Parasite is clearly last year's best film, and handles the issues Joker tried to tackle with far more nuance and elegance.
Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite recently won best picture at the Academy awards and after seeing it this weekend I can attest to its quality. The acting was and cinematography is great, it was funny and smart, and anything but predictable. But this is a blog about political economy so I want to discuss the film’s message and its discussion of class.
I want to start off by saying that I know little of South Korean culture and therefore probably missed some of the social commentary, and to warn that I will spoil the entire movie so please stop reading here if you haven’t seen the film yet.
Parasite is hardly the first film to discuss class, Bong Joon Ho has visited the topic before in 2013’s Snowpiercer, but it does so more elegantly and with more nuance than most. The upper-class Park family isn’t aren’t malicious, stupid, or decadent as the upper class is often characterised. They might seems so at first, especially Park Yeon-kyo who at times seems quite vapid but casually references Admiral Yi’s naval tactics when describing who to arrange the tables at a party. Similarly, the Kim’s are consistently shown to be clever, poor by circumstance rather than lack of merit. The tension between the families arise due to the Park’s being totally incapable of empathising with the Kim’s as they have nothing in common. The flash flood which destroys the Kims’ home and all their earthly possessions force the Park’s to cancel their camping trip so they throw a garden part instead.
One of my favourite bits with the film was the way the film played with foreshadowing. Mr Park says that he hates when people “go over the line” and that Mr Kim has been close to going over the line several times but never does. The audience sees that too when Mr Kim almost hits his wife but was just joking, but in the climax he finally does go over the line. Similarly, Kim Ki-woo is the one who goes to deal with the drunk man in the alley the second time, and when he picks up the stone violence is clearly implied. He decides against using the stone, picking a bottle of water instead but when we see him walking towards the shelter with the stone the audience knows what he’s thinking, making him the scene of him dropping the stone much more impactful.
Talking about the stone, that’s my favourite metaphor. The stone is according to Min supposed to bring prosperity but serves in the narrative as the fast way to get out of poverty, hence it’s association with violence. But of course, Ki-woo’s shortcut to escaping poverty backfires and does more harm than good.
Joker also tackled issues of poverty and class, but unlike Joker Parasite’s rich and influential aren’t evil just disconnected and ignorant. And while Mr Kim did act violently unlike the joker he got punished for it even if it wasn’t justice through the official channels and he seemed remorseful of his actions. In short, Parasite is an interesting and nuanced commentary on class where the system is the problem rather than the individuals, and I’m not sure who the titular parasite(s) is. Is it the Kims who cheated their ways into the Parks’ home? Is it Geun-sae living in the Parks’ basement stealing their food? Or is it the Parks who are parasites on society?
Written by Karl Johansson
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