#1 PARASITE: WHO IS THE REAL PARASITE?

Hi reader,

today I want to talk about Parasite, a South-Korean film of 2019 directed by Bong Joon-ho which has won, among others, the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Festival and the Oscar for the best feature film, best international feature film, achievement in directing, and best original screenplay at the 2020 Oscars. I must admit that I did not like it the first time I saw it, although it is award-winning, but I appreciated it on a second view, thus I would like to explore its features, which I believe give us insights for interesting reflections on our society, with you.

I start by saying that I will not talk about the plot, but I will directly analyze the film’s themes, thus I recommend to first go and see the movie. However, if you already saw it and you could use a refresher, or you do not care about spoilers but you still want to understand what I am talking about (as I will not call the characters by name but I will refer to them using their role in the story or the name of their family), you can find the plot and the characters at this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite_(2019_film).

Ah, I almost forgot...SPOILER ALERT!

What are the shades that we can see in a story of huge social inequality like that of Parasite? Let’s try to analyze them.

On one side we have the poor, the Kims and the bunker couple, which represent two different behaviours of poor people towards rich people: the Kims are ambitious and want to emancipate themselves, despite discovering later that it is impossible to lift from the “caste” to which one belongs, while the housekeeper and her husband are obliging and adore their masters who let them survive with their leftovers.

On the other we have the Park family, the rich, the leisure class which does not have mundane worries and is disgusted by the poor. Oftentimes during the film, the Parks point out how their employees (the Kim family, which they do not know as such) stink, how they have a smell of dirt and poverty which “crosses the line”. But which line? That implicit line for which the servants must not interfere with their masters’ life, that line which this stink crosses, disturbing the fragile equilibrium of the rich family.

Here we can see some very strong social critics, which remain valid also for our society, albeit different from the South-Korean one.

First of all, let’s analyze the behaviour of poor people towards rich people. In a society like the South-Korean one, the economic and industrial development happened very rapidly but not for everyone. Society could evolve at the pace of economic growth, as it has been too fast, thus wealth went in the hands of the few, leaving great strata of the population in utter poverty.

In everyone’s ideal world, each of us would like to have no economic problems and to be rich enough to afford all our whims. And so, also poor South-Corean people dream of being rich. They see material wealth as a life goal and put on a pedestal the rich, asking themselves: “If they are that which I want to be, why should I be angry with them?”. The question that they should ask, however, is another one: “Why am I poor and they are rich?”

And the answer is that there is a huge disparity in the distribution of wealth, thus the few have much and the many have little. However, instead of acting rationally and fighting to improve the situation, they adore rich people because they would like to be like them and they take it out on other poor people. Rather than cooperating for a fairer society, poor people hate each other because they see each other as an obstacle to the achievement of the ideal of wealth and material comfort (and one cloud also discusses how much material wealth really is a healthy goal for a person’s life).

Reducing a little the terms and going back to our Western parameters, does not all of this happen also in our society? That which we see is a continuous struggle between the poor, because public opinion and politics, instead of looking at social disparities and pretending a fairer distribution of resources which can provide sustenance to all, rage against the last, blaming them for the discontent of the second-last. Indeed, those who have reasons to worry about their economic condition see the others, a person in the same situation, as an adversary or an enemy because he/she could steal opportunities from them. Rather than directing their discontent against rich people, they pour their concerns on the different, the foreign, the immigrant, who most of the times is a person coming from terrible situations and only searching for a better life and a stable position in the society, but who is still treated as an enemy rather than being welcomed.

All of this is based on concrete fears, fears exasperated by populism and belittled by the more institutional parties, fears of people who probably do not have bad intentions but who could become dangerous if their problems are not taken seriously, as it indeed happens.

But let’s go back to the film. The Kim family and the bunker couple, thus, idolize wealth and hate each other. The Park family for them is the symbol of those who made it and the Kims, by deceiving them, think of themselves as very smart and almost realized. For a moment the movie tells us: “Here are the parasites”, but it does not end here.

