REAL REASON WORLD IS OBSESSED WITH SQUID GAME
What does it say about not only Australia but, indeed, the world in 2021 when the most popular television show is about poor people being killed off to entertain the rich?
The Korean series Squid Game is not only the most popular Netflix show here but is No.1 around the world and holds a rare 100 per cent rating on critic site Rotten Tomatoes.
For those who haven’t seen it, it is set in the near future, where loan sharks force poor people to sign away their “physical rights” – meaning they can take your kidney or an eye if you can’t pay them back.
Naturally they don’t stop there. The really desperate have a chance to pay off all their debts and walk away with enough cash to live in luxury by playing a series of games. But if they lose they are killed.
And it doesn’t shy from the slaughter, shown in bloody, slow-motion detail.
Naturally there is a gang of plucky heroes who all desperately want to make it through, which gives the show its heart.
(Of course, that heart could be plucked out at any time and handed to a rich bastard who wants a transplant.)
Anyway, there’s the divorced dad who needs to help his daughter, his old school friend who’s lost everything, the North Korean girl forced to become a pickpocket because everyone distrusts the North Koreans . . . you get the picture.
They supply the light relief and the emotional punch.
But there are many shows with complex characters. You can get that with Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown or Nicole Kidman in Big Little Lies. You just won’t get to see Kate or Nicole wasting hundreds of extras in full gory detail.
In some ways it’s perfect for those left a little disappointed when the “celebrities” make it through the challenges on SAS Australia safe and sound.
To me, it has its roots in the 1980s. Clive James used to feature clips from a Japanese show called The Endurance, where the contestant who suffered the most torture won the most money.
It’s actually disturbingly close to that, mixed in with a dash of such dystopian tales as You Bet Your Life, a (mostly) fictional story from the classic comic Judge Dredd, where poor people competed for cash and died if they got things wrong.
At this point, sociologists and certain politicians could probably step in and start pontificating about our unjust society, the gap between rich and poor and so on. Some of it might be true.
But I don’t think that is why we are watching Squid Game, even if you do have to pay a streamer to watch it.
And I also don’t think it’s because we’re a bunch of jaded, bloodthirsty monsters who like watching people get shot.
It’s because Covid has ripped away the curtain of complacency from our lives. We can see how everything could be taken from us – through no fault of our own – and we could be left with nothing. Even at a point where risking our lives is no longer unthinkable.
I don’t think we’re mocking the poor bastards on Squid Game. We’re sympathising with them.