Source: Netflix
For spoiler reasons for the first episode, the post is below the fold, being a run down of the episode, though I guess that by now y’all know the basic set up of the series.
You’d have to be living under a rock to not have heard of “Squid Game”, the most successful Netflix series so far. Everybody and their dog seems to be very excited about it, and of course my kids are pestering me to let them watch it. Now, I’m not set against violence in media as such, but I’m very much in favour of kids not being shown violent media they cannot understand. Plot lines, narratives and stories are things we need to learn. We start them on Peppa Pig and work from there, so when they encounter violence in media they can contextualise it. If we start them on violent media, no matter how good that media is, where they cannot understand the story, then all they get is the violence.
Squid Game is advised for 16+, so there was no way I’d just let a 12 and 14 yo watch that show, so I promised them that I’d watch first and then we talk. So I watched the first episode and now I’m a bit puzzled about the hype. We start with our protagonist, Gi-hun, who is, let’s face it, a waste of space. He’s a gambler with about 300k (€/$) in debt. He lives with his old mum, whom he bullies and insults, while she’s doing the cooking and washing. He pesters her for money, and when she doesn’t give him enough, he steals her bank card and steals money from her account. At this point I hated him already. I’m not sure here: am I meant to hate him? Or am I missing out on the “tragic hero down on his luck” story because I have no patience for men like him?
Of course he carries the money off to a betting place, where he first loses, then wins big, but loses the money again to a pick pocket while running from the loan sharks out to get their money. In the end he has to beg money off a woman he gave a tip earlier, because he really needs money, because it’s his daughter’s birthday. Oh, did I forget to mention that? It’s his daughter’s birthday and all he cares about is gambling. So he gets a little money and he does what? Right, he goes gambling. In the end he has an inappropriate gift (a lighter ion form of a gun) and takes the kid to a fast food place. Father of the year! He takes the kid back home, meeting his ex, and of course she’s portrayed as a total bitch, making a fuss about him being 10 minutes late. I can only imagine how much time the lady has spent waiting for this guy already…
On the way home he meets a mysterious guy who offers him a game. It’s a Korean kids game and he can easily win a lot of money. What’s even better, he doesn’t even lose money, if he loses he just gets slapped! And he loses often, letting the other guy beat him so bad his whole face swells up, but he does win some money. See, finally gambling pays off! The guy gives him a business card and Gi-hun goes home where his mum informs him that the evil ex is planning to move to the USA, taking the kid with her. If only he had some financial stability! Then he could get custody! So of course that’s when he calls the guy from earlier. Again, we’re probably supposed to now feel for him. Dude is just doing it for his daughter! This is probably me again, but I’m more worried at this point that the guy could get custody than anything else. Sorry, I know too many kids with fathers like that and I see the damage they do. I don’t know, did others who watched it feel sympathy towards him? Do they have any emotional connection with Gi-hun?
Anyway, we’re probably now about 30 minutes into the episode and the game finally begins. He and the others are basically abducted. They’re all in serious debt, the game masters know all about them, they sign a contract that doesn’t tell them that “disqualified” means “dead” and the first game “red light, green light” begins. It’s probably an international game, because I know it as “1-2-3-4 oxen at the hillside”: One kid is turns around saying their line, and while they’re doing so, you’re alowed to move, but if they catch you moving after they turn again, you’re out. Only here “out” means “dead”. Of course the first person to move gets shot, when the others notice, there’s a panic and about 80% of the participants don’t survive the following carnage. Frankly, it’s the exact sort of violence I dislike in media: Senseless carnage, just for the brutality of the images. And they are brutal, with corpses piling up, blood flowing freely. The bullets, otoh, are magical. they never hurt anybody except the person intended to die. You see them enter a head, you see the blood spray out of the back of the head, but the person behind is simply unharmed.
Of course, Gi-hun and a few more we barely got to know survive the first game and this is where the first episode ends and I’m left puzzled. Am I supposed to care about Gi-hun? Am I supposed to have an emotional connection with him that I’m just not getting because I see him as a complete asshole and not some tragic hero? Or am I supposed to care despite him being a complete asshole, because no human being deserves to be treated like that? And if so, what about all the others who died in that episode, whose deaths were obviously not meant to make a connection? I’ll give the series that the visuals are great. The people involved with the game don’t have faces, apart from the first guy Gi-hun meets. They’re wearing uniforms and masks (cue seeing them everywhere this Halloween), there is a mastermind who enjoys watching the carnage in a luxury setting, also wearing a mask. I could see this as an allegory for capitalism as a system killing people for its profits: not a personal problem, but one of a system, but honestly, it does have Nazi vibes where every single person working there is obviously ok with the brutal murder of hundreds of people.