Little by little, we find in the Parks an almost obsessive dependence for the Kims. These have become their servants, and the Parks cannot do anything without them: the daughter has fallen in love with the Kims’ son, the son has been enchanted by the Kims’ daughter, Mr Park could drive but it is not a gentleman’s activity and thus he let Mr Kim drive him everywhere, and Mrs Park is unable to do anything on her own, inside and outside the house, and needs the housekeeper to keep everything going. Don’t they seem fragile and superficial people? We notice this especially from the way they fire their old employees: for example, when the Kims’ daughter uses the ex-housekeeper’s peach allergy to make it seem like she is sick with tuberculosis, Mr Park is shocked and immediately dismisses her, without worrying in the least about the health of a woman who has worked for them for years, and without even directly asking for an explanation.

In fact, all of the Kims’ plan is base on this: the fact that the Parks do not really care about what happens to their employees, but only that those people do not affect their lives, to the point that they do not even dignify their faithful servants with a confront or the benefit of the doubt, but they trust only their impressions even if they are wrong.

In the eyes of the Park family, those servants are replaceable parts. They are no more people with which they sign an employment contract, recognizing that they too have a private life and could have problems outside work. The sole problems that exist are the Parks’ ones, and the employees must completely and utterly devote themselves to them. At the same time, however, the Parks do not want others to cross that line which we discussed earlier, and as you can see this is a paradoxical demand since the Parks are the first to cross it, drowning their employees with all their futile problems and pretending immediate support and help.

We might think that this is done maliciously, yet it is pure superficiality. The Parks are used to living a leisure life and think that everybody is in the same condition. They do not conceive that others can have real problems, and that conviction greatly clashes with reality.

In fact, the reality is the tragic situation of the Kims, exemplified in a scene in which, while they are in the gym to sleep after the flood, the Kims’ son has a lucky stone on his lap (which has been donated to him by a friend) and thinks about a new plan to make everything alright, but his father tells him that, in order not to ever be disappointed, in life no plan has to be made. The stone symbolizes the will to emancipate and to be touched by luck, but these desires are only illusions, and in fact the scene shows us how the stone has become a boulder, a bulky and painful burden on young Kim’s life that will lead him to ruin (as this very stone will be used to hit him at the end of the movie).

The Parks, without the external help of their servants (being them the Kims or others, it does not matter), could not bear the weight of their life. The father is always away for work, the mother has no purpose in life and is not even able to perform the simplest housework, the girl is insecure and has bad marks at school and the boy needs attention. These are fragile people, who very much resemble us Westerners: despite not having immediate problems, like the economic and material ones, the Parks have problems of a different nature, more psychological, which are silenced thanks to external help without which then they cannot do. Without their employees, the Parks too would probably fight endlessly, as it happens in many families, yet commanding those external figures, who are nothing to them and must only solve every problem without asking questions, makes them feel like they have control over something in their lives. In this way, the situation remains perfect on the surface and they can continue to live in their bubble, happy and oblivious to all that happens not only outside their house but even inside of it and between them, as they do not even explore those relationships which should be the most intimate ones.

Thus, the real parasites are the Parks, who exploit other people’s life to hold their house of cards together: despite not having real problems and having to create fake ones, the fragile psyche of the Park family’s members is always on the brink of crashing, and the easiest way to keep it safe is to use external people as a bonding agent. This is the reason why they need someone who performs a function in their life, someone who does not have a personal life but is at all times available to make up for the shortcomings of the family, in order for it to keep living a life of false happiness. And as those people are replaceable parts, as the Parks do not want people but automata which perform a function, when one of them has achieved its purpose or does not function properly anymore, they simply throw it away and take another one. By doing so, they do not really solve any of the problems which afflict them, but they delay them and hide them under a blanket of apparent comfort at the expense of others, who are used as a series of patches used to hide a gangrenous wound. And in the meantime, the lives of those people are ruined by the Parks’ problems, just like a body is ruined by the parasites inside of it.

Dear reader, other than the ones I discussed today, do you think that we could find other parallels between the South-Korean situation shown in the film and ours? If you saw it, what did this film leave you with? Do you know other interpretations of the movie which you would like to share with us?

Let us know by leaving a comment here, sending us an email with your reflections or commenting on the related post on our social profiles.

Thank you for your attention,

Maria Chiara Bodda

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