I guess that's because otherwise you are kind of taking on the role of the sadistic spectators. I'm not saying that's true but it might feel like that to some people.
I kind of enjoyed Squid Game but I totally agree with you, I do not think it had much to offer in terms of social commentary, it's pretty one dimensional.
Personally, I prefered 'The Platform' (also on Netflix), which is a bit of a different take on a similar theme, although it is not any more subtle about its metaphor.
The acting, characters, sets and twists made it chilling in a way that makes Hunger Games et al look amateurish. At least until the English-speaking people opened their mouths...
Edit: to clarify, the “hints of communism” here refers to the game on the island, not south korea. These people willingly left capitalism to join this weird commie authoritarian style game to make money.
Seriously? It portrays current South Korea, which is one of the most capitalist societies in Asia. Did we watch the same show?
In fact, most of the circumstances that bring the players in the squid game are due to poverty and failed capitalism.
The social critique of Squid Game isn't the squid game. It's the world outside the game. It's why so many of the participants not only volunteer but also volunteer to come back after having already experienced it. The world outside the game show is portrayed as so bleak that hundreds of people would rather compete in a life-or-death "game" that promises fairness and a life-changing cash reward.
And the critical message of the show is that this world outside the game is not significantly different from ours. The game is a grotesque exaggeration of a get rich quick scheme but there are plenty of examples for people hoping to beat the odds or being willing to scam others for promises of great fortunes (look no further than the way the GameStock pump and dump was framed as a proletarian revolution until it was revealed most of the stock movement was the result of established investors jumping in to cash out on the gullible masses still tweeting "diamond hands" memes as the tide was starting to turn).
The cheap gore horror sells the show, but the implications of the story it tells, what people are willing to do to themselves and others for the promise of a carefree life, and how characters from all walks of life can end up in the gutter and devoid of hope, is why people dig their claws into it for more than just a few viral marketing memes. It speaks to the zeitgeist, especially during a pandemic that has repeatedly demonstrated failures of government and society, and economical interests being placed above the individual's well-being.
Before 2020 many people likely believed that their country would come together in a crisis like this, that people with power would forego their own interests for once an help out or that the wealthy wouldn't do less than even the bare minimum to contribute to the society that made them rich. In 2021 I don't think there are many people left having any such illusions about the systems they exist within.
So yeah, detached rich people betting on the dying and desperate like horses in a race strikes a chord with people right now. A show casually presenting a social reality in which poor people are willing to participate in such a "game" even more so. Note that this show's success on Netflix followed both The Platform and Snowpiercer (or the serialization thereof) as well as Parasite and Knives Out. There's a common thread between the themes of these films and Squid Game managed to strike the nerve.
Also to reflect other comments the acting and the whole imagery was excellent.
Did you happen to watch Parasite - it’s sorta cut from the same cloth. Curious if it didn’t interest as well.
All those people prefer to go back to the game where it's almost certain they will die but that at least gives them one chance, rather than living a normal life in a ruthless capitalist society that treats them as garbage.
The protagonist was going to be gutted by his loaners. He had signed a waiver on his body rights.
There are some participants who didn't come back. I assume that we were supposed to assume that they didn't come back because they had died in society.
To me honestly it feels like a boilerplate manga/anime plot, but to a more untainted audience it can be more.
The main character is a gambler that lives off of the back of his mother. This can be blamed both of his own shortcomings and that of society. At the end of the show it is proven yet again that he is a gambler in heart when he chooses to play the last game with the mastermind of the game instead of going out and helping the freezing homeless person. On top of that, he hoards the money and sits on it for a year instead of helping the victims' families. This can hardly be blamed on society or on the rich.
Dog eat dog world assumption really doesn't work in Squid Game. Here's why. Being a woman and old is disadvantegous. Yet the team chooses two women and old man for the tug of war competition. If this is not downright irrationality I don't know what is. Yet the little compassion that they muster during life and death situation ends up being their ticket towards survival. This imitates real life where even the morally worst will do something to save someone just to prove to themselves that they are not that far gone.
In the following game the main character again chooses the old man who most likely would've been left off to die. Yet again this small compassion brings him a victory as the old man simply gives him the marbles because they are friends and friends share everything.
So yeah squid game imitates life but that's not really pessimistic because it contains both the beautiful and horrible aspects of human nature.
This is a bit oversimplified. Meritocracy is not an outright fallacious idea, but depending on the subject, there is a certain threshold of opportunity above which it becomes the dominant force, and for many that threshold is out of reach.
For instance, learning to program is fairly "accessible" today, but even it has certain minimum requirements, a threshold of opportunity above which the playground becomes more equal: You need a computer, internet access, enough free time... eventually you need a job. The one that really generalises against meritocracy is "you need free time", because most of the world is fighting for their next paycheck and are not in a position to attempt to improve their life. I believe this is what the author is getting at, wealth and "social class" are just an indirect way of saying "the freedom to pursue more opportunities".
