Looking Beyond Parasite (2019)
Courtesy of NEON
By Yoojin Shin
This review contains minor spoilers
The 2020 Academy Awards was a momentous time for South Korean cinema, as Parasite (2019), directed by Bong Joon-ho, took away the four major awards of the night: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Foreign Picture. It was the first time in the Academy Awards’ history for a film in a non-English language to win Best Picture.
Sitting in the dark cinema to watch the film, I felt an electrifying current sweep through me. This theater—specializing in the area as the place that screens the more obscure, artsy, and “indie” movies—was full to the brim with people, all kinds of people, on a Monday evening. There was some kind of a fundamental change rocking through the cinematic world: foreign films with subtitles were no longer “underground,” but very much on top of the ground, gaining full steam towards global recognition.
Parasite opens with a scene familiar to those who’ve taken the small roads and alleyways in Seoul, South Korea: a half-hidden view of the street, populated by feet and wheels, glimpsed from the worn-out, oppressive heat of banjiha—a half-basement type of dwelling where the only window to the outside world is a narrow strip of glass marking the space between the ceiling and the cemented floor of the street. The small villa in Seoul that my family and I lived in when I was a little child also had a banjiha, but my view of it was restricted to the street outside, where I sometimes stood and wondered who might live there.
For the poor in South Korea, the banjiha is a common type of dwelling because it’s cheaper than its above-ground counterpart. Of course, the cheap price comes with many downsides: it’s hot during summer and cold during winter; it’s stuffy because the windows are small and the circulation is bad; and because it’s stuffy, it’s prone to dust and mold. It’s not difficult to see that such characteristics can pose serious health hazards to those who live inside; but still, families choose to live there, because they can’t afford to live anywhere else.
The Kim family, who live in such a banjiha, is, indeed, poor and all unemployed. One day, a strike of fortune lands on the Kim family’s son, Ki-woo, in the form of a job as an English tutor for the daughter of the wealthy Park family. Sensing the potential opportunities for further employment within the Park household, the entire Kim family schemes to replace the preexisting domestic help, and they succeed, thanks to the “young and simple” (i.e. gullible) Lady of the House.
The contrast between the Kim and Park families is clear. The Kim family is generally grimy and rough on the edges: they’ve had sweat and dirt accumulate on their skin, they curse and deride, and they scheme and manipulate. The Park family wears fancy clothes, smiles and speaks in soft ripples, and incorporates English phrases—the ultimate symbol of educated posh in South Korea—into their everyday sentences. The physical stratification is obvious: The Kim family lives in a banjiha with molding walls, while the Park family lives above ground, surrounded by a sprawling back yard full of plump, expensive-looking trees. In our world today, such sharp division of class is an almost universal phenomenon, hence the widespread reception of the obvious theme: the woes of material inequality.
These “woes” aren’t simply that some are rich and others are poor. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), French economist Thomas Piketty said that accumulated wealth grows faster than output and wages, leading to social stratification between the rentier (e.g. the entrepreneur) and “those who own nothing but their labor” (571). Thus, the root of such woes is that the rich employ the poor, instigating the deepest, and the most festering, emotional wounds: the humiliation and the degradation of poverty. Humiliation is perhaps one of the greatest violations of personhood in Asia, which is why it’s a powerful enough motivator to drive the whole plot forward. It’s also the matter of being compared: indeed, if everyone was poor, no one would really know that they were poor; it’s only when the poor meet the rich that they realize their own impoverishment. Inequality, rather than simple poverty, is the real poison in the snake.
Mrs. Park in her home, after firing her original nanny, calling for a house care service.
Courtesy of NEON
The Kim family in their banjiha home.
Courtesy of NEON
The Kim family is subject to such comparison in a much more intimate way, because they are the household “helps”—the tutors, the driver, and the maid. The wealthy outsourcing its physical labor to the less fortunate is nothing new. In fact, servants and domestic help have been present within human society ever since the days when kings and queens used to rule the world; except now, even mildly well-off twenty-somethings can outsource domestic labor, with apps that drive you to places, pick up and return your laundry, clean your apartment, and deliver your groceries. This particular type of outsourcing draws a clean line between two groups of people: the employer and the employee, the owners and the help, and the rich and the poor. This is the line that Mr. Park, the bread-earner of the Park household, emphasizes as the most important between him and Mr. Kim, the chauffeur.
Certainly, Mr. and Mrs. Park are nice people, who really haven’t done anything wrong. They are neither villains nor victims. But as the twists and turns of the plot plunge the Kim family into the edge of human decency, the Parks’ niceness acts as dry hay in a flickering amber of rage—the indignation, humiliation, and resentment of poverty.
Much of what happens after the Kim family overtakes the Park household serves the purpose of storytelling and entertainment. As a thriller, Parasite delivers these components with suave execution: a nimble use of music; clean, symmetrical shots; and seamless, fast-paced editing—thanks to the Frankenstein magic of the editor, Yang Jin-mo—that maintains the biting pace of the movie. At some point in the end, however, Bong deliberately chooses to let go: the seasons change, the snow falls, and gliding on the change of mood, the final twist comes in an understated, but nevertheless shocking, arrival.
Parasite is a great cinematic achievement, but the reason it truly shines is because of its timeliness. We now live in a world where software firms recruit new grads for six-figure salaries while homelessness spirals out of control in their backyards; where billionaires purchase their fifth home while others default on their student loans; and where conglomerates pay one-digit taxes while teachers and government workers pay in two-digits. Precisely because of this timeliness of Parasite, Richard Brody of The New Yorker thought Bong should’ve pushed harder, made a louder statement about class inequality—but preachy, didactic films are not my favorite, and in truth, are a recent trademark of the American Hollywood that South Korean directors should try everything to avoid.
Linking Parasite to clickbait words like “diversity” and “representation” (two words that Hollywood people seem to be obsessed with nowadays) is to cheapen its value and merit as a superbly executed, entertaining, and contemplative film. Indeed, the Academy Awards is not a global, but rather local, affair, and I’m inclined to think the Palme d’Or at Cannes is a greater honor of international recognition than the Oscars for Best Picture; regardless, Parasite’s nab of four golden statues is not a win for leftist American politics, but a recognition of superlative cinema that has been in bloom for decades. Parasite—and more broadly, South Korean, and really, Asian cinema—is not responsible for representing anybody: rather, its sole responsibility is to tell a good story, with dense and substantive characters, in honest, original, and insightful ways. That’s the way cinema should be, anyway.
*For those interested in watching more South Korean films, here’s my recommended list to get you started: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (2003), Memories of Murder (2003), Joint Security Area (2000), and Peppermint Candy (2000).
Yoojin Shin is a writer, editor, and translator who has been nurturing a lifelong love for the creative arts. After accumulating an eclectic range of experiences in journalism, academia, and the fine arts, she launched the Baram House with Natalie Anderson over a plate of cheesecake. You can see more of her work on her website, and follow her personal journey on her Instagram.
