‘Squid Game’…Turns the death game genre on its head, to present a story that's more about the environment of the game than the game itself.
Spoilers Ahead…
In the 2017 Malayalam film Take Off, there’s a striking dialogue uttered by an Indian nurse when she finds out that the Indian government plans to evacuate her and her colleagues out of Tikrit, Iraq, after the city falls hostage to the ISIS. The nurse refuses to leave, stating that she rather stay here and probably die, than go back home, where after a day or two of relief and joy, it will be back to the grim reality, where debts and bills must still be paid. This is the same predicament that the contestants of the Squid Game find themselves in.
After playing the first game and witnessing the horror of what it truly comprises of, the majority vote to leave, only to return to it within a few days, as money is the only solution to their debt-ridden lives and this seems to be the only opportunity to earn some.
To convey this, the whole of the second episode is dedicated to depicting this predicament from the perspective of the various main characters. This break in the screenplay is a brilliant yet risky decision, as it threatens to slow down the momentum and interest built up from the introductory episode. However, it dismantles the usual narrative arc abided by survival death games, where participants are either thrown into the game unexpectedly or against their will and for the most part, with little to no knowledge of what exactly the game comprises of. But, by going back on their own accord and with prior knowledge of what the game entails, the players of the Squid Game think they have obtained a sense of control over the game — a notion which is continuously challenged in the coming episodes.
Squid Game then asks, how different would a death game be, if people went in ready to kill or ready to die?
The genre of the death game is by default brutal and gruesome, characterized by lot of mindless violence. Battle Royale, The Hunger Games, and the recent Alice in Borderland (also a Netflix original), are some of the names that come to mind when discussing this genre. But, these stories are set in a far dystopian future or a parallel world, whereas Squid Game takes place in the present day, which makes it more tractable to the current social and political climate, and thereby also much more dreadful to watch.
It is also less about the games, and more about what happens in between them. We see the guards cremating the dead bodies of the eliminated players, we see them in their dorms, their morning roll call. We see the Frontman and his surveillance team observing the players. We see the players bonding, strategizing, scheming, consoling, before and after the games. We watch them wake up, eat, fight/survive, sleep, wake up and do it all over again. It’s like watching an interesting version of Big Boss (Big Brother for those outside of India).
The constituting games in the show are children’s games that don’t require any solving but just pure plain luck. They are a means to get rid of the supporting players and so, we relay on the moments between these games to develop the characters and their relations. While some relationships are developed quite effectively, like the one between Cho Sang Woo (Park Hae Soo) and Ali Abdul (Anupam Tripathi) or Seong Gi Hun (Lee Jung Jae) and Kang Sae Byeok (Jung Ho Yeon), most characters don’t grow beyond their assigned characteristics.
Broad characterization is a hallmark of this genre, as with a large number of characters, it is easier to remember them by their singular defined trait. But with the games not occupying much of the run time, nor being mentally stimulating, this one note characterisation gets repetitive, most notably with characters like Jang Deok Soo (Heo Sung Tae) and Han Mi Nyeo (Kim Joo Ryung). With the sizeable amount of time we spend with these characters, we don’t learn much about them, apart from the fact that they all have debt.
Also, when you have Lee Jung Jae as the main protagonist, it really isn’t a mystery as to who is going to win the Squid Game. So, the second half isn’t as nail-biting as the first half, as you are just waiting for the remaining players to drop dead soon.
With the success of Burning and Parasite, Squid Game too has been added to South Korea’s list of film and tv shows that critique capitalism and the widening class divide. I am not sure in what manner this allegory is presented here, but I personally don’t agree with this notion.
What I noticed was that these characters’ own bad decisions landed them in huge amounts of debt, like Gi Hun gambling or Sang Woo siphoning off money from his clients’ account. While we do learn that Gi Hun was unfairly dismissed from his job, this is just one case. We never learn about how the other players landed in debt, to pull a critique of the capitalistic system from it.
Only through Ali and Sae Byeok, we get a more concrete viewpoint of the way foreigners are exploited in the system, with Ali, a migrant worker who hasn’t been paid six months of his wages and Sae Byeok, a North Korean defector who has to relay on pick pocketing to make a living in the South.
I, for myself, see the show as a critique of communism, specifically North Korea’s brand of communism, with the constant mention of fair play and equal opportunity and the extent the game runners go to, to maintain this façade.
There are the public hangings which are a warning to the players who wish to defy the rules. The guards, who are immediately killed if they see something that they shouldn’t have. The surveillance on both the guards and the players. The execution by a firing squad — these are all aspects that we have heard about North Korea.
Now, I will be honest — I did not enjoy Squid Game; partly because of the hype attached to it (which raised my expectations, a lot) and partly because I don’t really enjoy death games (even in Alice in Borderland, I only enjoyed the parts where Arisu solves the puzzle).
But I can’t deny that Squid Game, even with its problems, is a novel show that is well written, well directed and definitely well acted.
The episode with the tug of war and the marbles were my favourite and I really liked the juxtaposition of the night fight against the organ harvesting subplot in episode five; one is manipulated chaos, and the other is chaos that is an unseen offshoot of the curated environment.
I loved the sets, which with its vivid colours, were definitely more unsettling that the usual greys, browns and blues of dystopian stories.
It’s the last two-three episodes where things seemed to stretch, especially with the addition the V.I.Ps. But, it is a set up I am intrigued by. With not one, but two more seasons to follow, I just hope, that all the questions are answered.
