JULY 7 — Note: There are no spoilers ahead.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the real appeal of the Korean mega-series Squid Game (Season 2 was released earlier this year and the final season just dropped last week) is not the fact that contestants are gambling their lives via children’s games; it’s the fact that their deadly participation in said contests refracts the trauma and breakdown in modern family life.
Freudian-inclined philosophers like Slavoj Žižek, Richard Boothby, and Alenka Zupancic have argued that popular media serves as a cultural mechanism for registering and working through complex emotions and societal tensions.
As such, shows like Squid Game — and in fact almost every major movie or TV series — may be offering audiences a way of “processing” frustration, pain and tragedy in the family by way of entertainment and fantasy.
Consider how commonplace are the troubles in the family with regards to the show’s main characters.
From the first season, we learnt that the chief protagonist, Gi-Hun, is a degenerate gambler who lives with his mum after being estranged from his wife.
He loves his daughter deeply but is close to losing her as his ex-wife and her husband plan to migrate to the States, thus taking the daughter away from him.
Although scared shitless about everyone dying from the first game, Gi-Hun continues playing after learning about his mum’s growing health problems and the prospect of never seeing his daughter again.
In Season 2, the family nightmares continue. No-Eul is a North Korean defector traumatised by the loss of her husband and, especially, her daughter.
Thus, as one of the “workers” on the island where the games are played, she risks her life to help one of the participants with a cancer-stricken child, too.
Probably the most difficult situation parent-wise was when Geum-Ja joined the games without the knowledge of her son, Yong-Sik, because she wanted to support or even save him given how his massive debts spurred him to sign up to play as well.
Finally, an arc which is brought forward from the first season, policeman Jun-Ho’s pursuit of his long-lost brother In-Ho (the “Front Man” of the games).
When I reflected on my experience of the series, I noticed that the most moving parts for me were precisely these moments of family precariousness.
There are many people in our own communities going through similar struggles and problems; to view such difficulties presented and played on the screen cannot help but add that extra all-critical “spark” to such films.
Any parent with a child struggling with poor health can easily relate to a character dangerously breaking rules to help another sick child.
Likewise, we all can relate to the trauma of having intensely “murderous” feelings towards our siblings whilst at the very same time being obsessed with their well-being.
It’s almost as if the horror of the Games mirrored the breakdown in the characters’ family relations.
Freud 102
I suppose we’ll never understand why the film industry requires broken families for successful movies. But perhaps Freudian theory can help.
Sigmund Freud suggested that we’re all made up of a type of supra-biological DNA.
As children, everybody had to negotiate our entrance into the world of law, order and norms. This transition, from childlike Paradise to an adult’s world of rules “screwed us up” psychically.
We are all infected with a loss necessitated from “growing up”, it’s a wound that never leaves us, a condition through which we experience the world.
Now guess who are the first individuals we need to interact with in relation to this “primordial” loss? Bingo. Our loved ones, the very first people we know aka family.
So anything which reminds us of this loss and the people inextricably linked to it will 100 per cent grab our attention. Ditto, superhero movies and awesome TV shows about people getting shot because they can’t stand still when the giant doll says Stop.
There is something about family trauma and brokenness which “endorses” a show’s plot, granting it a kind of validity and “urgency” which few other issues can provide.
Even movies like Armageddon, Deep Impact and 2012 needed the frame of broken families to “make sense” of global catastrophe; it’s as if the world coming to an end just wasn’t enough to spur the plot along!
Does this all make sense? I think it’s certainly worth reflecting on.
Whatever the case, we’re a long way from A Little House On The Prairie, aren’t we?
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
