Why did “The Squid Game” blow up Netflix? | The South Korean series boom

The idea is not really new. In 1999, the Japanese writer Koushun Takami kicked the board -literally- with Battle royale, novel in which a group of students have been forcibly recruited by a totalitarian government to kill each other on an island, in ruthless competition. To the Director Kinji Fokasaku It took him a little over a year to bring the story to the screen and produce a commotion similar to that in the book. Among the many “inspirations” that history has triggered, the writer Suzanne collins first and Hollywood later they extracted every drop with The hunger Games. Movies like Hostel, The Fear Game O As God wants, of Takashi Miike, used similar premises: anyone can be taken to the last extremes for themselves.

And then how come The squid game is on its way to becoming a resounding success for Netflix better than Theft of money O The lady’s bet? It is true that the era of platforms is lavish in instant hits, “series of the month” quickly replaced by other series of the month, but the production of South Korean Hwang Dong-hyuk you can already get a badge to be the first Asian achievement to reach the top of the red N, and is poised to surpass all other productions in non english language. What does he have Ojingeo Geim Attract so much attention with a now banal cliché?

Maybe it’s about time. The seven main characters of nine episodes son irredentist losers, cornered by savage capitalism and their own bad decisions. There is no fascist government here, a hate politician like President Snow from Donald Sutherland: everything is more elusive, as elusive as the faces of big corporations, and maybe – it’s not convenient to reveal anything – just a big game-like game for boring millionaires. Seong Gi-hun is the prototype of the man kicked out of the system from brilliant Seoul, a driver with gambling debts about to lose his daughter; But Cho Sang-woo, the one everyone thinks is his counterpart, the successful financier, is ultimately an emulator of Bernie Maddoff, a white collar crook whose scene collapses. Abdul Ali is a Pakistanis exploited in the eastern lands; Kang Sae-byeok, a North Korean defector; Jang Deok-su, a bandit come down and with a price on his head for betraying someone who is not due. And there’s more.

Those cornered beings are those who produce the empathy which results in viewings. The viewer is hardly in a similar situation – a Friday night with Netflix on the couch? – but no one is immune from the debt, anguish and sword of Damocles of a shattered world. And the excess of the proposal has its attraction: in the first game, a very simple “green light, red light” which in Argentina was known a long time ago as “Cigarette 43” (don’t ask, kids), losers get shot and goodbye. And the case has only just begun.

If Argentinian television today prefers the your nice From the culinary competition to scripted rants on the dance floor, anything goes in fiction. The squid game presents a reality show … in many ways: you don’t compete by cooking, singing or dancing, but there is a jackpot of 45 billion won, which usually arouses the worst instincts. And the reality of these characters will not be suspended to engage in such a game. On the contrary, the insane competition works like a mirror of what is going on in the city, and participants will understand it as soon as possible. Until the pastel tones some scenarios seem to reproduce the capitalist system, full of glamor and attractions that hide a fierce price. And it’s not just a question of money.

Yes, the sinister game takes place on an island, like Royal battle. And as in Takami’s story, the competitors are asleep on gas. The first game also appears in Miike’s film. The Red suit guards leads to reflection Theft of money, and the signs of the masks suggest an evil PlayStation. The sculpted black face of the main masked man distills the malevolence of a dark Vador, and his enjoyment in the game is the same as Coriolanus Snow. But among all these cross-references, oddly enough, The squid game obtain a own brightness, a humanity in its characters who Katniss Everdeen loses by becoming a superhero. Humanity in its despair and powerlessness, humanity in its ambivalence in the face of competition and its challenges. And humanity, above all, in the game of betrayals, broomsticks that inevitably appear.

And then: why The squid game is it such a success? Because platforms must constantly renew the display, assurance and concepts of strong impact -although repeated- they always give way. And, come on, who hasn’t played total stillness or the ground is lava, luckily without such consequences. But it also happens that the vast majority of human beings on Earth sometimes feel, like poor Seong Gi-hun, that they run like hamsters on an endless wheel. And there is some relief that for once the hamster is someone else.