We can all learn a lot from the blockbuster South Korean small-screen masterpiece Squid Game, the survival drama based on real-life, debt-disabled credit-card failures chosen to participate in a sadistically twisted series of childhood games for a title-winning payout of 45.6 billion South Korean won, or 287 U.S. dollars.
Some see the Netflix series as a social allegory of the brutalities of capitalism and working full time on the factory line at Hyundai; others view it in a softer light – as an empathetic portrayal of the human condition except where you constantly want to beat, vomit on, nut-punch, maim or machine-gun your neighbor, friend, relative, partner or the douchebag who sits next to you at work.
But in this breathtakingly noble portrayal of Korea’s down-and-out class rises another notion: that of euphemistic compassion. This is the ability each of us has to be ritualistically civil to those we are closest to through a variety of social constructs like work, school, church, sports and bizarre family Christmas dinners while at the same time desperately wanting to disembowel them and steal all their money.
It is through this construct that most of our daily lives are lived, and Squid Game brings the notion home through its stark yet elegantly wrapped romper room aesthetic of Escher stairways, aqua-teal tracksuit pajamas and high-elevation tug-o-wars. The setting is important and principled, showing us that is is possible to at once be stylistically shrouded but still take time out of our busy daily schedules to casually indulge in warped, perverted and murderous head games with those around us before cashing in their Hanwa Life Insurance policies.
Squid Game also teaches us about the clear hierarchy in life: there are circles, there are squares and there are triangles. Are you the circle, waiting forever in your round and open space for someone to figuratively come and swipe your marbles while you’re looking at your wet underpants? Are you a square, with your hard edges and corners, unwilling to bend to life’s circumstances? Finally, are you actually a triangle, with your equilateral sensibility but with a point at the top of your head that nobody can quite figure out?
The mystery is in the play. The beauty of Squid Game is that we all have to figure out what it means before we ultimately get whacked and somebody takes our last dollar. Or should you just give it all away now?
READ MORE ON HOW THE WARPED KOREAN PSYCHE IS SLOWLY SEEPING INTO AND BEING CHAMPIONED BY NON-KOREANS