On the Netflix series "Squid Game"

ABSTRACT:

Squid Game, a 21st-century South Korean survival drama series, is critically acclaimed as anti-capitalist. This study aims to untangle the modern capillary functioning of power in both capitalist and communist worlds against the backdrop of the characters and circumstances in the storyline. It deals with the political and cultural symbiosis to determine the dynamics of society through Michel Foucault and Raymond Williams framework of power and cultural mediation respectively. This symbiosis is then explored through the news reports to connect the ground reality of South Korea, verifying the immense economic gap between two extreme strata of the same society. It is observed that the violent games instruct a lost sense of personage; in turn, affecting the political and social choice of an individual; to further ratify the power and control. This study aims to confer the society as political metonymy, and games as cultural metonymy, both as a causality of power regime influence each other, to hypothesise a vicious circle; similar to the base and superstructure.

INTRODUCTION:

Squid Game is a South Korean survival drama series directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk. The basic premise of hunger games traversed with 'parasite', the backdrop of inequality and capitalism sets out the protagonist Seong Gi-Hun (played by Lee Jung-jae) and 455 other debt-strapped contestants to partake in six consecutive children's games urging an incredible cash prize, but the stakes are deadly. The rules of the games assert to not quit or lose, proclaiming death unless the majority proposes to disband the game (Red Light 00:40:21-30). Initially, when contestants learn to know the deadly rules, the majority chooses to quit. However, their debt-ridden life led them to pursue the game again with several permutations. In the parallel edifice of the storyline, a cop infiltrates to ascertain the governing head of the games organisation. The director and creator of the series aim to target the modern capitalist society.

The secret organisation employs “panopticon” machinery with constant CCTV surveillance over the contestants, workers - including the Front man- inside the games (Foucault 6). However, from the onset of the series, an unseen "gaze" and an algorithm followed the contestants incessantly in the outside world (Foucault 2). The disparity of the outside and the inside world (squid games hierarchy) in the series plays the metonymy for capitalist and communist systems respectively. Panopticon - a network of mechanisms adopted by Michel Foucault, 20th-century French philosopher, literary critic and political activist to explain the functioning of "power" in modern society (Foucault 3).

The 21st-century modern power of capitalist society functions in "capillary, that it operates in the lowest extremities of the social body in everyday social practices" (remaining). In simple terms, suction of power in modern society operates from bottom to top where everyone gives up their power in the process i.e., through the hierarchy, power gets accumulated at the top, the most powerful. For instance, the democratic system is said to be for, by and of the people, but the noun through "capillary" has been superseded by the adjective powerful in the modern world (Foucault 3). The series showcases a well-organised system similar to democracy and globalisation, but the choices of the contestants are subtly infected by the powerful American/Chinese elites/VIPs.

In this paper, I aim to decipher the political and cultural symbiosis prevalent in the Squid Game with the help of two literary, political and cultural theorists: Michel Foucault and Raymond Williams. Moreover, the paper answers several plausible questions such as the free will of the participants: are they freely, actively participating, or led by subtle manipulations and mediation in the invisible and entrapped system of the powerful political setup of 21st-century society?

LITERATURE REVIEW:

Squid Game emanated from the real-life economic struggles and class disparity of Hwang Dong-hyuk, the creator and director, acclaimed widely as an anti-capitalist survival drama series against the backdrop of a 21st-century South Korean society. Though initially written in 2009, the series was discussed in 2019, released worldwide by September 2021. The series came on the surface approximately 3 months ago; therefore, not considerably explored by many researchers besides the multiple non-academic analysis.

Bibin John Babuji and Sharon Soby Varghese in their paper Unknown Citizens in the Squid Game: A Study On State Domination In Hwang- Dong-hyuk's Korean Drama Squid Game refers to W.H. Auden's poem Unknown Citizen, Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish to explore the plight of a modern man in a surveillance state against the backdrop of Squid Game. Depersonalization of the workers in the series to merely reductionism their identity from their names to the social security numbers have been deduced as a representative of the lost human element in modern times; in addition, Auden's emphasis on the horrifying extent of surveillance implies the modern tyrannical State such as Russia and China. Their paper attempts to deduce a relation between the surveillance in the hierarchy of the games and the surgical precision in the modern States to reinforce power, to neutralize all forms of rebellions or tensions.

