Why we should celebrate Parasite beyond its representation
“When directing the movie, I tried to express a sentiment specific to the Korean culture...but upon screening the film after completion, all the responses from different audiences were pretty much the same. Essentially, we all live in the same country….called capitalism.”
Mild spoilers for Parasite (2019).
The 92nd Academy Awards - also known as the “awards everyone claims to not care about yet still gets angry over when the nominations come out” - took place this past Sunday, with notable moments all around. From Taika Waititi’s Best Adapted Screenplay win for Jojo Rabbit, to Hair Love’s Best Animated Short Film accolade, it seems that the Academy is finally giving people of color their due. But, of course, we can’t talk about milestones in representation with acknowledging South Korean film Parasite’s historic four wins out of six nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture.
Parasite is, no doubt, deserving of its wins. With a tight script, breathtaking cinematography and stellar acting, director Bong Joon Ho leads a 2 hour and 12 minute long masterclass in filmmaking. Furthermore, its 100% Korean cast and crew is incredibly important for Asian representation, especially in terms of how non-Western cinema is perceived in Western culture.
But Parasite isn’t groundbreaking simply for its representation. We cannot celebrate it without also acknowledging its underlying messages about class divide, socioeconomic inequality, and the destructive nature of capitalism.
Bong’s genius cannot be understated - there are so many visual metaphors and symbols throughout the movie that I can’t even begin to list them all. There’s the use of lines and windows to physically show the divide between the poor and rich; Mr. Park, the wealthy head of house who employs the Kims, references the poor “crossing the line” several times. The apartment the Kims live in is colloquially referred to as a “half-basement,” symbolizing the half-baked hope that the family may some day finally make their way fully “above ground.” Social mobility is represented through the staircases; the Parks can stay safe from the flood in their upper-level housing, while the Kims are displaced by the water trickling downward (and only downward) and Geun-sae languishes in the underground basement for over 4 years. In the end, money’s protection can only go so far; in Mr. Park’s case, the flies don’t discriminate between rich and poor corpses, while the surviving Kims end up right back where they started.
Considering the film’s criticism of the wealthy, it is unbelievable to then see so many rich people, blissfully unaware that they identify more with the Parks than the Kims, cheer on and applaud Parasite’s message, and then do nothing to evaluate how they contribute to the problem. In fact, it’s sort of bizarre that Parasite is being celebrated so heavily during the Oscars, the quintessential rich people celebration. With America specifically, the widening wealth gap and one of the highest mortality rates among the world’s richest countries should make it impossible to deny the trail of bloodshed capitalism has left in its wake. Capitalism, and before that, colonialism, is the weapon of white supremacists and fascists, starting from the exploitation of slave labor and leading to the institutional, modern-day contempt for the poor. Billionaires are the leading cause of environmental issues and poverty, and could stop climate change and world hunger several times over with enough money remaining to comfortably live out the rest of their lives, but they just don’t want to. And that speaks volumes. Because no matter how generous Bill Gates seems for helping African youth, or how charitable Michael Bloomberg looks for easing the financial burden on Johns Hopkins students, billionaires are perfectly content to live lavishly while the bottom 50% die from their inability to afford healthcare.
I don’t want to detract from the significance of Parasite’s win by talking about white billionaires (though just to be clear, billionaires of color are no better). But it is not enough to only celebrate the movie for its diversity - in fact, it’s ironic that the story could apply to any country, yet people are focusing solely on the representation to distract from the global nature of capitalism. If we truly want to elevate the voices of the disenfranchised, we must take a closer look at the systems that hold them back in the first place, and then actually do something about it.