Agenda of Parasite

Why does September feel so long? I don't know. Wonder if someone has an answer to this question. With regarding monotony, my mood shifts its gear randomly. And I found myself in a great abyss of desperation. It felt just like when I watched the film Parasite for the first time. It has a unique directive that plucks out the audience when they have started to enjoy the film.

Bong Joon-Ho's tour-de-force and a black comedy thriller, Parasite is a careful examination of growing class tensions in modern society. Through this film, Bong demonstrates his mastery of oral and visual storytelling. The sleek transitions, irony-laced dialogue, and morally ambiguous characters come together to deliver one of the most riveting movies of the decade. I know this is nothing new to you all; already watching and rewatching it multiple times with a diverse mentality, you got a precise idea of what this movie holds to its core. But I am going to start it from a notch so bear with me for a detailed analysis. And caution for those who still haven't watch this film. Please, I implore you to watch it first and came back to read this blog. Bet you will have a great read then.

Plot Analysis: -

The film centers on an abjectly poor family who relies on cunning and manipulation to survive in their harsh society. The narrative begins when the son Ki-Woo is presented with an opportunity to tutor the daughter of the rich, Park family. Due to the trusting and gullible dispositions of the parks, Ki-woo and his family can effectively deceive their way into obtaining service jobs in the household. However, it's not until long that the family discovers they are not the only ones mooching off the Parks'. In a long and suspenseful scene reminiscent of Hitchcock's direction, it is revealed that the Parks' former housekeeper has been harboring her husband in an unknown bunker beneath the house to escape the violence and coercion of his debt collectors. This scene marks a significant shift in tone and brings to fruition the meaning behind the film's title.

In-Depth Analysis: -

After a long and miserable night, in which the poor family essentially kills the former housekeeper in front of her helpless husband and runs home only to discover their semi-basement is flooded with the sewage water. We see how these jobs that the family once enjoyed, are now becoming grating and tiresome. These are slipped in through subtle moments and interactions. 

We can glean from these scenes that there is a new clarity with which the family now views themselves. At first glance, the title parasite represents the way these members of the lower classes leech off the good nature and generosity of the Park family. But what Bong is trying to tell us in the aforementioned moments is that the Parks are also leeching off of the lower classes by living comfortably off the backs of their labor. It is here that the film presents us with a frightening but important question: 'In late capitalist society who are the parasites?'

The difficulty of answering this question can be explained with two concepts borrowed from the school of cultural studies: 

1. Cool Capitalism.

2. Cultural Hegemony. 

In 'The Coolness of Capitalism' Jim McGuigan states, "Neoliberal capitalism has constructed popular legitimacy of such a resilient kind that it goes beyond management ideology and propaganda into the texture and common sense of everyday life." To support this idea, he uses the example of 'Apple'. Apple, through its sleek and shiny products, has become so embedded in Western culture that we have become blind to the company's very real exploitation of their outsourced workers. This disaffection amongst consumers to the acute poverty and exploitation of others is what McGuigan calls Cool Capitalism. To understand how cool Capitalism plays out in Parasite, let us look at the scene from the second act Here -

the former housekeeper's husband who has been hiding in the bunker for four years maintains his sanity through a daily routine of hitting the light switches to illuminate Mr. Park's path as he walks up the stairs at night.

Privileges that has been taken for granted: - 

Mr. Park, unaware of the bunker beneath his house, is led to believe that these motion-sensor lights are a marvel of modern technology. This scene distills McGuigan's idea that Mr. Park is blind to the fact that these luxuries he enjoys in his everyday life are afforded to him through the hard labor of someone beneath him. It is no coincidence that the housekeeper's husband lives physically beneath the Parks'. This obliviousness towards the suffering and labor of others at times borders on indifference which is exhibited most clearly in Parks' relationships with the poor family.

For example, as Ki-Taek drives Mrs. Park home from grocery shopping she exclaims to a friend on the phone that the storm from the night before was a blessing in disguise, completely ignorant to the fact that thousands of people in the city were displaced as a result including Ki-Taek.

Revulsions and Reactions(Use of Smell Imagery): -

Another example of this ignorance is how the Park clan displays their physical aversion to the smell of the poor family. This theme becomes increasingly prevalent throughout the film as their reactions to smell become more exaggerated. In Purity and Danger, Mary Douglas suggests that cleanliness and hygiene are social constructs. She states, "There is no such thing as absolute dirt. It exists only in the eyes of the beholder." In Parasite, we see how Parks' revulsion to the smell of people like Ki-Taek is a revulsion to people they perceive as lesser than themselves. Their palpable desire to escape these smells like when Mr. Park plugs his nose as he flees from the mayhem of his garden party signals to the viewer that those who benefit from capitalism distanced themselves from the have-nots both metaphorically and physically.

 

In an interview with GQ, Bong said, "What the parks really want and this is something Mr. Park says in the film is they draw a line over their sophisticated world and they don't let anyone cross it. They're not interested in the outside world, the subway, and people who might perhaps smell. They want to push everyone outside of that line and they want to remain safe behind it." 

Much like how consumers of Apple do not need to think about the exploitation of Foxconn because its workers live on the other side of the world, the Parks do not have to worry themselves about the poor because they are physically isolated from the nearby slums. The smell of poverty is an ugly reminder to the Parks that suffering is nearby. While the Parks present as well-intentioned and kind-hearted people, they choose to be ignorant to the extreme poverty that surrounds them because they are comfortable with the lifestyles accorded to them at the expense of the impoverished. They recoil from the smell for fear of being confronted with the reality outside of their privileged bubble.

