Parasite: An Appreciation Of Bong Joon-ho's Cinema

In capitalistic society when the quality of institutions diminishes through lack of funding, privatization, or any other potential manners not only does the quality of life follow, but so does the moral decency of the average person. When the motivation for everything becomes for-profit above all else, no matter how much blood you are dealing with, it becomes such prevalent means through which to view anything that everything else seems obsolete until the stable flow of capital comes with it.

There is a phrase in Korean society that arose out of satire in 2015: "Hell Joseon" the term is largely used by younger Korean adults as a shorthand for criticizing the socioeconomic conditions of modern South Korea. The wealth and class disparity is such that a veritable aristocracy exists where the lifestyles of the highest earners are lavish and luxurious comparative to the lower earners that makes them seem almost of different planets. The problems of the common person being completely incompatible or inconceivable to that of someone who makes an excess of money and enriches themselves through generational wealth, chaebol companies (the large financial "cliques" of Korea, usually in the form of industrial conglomerate companies), and other illicit means.

Korean film auteur Bong Joon-ho's 2019 film "Parasite" needs no introduction. It reached such critical and commercial heights not just in its native Korea but to a wide global audience. The Palme d'Or winner was even so ubiquitous where it was even controversially given best picture at the Academy Awards. The first non-English language film to do so. Even if the Academy is a topical farce that does not recognize genuine artistic merit, it is a fair measuring stick to look back on just how large its sphere of influence was that it was even able to break through such a strong barrier. I've written many pieces about Director Bong's filmography, he is my favorite film director after all, but not his most well known work to date. It is time to look back on its artistic merits beyond its cultural impact of its time.

The Kim family of four live in a semi-basement apartment in a poor district of Seoul. They are all of employment age but, even with all of them employed, struggle to make ends-meet. Their much more well off family friend Min-hyuk gifts them a scholars rock, meant to guarantee wealth to the owner. Thank goodness he didn't give them something useful like money. That could've been awful.

As Min-hyuk is about leave to study abroad, Ki-taek comes up with the beginning of a remarkable scheme: Ki-woo, the youngest of the family lie about his qualifications and take over Min-hyuk's job as an English teacher for the wealthy Park family's youngest daughter Da-hye. With the help of his younger sister Ki-jung and some documentation forgery. He is able to successfully infiltrate the Park family. But that alone won't be enough. Slowly and sequentially each member of the Kim family is able to become an employee of the Park family, entailing them to an exponentially larger pool of earnings and the luxury of the Park estate so long as they can keep up the facade.

Director Bong has always been a master of framing ensemble casts. Giving the totality of the drama the collective feel it needs to stand out in the way that it does. Utilizing height specifically to add to its economic symbolism portraying from a lower or higher angle given that character or location's place on the totem pole. Especially given that this is a family effort, none is ever made to feel like they are more important than another in their influence of keeping the illusion alive. Making them truly feel like a family unit through always keeping them in view together when possible from angles to suggest tone and power dynamics. Each are written in a manner that, while still being a part of a similar struggle, gives them individuality that complements the others unique skill sets and character traits. Through deception, manipulation and lies to their employers, we can still see and feel who they really are in their daily lives outside of confidence tricksters. They would not work if one wasn't included, but in the fray of drama they never lose what makes each one of them themselves. Their flaws revealed through how they speak not just to the Parks, but to each other. Their conflict with the Park family is so loud to them, as a struggling destitute family wrapped in the mires of economics, and as any rich family would be, completely tuned out. The film is better for portraying neither family as a paragon but also neither as particular malicious either. Keeping away from the oppressor/victim dichotomy is what allows it to feel more organic.

Bong has never been a stranger to lampooning aspects of Korean society and government that are objectionable. Always with a wink and a smile. A sharp wit of dark and morose comedy combined with an undercurrent of drama bubbling under the surface before it suddenly and smartly erupts into the foreground. Metaphors and symbolism that exist quietly without slapping one in the face to get them to see it. There is so much craft put into Bong Joon-ho's films. Working to put a cohesive feel, the act of one thing affecting another in a chain, and a consistency that allows the worlds he creates to echo life back. It's as much in reading between the lines of how his characters interact as it is reading the scene level to extract meaning as it relates to both the plot and the real world conditions that facilitate it. It functions through its form but it's always deeper than the quality of its craft. The special pixie dust that sparkles on all of the most transformative works of art.

Parasite's themes are well documented: class conflict, social inequality, wealth disparity. But the messages that it imparts using these themes is what ultimately allows a very Korean culturally specific film to reach across the globe and communicate with as many as it has in it's undeniable overlap that transcends language and culture.

The rich live in such unawareness and isolation to the rest of the world, completely ignorant to the struggles the regular person faces in their life. And this system thrives and is maintained by putting us against each other however it can, over trivialities, over resources, over people with otherwise common interests. We are fighting over scraps amongst each other and against people we would otherwise get along with. The ruling class either don't know or don't want us to know that there is enough to go around for everyone. Your hard work, your passion, your love, all of that too. Being crushed down into soulless paste to enrich a group that has decided they are in charge deciding what they deserve all while having done nothing to earn it. Don't let them take the creative and loving fire inside of you for a profit motive.