/siberia/ - Off-topic

Hey guys, remember squid game?

I remember how in 2021 it was a massive sensation, mostly because it was grades above most of the Netflix originals produced then, with the few competitors being Love Island and Stranger Things. Even wine aunts would mention in casual passing, despite the show being Korean.

What got me is how you had leftoids like Agent Kochinski praising Squid Game as some anti-capitalist woke show. Excuse me?

I bothered to watch the first season, and I can’t tell you with how much it sucked. Before going into why Squid Game isn’t communist, I’ll give a simple review of the series and why it’s not woke.

The show, as you can guess, is about a bunch of people who for various reasons decide to compete in a deadly reality show full of games and competition for huge amounts of cash, with the games being broadcasted to a shadowy elite cabal made of the ultra rich. Sounds leftist, right? Well, except it’s not.

For starters, the show has no class analysis + the most popular character (and main female contestant in the plot) is a Nork fugitive in the story. As for progressive values c. 2021 standards? Nope.
The only LGBT+ representation is some ultrarich guy trying to rape one of his masked male servants, the MCs are heterosexual men, all the main female characters get their way via sex appeal or psychological manipulation as opposed to via Grl power, and the only brown/black character is a Pakistani contestant and immigrant worker to South Korea that gets betrayed and killed in the most cold-blooded way imaginable.

The problem with trying to apply any leftist narrative onto the series is that the show is so generic with its message that you could apply to any given situation. Greed, plutocracy, and desperation due to poverty? That shit exists in AES countries as well, it’s not exclusive to capitalism, and I bet the creators leaned towards the show being anti-capitalist just to chase clout back when Tumblr idpol pseudo-Marxism was en vogue during the BLM era. I guess there’s a generic message about greed, but that’s about it because this k-drama ain’t that deep. But if that’s the case, why not have the series be about people combing back for more as more money is dumped for the rewards? And that’s where I get into the plot and why I think it’s asinine.

Now, I’ll confess that I only watched the first season, and have no plans to watch the other two seasons as the first one left a bad taste in my mouth, but I’ll reconsider it in the future. With that said, aside from bland characters and a convoluted set up (e.g., what’s the point of organising the show in such a meticulous way when you could have prison convicts instead?), my main issues are with the games and how they take away from the tension. Ofc, notwithstanding some of the writers’ bizarre decisions (like giving one of the male MCs a magenta hair dye all because one of the Korean showrunners had a random shower thought once).

A key example of what I’m talking about is that challenge where the contestants have to cross a glass bridge without knowing which parts will break or not. Like most of the challenges, it all comes down to chance and luck since the game’s very structure means that only 1/16 of the contestants will succeed. If the challenges are going to be so devoid of strategy, the writers might as well have had the show be some bloody death match battle royale-style or à la the Hunger Games.

Overall, the first season back then was a lot better than most Netflix OGs but still sucked imo.