Also, whoever's advertising this to 12-year olds needs to be fired yesterday. It solidly earned the TV-MA rating Netflix has on it. I wouldn't show this to anyone under 18, myself.
This reminds me of my childhood. I wasn't allowed to see rated R movies while I lived at home. Even after I turned 17 and was legally allowed too. Then 2004 comes around and all the people who for my whole childhood told me that violence and sex perverted my mind and should be avoided at all costs lined up to see The Passion of the Christ. One of the most violent and brutal movies of the time.
By 2004 I had already pretty much left the faith even though I still went to church to be with my mom who was sick at the time. And I sat there while they organized viewing parties and sunday school classes took trips to the theatre to see it. I was floored. Why was this violence okay when everything else wasn't? Of course the answer was always the same, this is about the suffering of Jesus and people need to understand and see the visceral reaction as he was sacrificed. I remember sitting in the theatre with my parents as a lady we went to church with forced her 7 year old child not to look away at the violent parts. Yelling at him that this is for you. Over and over.
And really its true, if you wish to tell a story you cannot hide the disturbing parts. Not if you want to have the impact.
I think Squid Game tells a worthwhile story. Throughout history people have been willing to do all sorts of evil in the pursuit of money. And more importantly that they never reach their goal with their souls intact. It's too bad you didn't get to episode 6 because its really the one that sinks this point home.
I finished the series last week and have some thoughts. There may be some spoilers here (I'll try to avoid them as much as possible), so skip this comment if you care about those kinds of things.
Spoilers in 3...
Spoilers in 2...
Spoilers in 1...
This is the point of no return spoiler-wise...
On to the discussion...
The gratuitous violence was indeed the point of the first episode, but it serves a larger purpose in episode #2 when the survivors of the first game exercise Rule #3 and vote to end the game. They are dropped back into the world from which they came from, and we learn their back stories. And faced with choice of likely slaughter in the pursuit of life-changing wealth, most of them (I think it was around 90%) choose of their OWN FREE WILL to take their chances in the games. In all of the films and television I've seen, I don't think I've ever seen a more effective presentation of what hopeless looks like. And the hopelessness they're fleeing isn't the game itself, it's the "regular" world that those characters live within. That's a powerful message that the well-off aren't doing enough and resonates with 2019's "Parasite", a similar Korean social commentary that won the Oscar in 2020.
Moving past the larger commentary about society, "Squid Game" in middle and later episodes powerfully explores personal issues, in the context of where the environment itself wants you dead, how large is the cost of remaining a decent human being (exemplified by the character of Seong Gi-hun) and at what point does basic human decency start to whither away (as we see in the character of Cho Sang-woo, a guy who had and lost everything)? It's also an effective mediation on sunk costs in the context of necessary(?) evil, and how some people will double-down on "playing the game" in the hopes of paying off a debt incurred by the evil the committed earlier, and for some people how more evil can never be erase the debt from evil committed earlier.
The message that came through for me is that it's never too late to start trying to do the right thing, and doubling down on past evil in pursuit of a greater good in the end will jeopardize the final good to which one's goodness and integrity are being sacrificed. The personal journeys resonated with me MUCH more than the overarching social commentary, especially when we live in an era where we witness daily people trapped by the sunk cost fallacy (the modern GOP, anyone?) and we witness people change before our eyes into someone we didn't recognize just a few years prior. This may not be a message the people want to hear, but it's a message that needs to be heard. It's a horrific message that uses the slaughter of hundreds of people (not all innocents) to drive its point home, only until we look at our own actual world and recognize that "Squid Game" is correct that it is likely worse out here. (For example, we had 449 COVID deaths yesterday - just 7 fewer than the initial number of participants in the game. And like returning to the "Squid Game" after it was crystal clear what was happening, how many of those were completely avoidable?) And lest it sound like I'm preaching from a high perch here, "Squid Game" makes it crystal clear why some of these characters felt they had no other option. Placed in a similar crucible, I would hope that I would demonstrate the basic decency of Seong Gi-hun, but I couldn't promise that I wouldn't come out as a worse human being. The message there is that I need to work on myself so that I can shut the door on that question as much as possible.
To the extent that message was delivered in an overly-gratuitous manner, I'll have to disagree with you on that. In this respect, the film reminds me of Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream", which follows the descent of a handful of characters into oblivion due to drug addiction. That's a spell-binding work of cinema to witness, beautiful in its highs and sadistic in its lows, but would be hobbled in its message ("don't mess around with drugs") by ignoring the extreme ends of those experiences. Like "Squid Game", "Requiem" is another work that I'll watch once and appreciate, but likely never revisit again.
I'm sincerely glad that you have your faith (though the faith of one of those Korean Christians gets tested and distorted pretty severely later in the series) but for us humanists and materialists attempting carve a decent path out in this world during the brief time we're here, "Squid Game" functions as an effective parable that reminds us that in the proper contexts, we can ALL be monsters to one extent or another, and we need to be vigilant about closing the doors to those potential scenarios, be it on a personal or social level. For those of us who don't have the faith or confidence that everything that happens is part of God's Plan*, the lessons "Squid Game" preaches will hopefully leave the world a better place than it found it, if only in reminding us to keep our own internal monsters in check.
* (On the question of "God's Plan", "Midnight Mass" from Mike Flanagan - also on Netflix - is an effective mediation on Catholicism and faith, in the context of a solid horror tale, which no one does better than Flanagan these days.)