However throwing out meritocracy completely is not the solution to this, if replaced with ideas revolving around inclusivity and equality alone it will fall apart - meritocracy is part of equality, it's just not all of it, it doesn't automatically solve equal opportunity... And this is where I think the author is missing the point: the world, society, government does little to ensure equal opportunity - This is the point squid game is making, everyone starts equal unlike reality.
A meritocracy is inherently a society of elite. It is not egalitarian.
You are conflating the very two things i am trying to distinguish here... luck, good environment, good parents are all opportunities.
Talent is something you earn with hard work, passion, effort, and yes is compounded and encouraged by merit, but can only do so given the opportunity. If society does not reward these things it falls apart, if a business does not reward these things, poorly qualified people end up making things, passionate people end up demotivated and stop improving, dispassionate or incompetent people produce rubbish without improving, nothing good comes out of this.
Many people suggest the merit is all that's needed, and that's not true, you need both. Honest insightful and successful people recognise how important opportunity was in their success, and when the world is viewed with this perspective you realise meritocracy is not enough - but being insufficient does not automatically make it bad.
[edit]
for clarity, I more delicately rephrased the part the parent quoted before they posted their reply, but I did say that:
> Meritocracy is a friend of disadvantaged people
It's a lot like trying to reason about society as a network of perfectly rational actors making optimal decisions. The problem is not only imperfect knowledge and flawed decision making but personal biases on all sides, and not all of these biases are undesirable (unless you are looking for an optimum devoid of all externalities).
E.g. you could argue that insufficient risk taking is a failure to execute on your potential merit, but you may be risk averse because you lack a social safety net (e.g. wealthy parents) or because you have vulnerable dependents (e.g. a sick or disabled spouse, parent or child).
Meritocracy only works on an abstraction of what people are, but people can't be that simply because they're human animals with emotions, desires and needs. And this doesn't even go into undesirable biases like (unconscious) racism or sexism.
--
Spoilers ahead:
That said, where a lot of surface level readings of the squid game (the game in the show) fail is that they take the Frontman at face value. The game is decidedly not meritocratic. To start with, the games are very much not a level playing field as the participants carry over advantages and disadvantages from their life outside the game (e.g. poor health, physical strength, age, etc). The games also intentionally disrupt any attempts at cooperation (e.g. by alternating between picking teams and picking opponents without making it clear which is which). Several participants even outright cheat or are aided by staff. And the penultimate game not only replaces any pretense of skill with pure chance but also changes the rules when one participant reveals a relevant skill. But more importantly than anything else, one of the participants is revealed to actually be the person who invented the game and participates freely, even beating (killing) other participants, but is spared the consequences (execution).
Not only is the society outside the game shown to be unjust and impact the pretense of meritocracy within the game, the Frontman actively sabotages a meritocratic victory in one of the games for the entertainment of the VIPs and one participant is exempt from all consequences because his wealth and status allows him to participate on his own terms and manipulate the other participants, skewing the results.
The participants don't volunteer to come back because the game is meritocratic, they come back because they think they have a chance. In fact ultimately the victor is a gambler who tried to win by uniting some of the weakest participants (though punished by having to cheat the seemingly most vulnerable person in order to survive), and a ruthless tactician willing to sacrifice everyone to get ahead but ultimately sacrificing himself out of regret. Heck, after weeding out most of the survivors in a blatant game of chance, one of the three finalists is gravely wounded (and consequently murdered) by sheer bad luck and we know that at least of the participants that made it to the game of chance got there by actively cheating their opponents (and at least one was "gifted" their place by another participant sacrificing themselves voluntarily).
If anything, the game demonstrates an environment intentionally set up to disrupt any attempt at solidarity (tho this idea was portrayed much more explicitly in The Platform) while blaming the individual for their failure in a system designed to prevent their success.
This is just a war of semantics: I'm using it as a distinct abstract idea, you are implying it must be an all encompassing model of society. As an analogy, would you say we should ban seatbelts because they ignore the fact that some people drink and drive and still cause death and destruction despite seatbelts?
Literally all i'm saying is that meritocracy is a part of equality just like seatbelts are a part of safety, and not a panacea... to be accompanied by other mechanisms.
Can you imagine a world where we do not reward people for improving themselves and becoming more useful? How is that not part of equality.
Meritocracy is a form of elitism, perfect ability to select by merit or not. We would have end up with a moneyed elite either way.
In other words, it seems to me that it first had to be publicly announced as 'popular', before people would consider watching it thus actually making it popular.
Back in 2007, Netflix wasn't a globally available streaming service and they were still sending out DVDs.
> would not have looked twice at Kaiji
I still wouldn't, it's a cartoon, I'm not into cartoons.
> it first had to be publicly announced as 'popular'
I didn't figure out it was popular until after I finished watching the show. Meanwhile, while watching the show, I was telling all my friends about how much I liked it and recommended it to them.
Your comment reeks of "I have superior taste and people who watch Squid Game are sheep". Just accept that some people might just really like this show while not being interested in the Manga you enjoy.