The functioning of laws and rules in the modern States and series respectively, stand ambiguous due to their nature of deceiving the people with conditional freedom, confers the inherent evils of democracy; crushing the minority voices within the system has been deduced through the deviously structured rules in the games. On one hand, the rules are depicted to show the indifference and nebulous nature of the State towards common people, and on the other hand, the elimination rule in the games, euphoric for killing, is depicted as the misuse of laws across the democratic State.

Their paper expounds on the unjust economic order and apparent stability between elites/VIPs, the cold face of capitalism, and poor contestants, the pawn of society, with the help of an Oxfam report. The key premise of their paper is based upon the power dynamics through the philosophy of discipline and punishment, and its polyvalent applications in modern society highlight the tyrannical misuse of power, rules and democracy by the State to render a common man helpless at the helm of the barbarity of capitalist, the powerful, conclusively been discussed through several contrasting examples across the series.

Namiratusshofa, Alemina and Umar in their research paper The Cultural Effect of Popular Korean Drama: Squid Game extensively discusses the impact of Squid Game on the mental and behavioural health of children across the world. With a descriptive qualitative approach against the symbolic backdrop and potential cultural meaning of the sadistic and violent games, they draw the importance of negative and lethal consequences of the series among children with the help of considerable reports. They aim to discuss the serious cultural impact on children by merely consuming a little altered social information.

This dissertation endeavours to curate the potholes in the symbiosis represented by the aforementioned research papers simply by documenting the tendency of a vicious circle of the political and cultural domain, whereas the power remains unverifiable and outside the system; in addition, Raymond Williams Marxism and Literature provides the key to connect the political, cultural, historical, psychological, economic and social facets (Williams 95). Lastly, the cultural mediation across the series is represented through Raymond Williams model of Dominant, residual and Emergent highlighting the Capitalist as well as Communist power, both forging democracy and freedom, yet the founding step towards social advancement requires an epiphany towards the panoptic schema (Williams 121).

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

This section proposes an evaluative insight into the paper to critically concede the validity of the research. The approach implies a qualitative symbiosis/comparison study based on the existing philosophies, considerably of a socially relevant drama-series and factual data to further prove and hypothesise the stance. Moreover, political and cultural philosophies ground the research work of the paper.

Michael Foucault's theory of panopticism from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison has been used as the focus of concern to extract the political symbiosis of the series. The idea of panopticon has been adopted and thereafter renovated by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham by Foucault, to seek its political significance besides the architectural structuring (Foucault 5). The structure represents a tower at the middle with a radical and alert gaze on every cell at the periphery in the structure; the authority at the central tower to maintain a constant command, threat and power over the common periphery or the prisoners. The structure is symbolic of the 19th century plague-stricken society; therefore, the 21st-century continuous hierarchical figures and CCTV gaze at different levels in the warehouse of deadly games successfully depicted in the series. There is compartmentalization to perform pedagogical experiments to assess an individual, thereafter negotiating the rebellions within a democracy (Foucault 8).

On one hand, the paper compares the panoptic structure and the inside functioning of the warehouse to the communist ideology, and on the other hand, the outside functioning to the capitalist and democratic ideology. Both the backdrops present the characteristics of a panoptic schema: surveillance, binary division, segmented, immobile, dozen spaces at the risk of contagion or punishment, amplifying the omnipresent and omniscient power through multiple authorities. Therefore, both communists and capitalists stand responsible for an interpellation and inherence of power through rules and regulations, at the heart of democracy and conditional freedom. The symbiosis has been proposed through several comparable outlooks, characters, conversations and predicaments across the series.

Consecutively, gripping the outset of the series to carve out the cultural facets, social applicability of the series about 21st-century society, restating the implications of the games in both real life and the outside world as per the series, the approach navigates through Raymond Williams Marxism and Literature. This work gives a better understanding of Marx 'base and superstructure model, Raymond Williams comprehension of it as a fluid process.