Also, whoever's advertising this to 12-year olds needs to be fired yesterday. It solidly earned the TV-MA rating Netflix has on it. I wouldn't show this to anyone under 18, myself.
This reminds me of my childhood. I wasn't allowed to see rated R movies while I lived at home. Even after I turned 17 and was legally allowed too. Then 2004 comes around and all the people who for my whole childhood told me that violence and sex perverted my mind and should be avoided at all costs lined up to see The Passion of the Christ. One of the most violent and brutal movies of the time.
By 2004 I had already pretty much left the faith even though I still went to church to be with my mom who was sick at the time. And I sat there while they organized viewing parties and sunday school classes took trips to the theatre to see it. I was floored. Why was this violence okay when everything else wasn't? Of course the answer was always the same, this is about the suffering of Jesus and people need to understand and see the visceral reaction as he was sacrificed. I remember sitting in the theatre with my parents as a lady we went to church with forced her 7 year old child not to look away at the violent parts. Yelling at him that this is for you. Over and over.
And really its true, if you wish to tell a story you cannot hide the disturbing parts. Not if you want to have the impact.
I think Squid Game tells a worthwhile story. Throughout history people have been willing to do all sorts of evil in the pursuit of money. And more importantly that they never reach their goal with their souls intact. It's too bad you didn't get to episode 6 because its really the one that sinks this point home.
I finished the series last week and have some thoughts. There may be some spoilers here (I'll try to avoid them as much as possible), so skip this comment if you care about those kinds of things.
Spoilers in 3...
Spoilers in 2...
Spoilers in 1...
This is the point of no return spoiler-wise...
On to the discussion...
The gratuitous violence was indeed the point of the first episode, but it serves a larger purpose in episode #2 when the survivors of the first game exercise Rule #3 and vote to end the game. They are dropped back into the world from which they came from, and we learn their back stories. And faced with choice of likely slaughter in the pursuit of life-changing wealth, most of them (I think it was around 90%) choose of their OWN FREE WILL to take their chances in the games. In all of the films and television I've seen, I don't think I've ever seen a more effective presentation of what hopeless looks like. And the hopelessness they're fleeing isn't the game itself, it's the "regular" world that those characters live within. That's a powerful message that the well-off aren't doing enough and resonates with 2019's "Parasite", a similar Korean social commentary that won the Oscar in 2020.
Moving past the larger commentary about society, "Squid Game" in middle and later episodes powerfully explores personal issues, in the context of where the environment itself wants you dead, how large is the cost of remaining a decent human being (exemplified by the character of Seong Gi-hun) and at what point does basic human decency start to whither away (as we see in the character of Cho Sang-woo, a guy who had and lost everything)? It's also an effective mediation on sunk costs in the context of necessary(?) evil, and how some people will double-down on "playing the game" in the hopes of paying off a debt incurred by the evil the committed earlier, and for some people how more evil can never be erase the debt from evil committed earlier.
The message that came through for me is that it's never too late to start trying to do the right thing, and doubling down on past evil in pursuit of a greater good in the end will jeopardize the final good to which one's goodness and integrity are being sacrificed. The personal journeys resonated with me MUCH more than the overarching social commentary, especially when we live in an era where we witness daily people trapped by the sunk cost fallacy (the modern GOP, anyone?) and we witness people change before our eyes into someone we didn't recognize just a few years prior. This may not be a message the people want to hear, but it's a message that needs to be heard. It's a horrific message that uses the slaughter of hundreds of people (not all innocents) to drive its point home, only until we look at our own actual world and recognize that "Squid Game" is correct that it is likely worse out here. (For example, we had 449 COVID deaths yesterday - just 7 fewer than the initial number of participants in the game. And like returning to the "Squid Game" after it was crystal clear what was happening, how many of those were completely avoidable?) And lest it sound like I'm preaching from a high perch here, "Squid Game" makes it crystal clear why some of these characters felt they had no other option. Placed in a similar crucible, I would hope that I would demonstrate the basic decency of Seong Gi-hun, but I couldn't promise that I wouldn't come out as a worse human being. The message there is that I need to work on myself so that I can shut the door on that question as much as possible.
To the extent that message was delivered in an overly-gratuitous manner, I'll have to disagree with you on that. In this respect, the film reminds me of Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream", which follows the descent of a handful of characters into oblivion due to drug addiction. That's a spell-binding work of cinema to witness, beautiful in its highs and sadistic in its lows, but would be hobbled in its message ("don't mess around with drugs") by ignoring the extreme ends of those experiences. Like "Squid Game", "Requiem" is another work that I'll watch once and appreciate, but likely never revisit again.
I'm sincerely glad that you have your faith (though the faith of one of those Korean Christians gets tested and distorted pretty severely later in the series) but for us humanists and materialists attempting carve a decent path out in this world during the brief time we're here, "Squid Game" functions as an effective parable that reminds us that in the proper contexts, we can ALL be monsters to one extent or another, and we need to be vigilant about closing the doors to those potential scenarios, be it on a personal or social level. For those of us who don't have the faith or confidence that everything that happens is part of God's Plan*, the lessons "Squid Game" preaches will hopefully leave the world a better place than it found it, if only in reminding us to keep our own internal monsters in check.
* (On the question of "God's Plan", "Midnight Mass" from Mike Flanagan - also on Netflix - is an effective mediation on Catholicism and faith, in the context of a solid horror tale, which no one does better than Flanagan these days.)