“All of you, please, stop this! I’m… I… I’m sacred. We’ll all die! Everyone, every single one of us is going to die! I’m so scared. Stop this madness!”
In Korea, this is one of the most buzzed-about lines from the Squid Game, one of the most-watched Netflix original series in the world. Consumed with terror, Oh Il-Nam, the eldest player, screams out when the contestants are literally killing each other to secure all the money they could ever desire.
Despite its brutal description of violence, and bizarre mixture of children’s play and mass murder which I personally cannot appreciate, Squid Game has a global appeal. I find the reason in the critical message it delivers. Though excessively exaggerated, the drama reflects a certain aspect of the miserable reality of the society where we live. It challenges us to ask ourselves: “Is our real world any better than this?”
All 456 participants in the game are marginalised persons: a gambler who cannot afford a birthday gift for his only daughter or medical bills for his mother, a most wanted criminal who falls into billions in debt, a runaway migrant worker who injured his boss because of overdue wages and malicious discrimination, a North Korean defector who is constantly conned by a vicious broker, and so on. Participants are the so-called “losers” in a winner-take-all society, and the “unfittest” in the jungle-like environment. The more they strive to survive, the more they are driven to despair. Faced with a nothing-to-lose reality, they choose to risk their lives.
How better is our reality than in Squid Game?
“We see the gap between rich and poor widen across the world, and we hear weekly reports of hundreds perishing as they try to reach a new home. Political leaders have kindled hatred and erected walls between rich and poor, young and old, those at home and those who have to migrate. The reality of children who have been abused, physically or sexually, is also painfully and personally present to us” (Society of Jesus).
As the director, Hwang Dong-hyuk, said, the show is an allegory about present-day capitalism; it spotlights the structural evil that nobody questions. The drama gives a grave warning to society where competition is considered natural, inevitable, fair, and even admirable. Once the rules of competition are agreed on and accepted, participants do their best to win the game, without paying any attention to its downside.
“Stop this madness!” Through the voice of the weakest of the weak, the Squid Game suggests that we need to stop this game of death and set up new rules for living together. I believe that the call of conversion in the Ignatian Year urges us to listen to such a voice and follow it in our commitment to the UAPs.
“See, I have today set before you life and good, death and evil” (Deut. 30,15).
Yongsu Paschal Kim SJ
Provincial
Korean Province
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