A couple of weeks ago, a nondescript Korean show devoid of the usual tropes associated with the K-Dramas that have got the world hooked, began streaming online. No one expected it then to become one of the most watched shows on Netflix in many of its regional markets. What is Squid Game?
Survival drama
The Squid Game drama series created by Hwang Dong-hyuk is a contest among 456 individuals from all walks of life, with a prize of KRW (South Korean won) 45.6 billion (approximately Rs 290 crore). The competitors, all of whom carry huge debts, play a set of children’s games that are well known in South Korea.
The players are sequestered in a giant warehouse, and monitored at all times by guards in masks and pink bodysuits, as they play unto death. Each ‘death’ adds KRW 100 million to the winner’s purse.
Among the players is a driver played by the actor Lee Jung-jae, who has incurred massive debts because of his gambling addiction; a former investment expert, played by Park Hae-soo who appeared in the 2017 Korean drama Prison Playbook, who has stolen from his clients and is fleeing the police; and a North Korean refugee played by Jung Ho-yeon, who will move heaven and earth to get her remaining family across from the North.
Each of the players is at a very high level of desperation, which is their motivation to play the fatal game.
Show’s idea
Hwang had scripted the nine-part show back in 2008, drawing from his own humble beginnings and the financial struggle he faced growing up, but the idea was rejected by the production houses that he approached.
The show’s name comes from ‘Squid’, a popular children’s game, and a version of the traditional game is played out in one brutal episode.
Squid Game takes the children’s game through psychological and physical twists and turns in a highly graphic adaptation. The effect is that of watching an extremely taut thriller from the edge of one’s seat, perhaps through gaps in fingers that cover the eyes.
Social commentary
The show has been appreciated by critics and the audience for its sharp take on social and economic disparities in South Korea.
“I wanted to write a story that was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist society, something that depicts an extreme competition, somewhat like the extreme competition of life. But I wanted it to use the kind of characters we’ve all met in real life,” Hwang told Variety magazine in an interview.
The show is also an allegorical take on the way human life itself is treated by the powerful. Mistreatment of the elderly by society as a whole, too is shown.
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Different from K-Dramas
Squid Game is the opposite of the saccharine sweet K-Dramas where romance is the dominant theme. The actors look good and dress well, and there is a lot of kindness, warmth, and a happy ending — this is true for even the thrillers in the spectrum.
Squid Game has no well dressed people or exotic settings; it is a straight-off dystopian thriller.
Unprecedented popularity
Co-CEO of Netflix Ted Sarandos has tweeted, “It’s only been out for nine days, and it’s a very good chance it’s going to be our biggest show ever.”
Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, Netflix’s main competition in the streaming segment, said: “@ReedHastings and Ted Sarandos and the team at @Netflix get it right so often. Their internationalization strategy isn’t easy, and they’re making it work. Impressive and inspiring. (And I can’t wait to watch the show.)”.
Actor Jung Ho-yeon has become the most followed South Korean actor on Instagram. On video sharing site TikTok, the ‘#SquidGame’ has been viewed a jaw-dropping 22.8 billion times.
Word-of-mouth publicity and great meme worthy scenes from the show have added to its popularity. Industry experts have suggested that young people find it easy to relate to the alienation that players in the show face.
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Netflix's Squid Game
NetflixIt’s not surprising that Squid Game has proved to be one of Netflix’s biggest hits; the highs and excruciating lows of the game have proved strangely relatable to audiences.
Spoilers Ahead
It goes without saying that Squid Game is anti-capitalist satire, a version of The Hunger Games where the players choose to participate. It is this choice that sets Squid Game apart from similar stories.
The premise of Squid Game is simple - a group of people who are drowning in debt, with nothing left to lose, are offered the “opportunity” to risk their lives for an obscene amount of prize money. The players are chosen by a recruiter who ritualistically humiliates them, ensuring that they are desperate enough to participate.
Simply placing a group of strangers together in a series of life-or-death challenges is a compelling enough concept to carry a series, and Squid Game has a fantastic cast of ruthless strategists, unexpected heroes, deceitful introverts, and unhinged criminals, all played perfectly by their respective actors.
These contrasting personalities share only one thing in common; a willingness to do whatever it takes to win. As the games grow more twisted, the sunk cost fallacy sinks in, as the players become increasingly depraved, willing to continue down the road of murder and madness, lest it all be for nothing.
One of the most unexpected plot twists comes early on, in the second episode, when the group votes to exit the game, and are allowed to walk free. It’s an understandable reaction to the horror of the first game, which ends in mass slaughter.
However, once the prize money is revealed, stacks of bills piled inside a shiny golden pig, their sense of self-preservation fades away. Money, it seems, is the only mind-altering substance that could make these people tolerate such violence and depravity.
Although the vote is almost evenly split (it passes by a single vote), the players return to their mundane reality, where they are reminded that a life spent drowning in debt, frantically struggling to keep one’s head above water, isn’t particularly different from the deadly games.
At least participating in the games provides a real opportunity to get rich - ordinary life promises only drudgery, hardship, and ever-accumulating debt.
Hence, the players actually want to return to the dystopian playground, a deadly casino coated in candy pink and blue, where the trigger-happy guards have no face, no personality, and seemingly, no soul. And it’s all for the amusement of a small group of billionaires, numbed to a life of excess, who view poverty as an opportunity, human misery as mere entertainment.
It’s not a subtle metaphor, and yet, it is effective; once the players accept the conditions of the game, they change. A bloody betrayal becomes a business transaction - morality has no meaning or value when everyone’s lives are on the line, and only one can emerge alive.
Love and friendship simply cannot survive in this environment, as the incentives change by the day; the tug of war rewards teamwork, while a game of marbles brutally punishes the players for caring for one another.
Every interaction becomes a calculation, every life saved an investment, as is every throat cut. The protagonist, Seung Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), is introduced as a lazy loser who has failed to live up to his responsibilities - he’s an absent father, whose elderly mother pays the bills, while he gambles her money away.
In the games, however, Seung Gi-hun is one of the few players who actually values human life and friendship. He is forgiving, empathetic, and self-sacrificing, in stark contrast to the cold, calculating nature of his fellow players.
He shouldn’t win, really (indeed, the game ends up being rigged in his favor, to some degree, as his elderly father figure is later revealed to be one of the masterminds behind the games).
After Seung Gi-hun emerges victorious, with millions of dollars to spend, he finds that his mother has passed away in his absence; his newfound fortune can do anything, except bring her back. The pursuit of money has taken everything from Seung Gi-hun - all he can do is strengthen the family relationships that remain.
The marketplace and the games, both engineered by distant, faceless billionaires, dehumanize and humiliate their participants, eroding human relationships, turning simple acts of kindness into costly, self-destructive endeavors.
Squid Game’s metaphor proves particularly timely during the pandemic, where workers are quite literally risking their lives, simply by showing up to the workplace.
Seung Gi-hun’s story ends somewhat ambiguously; he can’t seem to forget his trauma, and seems set on pursuing the billionaires that oversee the games, even though he could choose to spend his time with his daughter.
Has the game tainted Seung Gi-hun forever? The audience is left to decide.
But we are left pondering the choice the players made in that second episode, and whether it was really a choice at all.