Social Stratagem, as presented in the film: -

Late Capitalism and the ever-increasing division between rich and poor can persist in our contemporary world through what Antonio Gramsci calls "Cultural Hegemony". For Gramsci, cultural hegemony is achieved through "inducing the consent of the majority of subaltern or subordinate groups to a given socio-political constellation." 

Throughout the film, often, Mr. Park speaks about a line he draws between himself and his employees. This line connotes a level of professionalism that Mr. Park expects of his employees, but what it also represents, as a division, he has established to maintain his status as a superior. Mr. Park expresses his satisfaction with the former housekeeper because she never oversteps her boundaries, but Ki-Taek, on the other hand, is always teetering on the edge of this line. In this sense, the former housekeeper consents to her status as a subordinate, whereas Ki-Taek, who eventually revolts against this subjugation by killing Mr. Park, becomes increasingly conscious of his class and the hegemonic social order that keeps them there. 

The poor characters have deep feelings of admiration and reverence towards the Park family. For example, in the same scene, each member of the poor family, goes around discussing what they like about the Parks. This admiration runs even deeper with the housekeeper's husband whose masochistic head-banging is his version of paying respect to the man who he believes has saved him.

Cultural Hegemony: -

Cultural Hegemony which favors the ideology of the ruling classes, teaches anyone who falls outside the dominant worldview that the dominant culture is something to aspire to. This can take place in many forms:

The prevailing standard of Eurocentric beauty has compelled women all over the globe to alter their appearances to achieve this conception of normality. Democracy has become such a dominant standard for a fair and just society the countries are now ranked on an index based on how democratic they are. And the list goes on. In the case of late capitalism, the ruling class is wealthy and in Parasite, Ki-Woo and his family alter their appearances in overall dispositions to fit into the mold of higher status individuals. Their reverence for the people they are using reflects an innate yearning to become them, both economically and socially. Bong tricks the viewer into thinking there will be a happy ending - as we watch Ki-Taek, who has been hiding in the bunker after killing Mr. Park, reunite with his family who has now made enough money to buy the Parks' house. However, this momentary happiness is dissolved as it is revealed that the scene is only an aspiration written by Ki-Woo in a letter to his father.

Bong's Justification of this Magic Realism: -

In an interview, Bong reveals that it would take five hundred and sixty-four years for Ki-Woo to save enough money to buy the house. This directly contradicts the mantra of contemporary capitalism, which has attempted to convince people that with a little hard work and determination, anyone can achieve higher economic status. The reality is that through Cultural Hegemony, the rich can stay rich by manufacturing the consent of the masses while creating the illusion of social mobility.

• Ironically the poor daughter, Ki-Jeung is regarded as the only member of the family who fits into the wealthy environment, but she is also the only member of the family to be killed. 

When all is said and done, the rich family can escape the horror of their situation while the poor family is trapped in it.

Neoliberal Capitalism: -

Neoliberal Capitalism takes economic responsibility away from the government and places it into the hands of free-market institutions and private individuals. In this type of society, your value as a person is weighed upon your ability to sell your labor for a wage. What it boils down to is a massive disparity in wealth that regards the wealthy as winners and the poor as losers in the free-market game. This is where we see things like hostile architecture that prioritizes the needs and aesthetics of corporate enterprises over the needs of the hungry and homeless. These defensive strategies become mechanisms for hiding the indigent out of sight, for fear of disrupting the wealthy social order. The great fallacy of this system is that every individual starts with equal access to opportunity and can therefore compete on an equal playing field, which is simply not the truth. 

• And when we look at the poor characters in Parasite fighting amongst themselves, vying to maintain their subordinate positions, we see that there is no attempt or even ability to overthrow the prevailing system of domination, but rather, it's a competition between the poor of who can be the least destitute. 

In a capitalist society, the prevailing conservative argument is that social democracy, higher taxes, and budget deficits only serve to extract from the hard-earned pockets of the rich and put this money into the hands of the lazy and deceitful poor. But what Parasite astutely points out is that the relationship between the rich and poor is largely parasitic in the opposite direction. The poor are often poor because capitalistic enterprises are unwilling to compensate fairly for their labor to maximize a profit. While the jobs occupied by Ki-Woo's family offer them proximity to wealth. At the end of the day, their wages do not provide them enough means to escape destitution. Rather, the degrading and emotional labor they provide for the parks only truly benefits the Parks.

Parting Words: -

At the end of the film, with Ki-Taek left to an uncertain fate in the bunker and Ki-Woo relegated to his basement, we're left with the bleak reality that the current capitalistic order is unyielding and unforgiving. What is more frightening is this cruel system that can be easily normalized. After all, the greatest trick late capitalism ever pulled was to convince the world it doesn't exist. This truth and harsh reality have been penetrating us for a long time. And we are living in the dark reality of uncertainty.

Only we have to wait to see the finalization it brings to us before we can have our ends meet. Here this film excels all human normalized boundaries of a so-called well-furnished film.

So here ends our first article, in the 'Cinema Agenda' blog. If you are a regular to our original blog, 'Critic's Agenda' you already know how we part ways for the next post. That will come eventually in the next month. Hope you will stay with us and enjoy reading our blogs. Thank you, see you all in the next month.