Raymond Williams' understanding of culture, ideology and the significant cultural meaning informing the cultural practices, gives a slightly different model of base and superstructure by assimilating a new dimension of human labour to it. These changes assign it the term mediation that has been represented and analyzed through the series, wherein the characters play a significant role; assertion of ample evidence that culture is political, and social changes triggered by political processes are reflected in the cultural practices. For instance, the cultural practice of hunger games in the series makes a cultural impact that has been traced by several instances and comparisons.

Both the wheels of politics and culture conduct the hypothesis of the paper, providing a symbiotic relationship between the games and the society, together with concluding the fate of a society. Raymond Williams theory determines how the game world is a copy of the real society in the series; society being the base and games being the superstructure run in hand and often mediated by an outside power i.e., economy. The facet of the economy has been briefly explored through the statistical data of the ground reality in South Korean society i.e., the connection of the series with the economic crisis signifying the economic gap in the society.

ANALYSIS:

This analysis attempts to deal with political and cultural symbiosis in Squid Game, to prove that the series sets out correspondence and thought-provoking perimeters of the communist North Korean and capitalist South Korean governments, comprising 3 prominent divisions. First, the Foucauldian theory of control through panoptic schema and capillary power in modern society. Second, Raymond Williams model of Dominant, Residual and Emergent besides the “mediation” from Base and Superstructure (Williams 96). Third, the hypothesis of a real-life vicious circle by assembling the two aforementioned theories that play out against the backdrop of Squid Game.

POLITICAL SYMBIOSIS

Political symbiosis of the series has been analysed through Michel Foucault’s framework of power in “panopticism” from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

Power in communist world

Every contestant has been brought to the warehouse in an unconscious state. In the warehouse, everyone from the contestants to the frontman is under hierarchical CCTV surveillance constructing a chain of commands; continuous, ideal and disciplined panopticon structure functioning efficiently. Therefore, the machinery is the metonymy for discipline and control - a laboratory of power.

Foucault says that knowledge is the penetration into men's behaviour by observing the hierarchical machinery through the panoptic schema to exercise the power: functions similar to an algorithm; the more it is operationalized the more intelligently it evolves. Therefore, "knowledge follows the advances of power" (Foucault 8-9). Il-Nam being a contestant alongside the head organizer of the games, and the frontman being the worker at the top of the hierarchy is the metonymy for knowledge and power respectively; the more Il-Nam operates the knowledge, the more intelligently it follows the advances of power. The warehouse functions as the laboratory of power wherein the games where the contestants are intentionally being starved to death by the organisation are symbolic of the pedagogical experiments.

The frontman asserts the motive of the games repeatedly saying that they are to assure an equal opportunity to every individual. Merriam Webster identifies the definition of communism, "a political system in which the state owns and controls all factories, farms, services, etc and aims to treat everyone equally". If to be focused on the last words i.e., " aims to treat everyone equally" to trace back the game organizers motive. Here the organizers symbolize the “state” who signifies similar claims after urging the contestants with outstanding prize money to get rid of their debt. But if found quitting or losing, would be shot dead as per the rules/policy. This paper aims to come back to the argument after elucidating the outside capitalist world view of the series.

Power in capitalist world

The protagonist, Seong Gi-Hun is a jobless, debt-ridden gambler living in poverty in the outside world and therefore unable to pay for his mother's treatment. Another contestant and the first runner up of the games, Cho Sang-woo has received education from one of the prestigious universities representing a corrupt, embezzling and debt-ridden entrepreneur, negotiating his mother's shop in a series of events to pay off the debt. Another contestant, Kang Sae-byeok being a North Korean escapee and homeless, is bound to pickpocket to survive in South Korea. All such instances pinpoint two major political issues: poverty and unemployment besides a good helm of education, conquering through the capitalist and democratic functioning of the outside world. These issues in turn dress the argument of inequality even in the capitalist world. For instance, the director and creator of the series in an interview says that the series is an attempt to showcase the demerits of a capitalist society. Demerits, if traced back, affronts the inequality against the backdrop of a capitalist society, wherein the contestants are unequally placed across the power machinery against the affluent elites/VIPs.

