this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023

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19

[SPOILERS] Am I dumb or is Parasite very reactionary or at least liberal as fuck? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 2 years ago by AdmiralDoohickey@lemmygrad.ml to c/movies@hexbear.net

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As far as I could tell in the movie the rich people were depicted as decent parents if not a bit naive, while the poor family were backstabbing assholes who betrayed their fellow workers (the housekeeper and her husband) because of sheer malice. Not once does the film hint at the underlying economical system as the reason why the rich are rich and the poor are poor.

If you are a socialist, you will (correctly) identify capitalism as the reason for the misery of the poor people in the film, and the rich as part of the bourgeoisie who exploit them. But that isn't any different than analysing an IRL crime through that lens, the film didn't help you reach that conclusion, it just presented a scenario.

A chud could easily see the rich family as the honest entrepreneurs and the poor family as poor because of the negative behaviors they exhibited, and there is nothing in the film that would dispute that interpretation.

With the poor family getting punished for their deception, and the son resolving to make money to save his father at the end (presumably through more "honest" means), it even displays the "pull yourself by the bootstraps" belief.

The best case interpretation of the film I can make is that "the rich people should be more conscious of the poor's struggles, and the poors should stay in their place or risk losing everything" which is pretty reactionary and not the class conscious film many people described it as. I guess you could see the ending as punishment for the class betrayal but I think that's a stretch.

Am I overzealous in policing the politics of the media I consume to the point of misinterpreting things or finding an even vaguely leftist film that hard?

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[–] MF_COOM@hexbear.net 21 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Bong Joon-Ho is a liberal, but yeah I think you're wrong to say the film is reactionary.

I think a major thing you're missing by wanting the rich people to be rude and the poor family to be polite is that these types of behaviours are typically engendered by certain class positions.

There are plenty of rich people who are polite, but despite this the rich characters are shown to be exploitative which is more meaningful. If you watch carefully they are assholes, they're just polite about it.

I don't know if you've ever personally been desperate for getting enough to survive, but that kind of mentality constantly experienced makes being polite much more challenging than it would be if you live at peace because all your material needs have been met.

And you're right to focus on how the poor family acts when they are asked to show compassion or take a personal risk when they meet the destitute couple. This is important because it demonstrates how when the poor can be made so desperate to survive that can, and often does, interfere with class solidarity because survival comes first. That interaction is the most interesting part of the film I think.

Anyhow so while like I say Bong Joon-Ho is a liberal I think you're also being a liberal by choosing to view the characters as having individual morality instead of behaviours shaped by their class position :che-smile:

[–] Noven@hexbear.net 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The real liberalism is Bong depicting police brutality in Memories of Murder as necessary because they're too incompetent to actually investigate the murders properly

[–] Huldra@hexbear.net 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Is that what he does? I'm not sure I ever really saw it that way, the brutality seemed to me to be pretty straightforwardly a symptom of police incompetence and it just fucks up their investigation more and more until they are so out of leads that even the guy who acted like he was the smug smart cop who cares about evidence, is about to just murder someone and put the blame on him anyways.

[–] Abracadaniel@hexbear.net 6 points 2 years ago

I watched this again recently and you're right, the violence is really just incompetence. Their abuse of suspects interferes with solving the case more than helping it.

[–] RyanGosling@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

guy who acted like he was the smug smart cop who cares about evidence, is about to just murder someone and put the blame on him anyways.

At the end, he tried to do his optical pat down as well, but then realized he doesn’t know shit and stares at the audience because he knows that the killer outsmarted him and is probably watching

[–] RyanGosling@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I don’t think so. In addition to what everyone else said, the suspect who was extremely sus did not have any concrete evidence tying him to the murders and allowed to go after nearly being murdered. The DNA test was inconclusive. If Bong Jong-Ho was a Punisher guy, he would’ve just murdered the last suspect and the following scenes will be the cops raiding his home and finding evidence.

His real liberalism is praising the cops for catching the killer even though the circumstances seem a bit odd.

Lee initially denied any involvement in the serial murders,[34] but, on October 2, 2019, police announced he had confessed to killing 14 people, including all 10 serial murders. Two of the additional four murders happened in Suwon, and the other two happened in Cheongju; as of October 2019, details about the victims have not been released because the investigation is ongoing.[35] In addition to the murders, Lee also confessed to more than 30 rapes and attempted rapes.

So he denies these crimes and suddenly confessed to every single one? Seems a bit convenient. Something tells me they wanted to just end the case and had the perfect patsy. Or perhaps they just summarized it too stupidly on Wikipedia

[–] IgnacioM@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Bong is a liberal? I thought he was a card carrying socialist

[–] MF_COOM@hexbear.net 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Is this a bit?

[–] combat_brandonism@hexbear.net 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Not the original bit-doer, but I thought his blacklisting in colonized Korea was related to party affiliation? Or is colonial Korea that fash that they blacklist succdems?

I think that+his response to a question about Parasite's international popularity is that it's anti-capitalist has given me the impression he's a comrade but I'm not super familiar and am entirely predisposed to not give famous artists the benefit of the doubt, so do you have more context here?

[–] AdmiralDoohickey@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I don't want the poor people to be polite, I want them to be more humane if that makes sense. And the rich people were too polite, weren't they? Not once did they mistreat their servants during the film, not once did they pay them less or abuse them. Also I never said that class doesn't inform their behavior, just that the film isn't as explicit on that point as it should if it's going to agitate properly

[–] Collatz_problem@hexbear.net 4 points 2 years ago

I think a major thing you're missing by wanting the rich people to be rude and the poor family to be polite is that these types of behaviours are typically engendered by certain class positions. There are plenty of rich people who are polite, but despite this the rich characters are shown to be exploitative which is more meaningful. If you watch carefully they are assholes, they're just polite about it.

We can compare it to Joyce and Evrart from DE. Joyce is polite, but she is a member of the board of the company that said blood-crazed mercenaries to suppress the strike, while Evrart is very slimy and yet he organized this strike and genuinely tries to improve conditions for union members.