In conclusion, the story is the Hunger Games, just adapted to a real world setting and without using innocent children but instead adults who are all less than innocent, having amounted tons of “unnecessary” debt via gambling, fraud, etc. But where the Hunger Games make you abhor the violence and brutality, so far Squid Game is desensitizing you. And just as a cherry on top of the whole mess sundae: the episode doesn’t even pass the Bechdel test…
What will I do now with the kids? If they really want to watch it, we will watch together, but we will have a long talk before watching. I’m just hoping that they’ll get bored during the first half of the episode.
Did you watch it? What was your impression?
Hmm, I heard some of my Year 7 class (11-12 year olds) talking about this while I was trying to get them to settle down for their Latin lesson. I didn’t realise it was a TV show rated for over 16s, I assumed it must be some sort of light-hearted cartoon game thing like the last craze -- Among Us.
Perhaps I ought to have said something to the safeguarding people.
I had heard the name, but nothing else. Consider me under the rock. But doesn’t sound like anything I would be interested in. Thanks for your viewing to save me the trouble of checking it out.
Re: the difference between this and Hunger Games:
The protagonists are also completely different. Katniss is admirable, if flawed. Her life so far has been spent trying to protect herself and the people she loves from a violent world, and she’s only a tribute because if she hadn’t volunteered, her sister would have been made one. From your description, Gi-hun is contemptible. He cares about no one but himself and nothing but his immediate urges. If he died in the game, we would see it as his just deserts, not a tragedy.
Hunger Games was IMHO a deeply moral story. This one sounds like wallowing in amorality. (Yeah, I’m moralistic. Wanna make something of it?)
So far, I haven’t been hearing good things about Netflix. First, that transphobic so-called “commedian,” and their reaction to complaints about him, and now this. Maybe amorality is what they’re about, and showing Hannah Gadsby was an aberration.
I watched it and enjoyed it. I was also an early viewer and was surprised about a week later when suddenly everyone was talking about it. It’s also very difficult to discuss without spoilers, as I’m discovering as I try to work out how to discuss it.
The show is a critique on capitalism and debt and how desperate it makes people. Gi-hun is very unlikable at the beginning and does grow, but he’s also an addict which I kinda didn’t think about when it comes to something that happens later (and I’m not thinking of the marbles scene).
The show is violent, but surprisingly the most heartbreaking deaths aren’t really shown on screen and I found that hit harder than the gorier ones like that first game.
There is a lot of sexism from the characters but more often that not it doesn’t work out as well for the characters making choices based on that as well as they had hoped.
I’d be cautious about letting a 12-year-old watch, but at the same time keeping in mind with the internet and friends with Netflix it’s probably impossible to stop them, especially if all their peers have seen the show, so it might be better to watch it with them so you can discuss it. If you don’t care about spoilers, it might be worth reading some articles talking in depth about the show to bring the themes more in focus.
I dont watch very much television anymore. No netflix, no HBO or any of the ripoff tv stations. I have only heard about squid game in passing and had no idea what it was. No plans to watch this show as it sounds like crap. Im sorry you had to put yourself through that.
I don`t get the hype either.
My partner likes it, I could not watch through the mass murder scene. You reflect my thoughts on Gi-hun exactly.
I crawled from under my rock to say that I had no clue what this show is about. I only read the name about two days ago in an article headline, I read the article, I did not get what they are on about and that was it.
I am one of those people who seek out spoilers to avoid unpleasant surprises and waste of time. That is why I have not watched the last star wars movie (the series ended with Last Jedi for me) and why I won’t watch this. From your description here it does seem like a worse written spoof of Running Man (the book, not the movie). I do not enjoy splat and gore violence, so I am definitively not going to watch this. I do not have Netflix subscription anyroad.
I saw chunks of it while my housemates were watching, and joined them for the last episode. It didn’t draw me in, but I have seen enough to understand it.
