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Why ‘Parasite’ is a Powerful Critique of Class Divide

Five years later, Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece still leaves us asking uncomfortable questions.

Syed Zain
Counter Arts
9 min readDec 17, 2024

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Credit: CJ Entertainment

Does money buy happiness? Or, perhaps more to the point: How much does it buy ignorance, comfort, and the illusion of freedom?

In a kingdom far away, there was a poor man who wished to attend the King’s Banquet but his status and clothes will not let him enter the banquet.

So he borrowed a fine coat and, in sartorial splendor, entered the palace without arousing suspicion.

There he was served a sumptuous banquet of roast meats, golden rice, and spiced wines. But as soon as he picked up a morsel, he leaned aside and whispered,

“This is for you, dear coat,”

and popped it into his pocket. Thus with every dish, he served his coat instead of himself. The bewildered nobles finally asked him why he wasn’t eating.

He said, “It’s not me you welcomed — it’s the coat. So I’m feeding it instead.”

You’ll be asking yourself, does this story even make sense? What’s the point of this story? Why did I choose to write it? Well, it highlights our illusions of self-worth tied to wealth and the feelings of inadequacy and exclusion that arise…

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Counter Arts
Counter Arts

Published in Counter Arts

The (Counter)Cultural One-Stop for Nonfiction on Medium… incorporating categories for: ‘Art’, ‘Culture’, ‘Equality’, ‘Photography’, ‘Film’, ‘Mental Health’, ‘Music’ and ‘Literature’.

Syed Zain
Syed Zain

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