In a “social experiment”, the Recruiter spends the morning purchasing bags of pastry bread alongside dozens of lottery tickets before walking into a city park where a majority of homeless men and women are gathered, going about their day. Over the course of several minutes, the Recruiter walks up to each person and offers them a choice: “Bread or Lottery”. They all reach for the lottery ticket. None of them win the promised prize, which could have changed their life instantly.
The Recruiter then walks to the middle of the park, empties the bags of bread on the floor, proceeding to stomp and destroy them under the horrified eyes of his experiment’s subjects. He laughs at their reaction, at the irony of it — that the people sleeping on park benches, without money to feed themselves to their body’s needs, would choose the 0.0001% chance of winning cash prize rather than the certainty of food.
It’s not far-fetched to say Squid Game is (the show and the games themselves) a scathing commentary of our societies when the director and creator of the show, Hwang Dong-hyuk, stated that “We are living in a Squid Game world.” in an interview with the Guardian in 2021. During the interview, he cited his own financial struggles after the 2008 financial crisis, class disparities in South Korea, and “capitalism” as inspirations for the show.
Squid Game is not just for our entertainment, Hwang Dong-hyuk is holding up a mirror, urging us to see the reality of what is unfolding right under our eyes.
All characters introduced in the show during the games are akin to hamsters having fallen off the wheel of capitalism. Somewhere down the line the wheel accelerated and they stopped being able to keep up. The result? Debt, fraud, divorce, medical bills, theft, gambling addiction, racketeering, money laundering. The individuals that carry on playing the games don’t all believe they can win the prize-money that could fix all their problems; but they all share the idea that it is better to die during the Games to return to face their lives back “home”. There’s a willingness to die before getting back on a wheel that keeps accelerating after they have fallen off, that has already found other hamsters to replace them. While these characters are fictional, they are very real and we see them every day; whether it’s on the bus, in the park, in our friends and families, or our mirrors — the paths that led the characters to “kill or be killed” for money are paths most people have set foot on, if not encountered. Student loans, mortgage payments, the cost of living crisis; money drives nearly every decision we take and dictates whatever path we end up on.
Beyond the graphic horror of the players dying and the violence of the games, the most worrying idea to come from the show is the fact that the execution of the games is viable.
There are thousands of Player 456 and Player 218 that would rather risk it all than continue to live in the backlogs of a society which has already forgotten them, whether that be in South Korea, the US or the UK. The outcome of the games would be the same too. The shocking and brutal deaths of the majority of players during the first game initially revolts the surviving players, when given the choice between leaving the games and having the prize money be given to the deceased’s families OR continuing the games, the players choose the latter. Eventually the initial sadness and shock wears off and to each game they are more desensitised, focused only on surviving to the next game with the promise of money to keep them going. The idea of desensitisation is thrown around more and more today, when we talk about school shootings, climate disasters, violence and atrocities. A tragedy happens, we express our outrage online, we maybe share a few links, sign petitions, send thoughts and prayers, and then we move on: to our dinner tonight, our shift in the morning, our surgery this Friday, etc. Would the unfolding of the games be that different if they were to take place tomorrow?
Towards the end of the second season, the Front Man tells Player 456 that “The Game will not end unless the world changes”; but will we ever?
“Squid Game Rectangle Mask 2” by KJ108_art is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.