Unfortunately, lots of people are just easily impressed by what influencers are watching or what is 'trending' these days. So they follow the hype squad around; like sheep.
It is great for Netflix's business since they have a successful hit, but count me out of the hype squad; since I simply cut through the hype.
Not every movie has to be a work of art with a truly original story. If that were the case, non of the most successful movies of the past decade(s) should really exist.
Y'all seem to think that we're in some kind of meritocracy, that predatory capitalism isn't centrally planned, that you earned your position in society and so everyone who's poor just isn't working hard or smart enough...
And even after watching a show that makes the point in as simplistic a metaphor as you could wish for; even after reading an article that breaks the metaphor down precisely and makes it abundantly clear, there's still people in this thread saying "I don't understand the appeal", "it's just brutality and shock value", "if you can watch this you're rich and who it's aimed at", "pfft, this is a ripoff of [obscure manga]"...
How can smart people miss the point so completely? It's simple, but still surprises me almost every time - "“Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.”
It's not that I'm wilfully blind to the flaws of the system I live in. It's that the overwhelming majority of people who offer critique offer absolutely nothing in the way of workable solutions. If the public intellectuals who came up with the doughnut economy, teal society, or the Rojavan system were having a talk in my town, I'd be very interested in going. But note that these people actually created something and spend very little time cataloguing flaws of the things they're seeking to replace. Nearly anyone can critique a thing that exists, and people who do nothing but criticise tend to rub everyone the wrong way.
More insidiously, there are often class interests at work motivating the criticisms or denials of meritocracy, and most people who enjoy having the chance to make a positive contribution to the world view that particular class with an extreme suspicion and often well-earned hostility. If you'd really like to understand how the other side thinks, I'd recommend this essay: https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2016/01/donald...
The public intellectuals and concepts you mention may be known in your bubble, but they are not popular or talked about.
It's insane that with all of our gains in productivity the last hundred years Americans are working two or three jobs just to survive. That's fucking bananas. Cloaking that in dry academic discussion may work for you, but it clearly isn't having a big cultural impact.
Squid Game touched a nerve. People know that that we're all getting screwed.
And it's not just America, clearly. Neoliberals all over the world are strip mining the common good, at our expense and at the expense of our descendants.
So let's not shit on media that at least gets people talking about systemic inequality, while also actually managing to be popular. That's an accomplishment, and to be praised.
They want to miss it so badly, it's simple cognitive dissonance. Some people don't want to accept that they had luck while others didn't. They have successfully convinced themselves that we are not all equals, that somehow there are people who are more deserving.
The show can have a good message and also have bad writing/be derivative/etc.
Not everything is perfect, but we're not living in a dictatorship yet. Sure, some poor people don't have a chance and the closer you are to money, the easier it gets, but it's not like it's all on the system. There are also quite a few capitalist countries other than the US, with less problems.
> there's still people in this thread saying "I don't understand the appeal", "it's just brutality and shock value", "if you can watch this you're rich and who it's aimed at", "pfft, this is a ripoff of [obscure manga]"...
I agree that squid game can be interpreted that way. But let's be real here, there's massive amounts of gore in there and it's portrayed extensively, far beyond where it would be necessary to make a point. And I'm pretty sure that a lot of people watch it mostly for that and for the crime story, not the implied portrayal of society. You can see it in there, but squid game is mass market first, social critique second.
There's 'not perfect', and then there's us... We've got sanctioned torture, an oligarch class, perpetual war, unaccountable surveillance, black sites, executive orders, secret courts, silencing, detention and torture of foreign journalists, and record inequality.
And that's in our own country - we do much worse to South America, Africa, the Middle East. Have done for hundreds of years. We even threaten and surveil European groups and leaders without (immediate) consequence.
> squid game is mass market first, social critique second.
So what? If it were social critique first people would be complaining that it's too political. I've overheard people discussing social inequality in the grocery store because of this show, and I fucking love it for that.
Most of us are on the winning side of the game right now - central banks have dumped a ton of money into investments and banking, software has very low marginal cost at scale, and companies can be unprofitable for decades if they have a good story. Big Tech has also been immune to regulation and taxes. If the regulatory/legal space or the market want ROI now, then many of us may be the losers in the next round of our economic Squid Game.
If Naval is right, then that will make America the same as the "Offshore" in "3%"...
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/naval/status/1463388121710481410
Meritocracy is an attack on capitalism. Read the book.
Its a warning that people could choose to participate in a centralized, communist totalitarian system if they are encouraged to do so. It reminds us of the communist revolutions from the early 1900s and a lot of the leftist rhetoric from today.
A daily lottery for who has to clean toilets and do underwater welding?
I don't think the series says much about central vs local planning, and even if it did that'd only be tangentially related to capitalism or anti-capitalism.
It is 100% a critique on capitalism and he states it clearly.
While Gantz rewards only individual players, it is not a battle royale. Teammwork is basically essential for survival.