Foucault identifies the normalization and homogenization of power to be the most dangerous products of panoptic structure ensuring equilibrium and disequilibrium; order and disorder at the same time. Equilibrium: to ensure the efficiency of the society through visibility; Disequilibrium: to create chaos, difference, imaginative and anxious state for the public to adhere to the ordered society, again ensuring the operation of ideologues at different levels. In effect of naturalization, the power in a free and democratic world becomes transformative and disconcerting for the people to recognize the possibility of resistance. Therefore, surrender themselves to the power in the name of freedom, conforming and actively participating in the politicization of their lives. For instance, the contestants in the series are subjected to equilibrium by a promise to sort out their debt, but at the same time to disequilibrium by creating fear and threat of death. Consumer capitalism is one such political exigency in the series.

The panoptic machinery functions with visibility and unverifiability ensuring automatic power functioning because people through naturalized effects of power have absorbed the power. For instance, all the contestants being part of the capitalist world interpellate and hail into the consumer cultures of games without realizing their active participation in the power regime headed by capitalist elites/VIPs. The contestants start following the rules due to the fear of consequences by inhaling and absorbing the power through rules and orders. The instance represents that the capitalist world is run at the behest of elites/VIPs who decide the fate of the contestants either outside since they gather every information about the contestants before offering them the games, or inside the organization of the game since they are still under constant visibility. Therefore, the capitalist world is represented as evil at its best without any realization of the location of power by the contestants in the series, either outside or inside the games.

Capitalist v/s Communist: Capillary power

Two symbiotic interpretations follow the political parallelism in the series. First, in the outside world, debt-ridden people thieve, gamble, commit crimes to survive yet are unable to pay off their parent's treatment, siblings' education, etc. For instance, the North Korean escapee, Kang Sae-byok is unable to pay for her brother's education, livelihood and is bound to thieve. In the series, this interpretation stands representative of a capitalist world, or to be more precise, a predicament after escaping from the communist world.

Second, the inside world of the games with surveillance and a constant command of hierarchy stands for the possible causality of political power at the edifice of economic power i.e., the elites/VIPs. In the hierarchy workers at different levels are minimized, separated, reduced to taxonomy, masks and rules which advance first the legislation and afterwards the regulation; furthermore, the functioning of power guarantees the disindivisualized and lost personage i.e., an identity outside the machinery. For instance, the workers being forced through the power of money to disown their lives outside the games is indicative of a lost personage and identity and the invasion of the economic power into the political actions; therefore, the lives of debt-ridden individuals.

Both worlds are representative of the capillary functioning of power. At the outset of the panoptic schema, it doesn't matter who is ruling, the effect of power is homogenized (Foucault 7). Foucault points out that the problem with the panoptic schema is that someone would always be at the middle of the tower, at the centre running and disciplining the periphery and hence the power. This ensures the capillary functioning of power in both the world either democratic outside, or non-democratic inside, wherein both the states claim to be democratic, but in reality, nobody is free; non-democratization camouflages democracy; people think they are putting together a choice, but do they? Let's discuss. This kind of panoptic functioning is a suction of power, wherein people from the lowest hierarchy give away their power and thus the concept of Louis Althusser's “interpellation” surfaces (Lennin 108). Here people belonging to the lowest hierarchy i.e., contestants are giving away their power for it to accumulate at the top and bottle-down from the lowest extremities i.e., from the debt-ridden contestants to the elites/VIPs through the machinery and stringent rules. The power which happens to accumulate to the most powerful has been taken away from the least powerful and that envision the process of suction, or capillary functioning, of power.

In a scene, the middle of one of the games, North Korean escapee, Kang Sae-byeok in a conversation with a South Korean contestant, Ji-yeong reveals an emotional and vulnerable side, symbolic of the threat to order, when asked about the better state, "out there", or "in here?” (VIPs 00:20:10-16). To which name replies that she thought it would be better in here, but she might die and she doesn't have an answer. All she has is a bunch of crumbling emotions and an individualised and “disindivisualised” identity at the same time wherein, on one hand, the system doesn't let her die but leave her hopeless at the helm of inequality, difference, unaccepted, isolated and "atomized and individualized" separation i.e., being an immigrant in South Korea discarded from the society that still wields and works at the ancient totalitarian and utilitarian dogma, and on the other hand, the current system i.e., organization of the game let her participate equally with an illusion of free will but a claim to shoot her dead if found disobeying the rules solely to earn money for mere survival (Foucault 6). The first world is representative of a capitalist one and the second world operates on the assemblage of communist ideology, but both claim themselves to be democratic.