It was… okay? It’s an angry show, meaning not the main character or even most of the characters, but the perspective of the narrative. We also watched the 2019 ‘Joker’, and honestly it reminded me of that in some ways – though it is the reverse in the most important way, that the brutality and horrors are shown perpetrated by those in power instead of the powerless.
I found it being something that did not grab me, but I understand the appeal. It’s dystopian, it’s brutal, and in many ways it’s disturbingly realistic. I believe that it is perhaps the ur-example of where media has been going in the last little while, a trend not yet over: it is a commentary on the massive inequalities in the developed world, the impersonal faceless hegemony we struggle under, and ultimately a cathartic scream of despair about it.
I watched it, and also think it was ok. I also did not find many of the characters sympathetic, with the exception of Ali, and the North Korean defector.
I’m not at all familiar with Korean culture and standards, but I was also concerned about the only LGBT representation I noticed was one of the evil and decadent VIPs. Also, everyone kept saying that Ali was stupid, but strong, which seemed kinda questionable to me…
Also, watching it, the logistics involved to pull something like that off, nevermind to do it secretly, would be completely absurd
I did run into some “fan theory” sort of thing, speculating that since in the flashback with all the squid game players playing that slap-game, they all picked the same color game piece. This “fan theory” was speculating that the masked workers (the circle masks, i think?) were people who had chosen the other color game piece. shrug.
Gi-Hun annoyed the absolute shit out of me. I found him a self-sabotaging emotionally-manipulative black hole of weakness and stupidity. No doubt this is an indictment of capitalism but meh, I managed 1.5 episodes before I lost patience and switched it off.
Seriously, I’m supposed to sympathise with someone who steals money from his mother and runs straight to a casino? and EATS WITH HIS MOUTH OPEN??
Oh, I didn’t want to turn people off the show, As I said, i just don’t get it, and yeah, it probably has something to do with my perspective.
Yeah, only that in the first episode, the characters that are shown are in debt because they wanted to be the capitalists.
Oh, I have that very much in mind, which is also why I don’t trust my judgement on him. I’m an addict’s kid and it sucks when you finally understand that yes, your parent may love you, but they love their “drug” much more. So, yeah, I understand that addicts need compassion and care, just not from me
Tabby;
The show is violent, but surprisingly the most heartbreaking deaths aren’t really shown on screen and I found that hit harder than the gorier ones like that first game.
OK, as I said, I only watched the first episode. So far there’s maybe one or two characters whose death I would find sad.
There’s the sexism of the characters, and there’s the sexism of the show. As I said, the first episode fails the Bechdel test, which was never meant to be something to be achieved, but a means to show how bad media is at showing women. At the end of the first episode we’re left with Gi-hun, the male childhood Friend, the male Pimp, the Old Man, the male Helper, and The Girl, a tragic character, a poor refuge from North Korea who was then abused by the Pimp.
abbeycadabra
Oh sure, and I read many pieces hailing Squid Game for these allegories, but honestly, for me they got buried under a pile of dead people.
Personally, I liked it, but I agree it’s not for everyone. As for Gi-hun, yes he’s an awful person and I think that’s the point. We find out later that he went through some major trauma and rather than deal with it, he just retreats into gambling and being a jerk. That doesn’t make anything he does better, and I think part of the point of the show is that even getting out of his bad situation requires retruamatizing himself in a similar way to his previous trauma that he already didn’t have the ability to deal with.
So yes, the show is pointlessly dark for the sake of being pointlessly dark, with only two or three ‘good’ characters who are mostly there so everyone else, including Gi-hun sometimes, can be awful to them and make us feel bad. Gi-hun’s only redeeming feature as a protagonist is that he’s less bad than some of the other jerks. What can I say other than: some people like that kind of thing?
Also, why are kids watching this? It’s 100% not age-appropriate!
Giliell:
So, by this principle, you’re sacrificing not only your time but your own wellbeing trying to review Squid Game and watch it with your children. Now that’s devoted parenting :)
(Honestly, your analysis seems quite impressive to me, as someone with only meager skills in media criticism. If you can’t see any deeper meaning in Squid Game, I’d presume it’s not there, at least as far as most viewers are concerned.)
Thanks for this Giliel, I’ve just come home from holiday, a news and TV free holiday, so I’d heard the name, but had no idea what the Squid Game was. I don’t do dark fiction, particularly not the kind that seems to glory in the violence and degradation of it’s main characters, there is quite enough dark in the world, and for my fiction I want to know the good guys win in the end.