The conversation gives rise to a primary argument of this paper, deciphering the dilemma of an individual to question which one is better, the outside or inside; the capitalist or communist; South Korea or North Korea. This schematic functioning renders the powerless by the powerful, here VIPs/elites, more powerless, continuously analyzed, assessed and persuaded by the panoptic machinery to exercise continuous control and power through threat of disorder, imbalance and harm to the society. So considerably so that the people end up inhaling the power through machinery and it is not required anymore to be seen with the naked eyes; because now the people are participating actively and voluntarily with manipulations i.e., games and the organization; absorbing the panoptic functioning (Foucault 7). The role of manipulations is yet to be discussed in the forthright cultural symbiosis segment.

The rules in the games are concocted. Let's skip to the last episode of the series to understand the default normal and a lost sense of personage in the gloom of power-ridden functioning conveying the effects of rules on an individual. The protagonist after winning the games successfully comes out of the death zone earning billions won, but unable to find his lost sense of identity and personage. The disciplined rules at the heart of cruelty, exercises, melds and deliver the power to the very soul or conscience of the contestants which seems in no connotation less than the state of despair during the seventeenth-century plague, brilliantly described alongside tracing the genealogy by Foucault in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

CULTURAL SYMBIOSIS

The cultural symbiosis of the series has been analysed through Raymond Williams Marxism and Literature, exploring “From Reflection to Mediation” and “Dominant, Residual and Emergent” (Williams 95-127). Raymond Williams deviates from the traditional Marxist view of base and superstructure, expounding his analysis of base as not a rigid structure, but a process that not only includes the industry that produces but the human labour that reproduces the cultural practices and gave it the term "cultural materialism". Cultural materialism confers the collective and cultural consciousness founded on everyday practices such as habits, institutional structures, education, traditions through art, disciplines, regulatory mechanisms, etc. In short, employing the political, social, economic and cultural facets to the model to analyse the determining methods.

Games being the base and the society being the superstructure amputating and mangling the consciousness through the mediation of ideology and practices prevalent in the games. Such an illustration mirrors an analytical distribution of power through practices such as games restating and confirming political and social disciplining. Therefore, the series implies that the games are representative of the superstructure i.e., the society with the mediation of the contestants, consumer regimes of powerful VIPs/elites. Moreover, games diffuse the detritus of panopticon in the social system; because the society is distributed on a superficial level fulfilling the lowest strata, contestants in the series, with a mere illusion of power and choice.

Culture plays a significant role in deciphering the power in politics, constructing and curating peoples subjectivity and identity. For instance, deaths in the games are a symbolic decoy of the naturalization of behaviour imitating power through the mediation of powerful technological ways. A second analysis of deaths confers its parallelism with the outside capitalist world, illustrating the death of the protagonist's mother due to his inability to pay off the bills, naturalizing or homogenising the effects of power in both outside and inside world i.e., capitalist and communist world. Therefore, contestants find it difficult to resist the power, normalizing the behaviour without recognizing the power, pursuing and complying with the game owners and the organisation consciously.

Raymond Williams model of Dominant, Residual and Emergent gives rise to the argument: who is going to be replaced by whom? The series grounds and at the same time elucidates the pattern of the 'dominant, residual and emergent' social groups prevalent in a South Korean society, at least contained in the storyline. This model suggests two analysing stances of the series in hand. The first analysis of the model suggests a South Korean cop in search of his brother infiltrates the warehouse of games in the parallel storyline by deceiving the workers, frontman, organizer and the elites/VIPs besides the presence of high security and CCTV alert. This suggests a strange take on the infiltration and rebelliousness against the communist in stark contrast to the obedient and relinquished contestants since this paper analyses the inside world being founded on the communist ideology (yet advanced through the economic power contained in the elites/VIPs). This follows the argument of a dominant group infiltrating the emergent group i.e., capitalist outside infiltrates the communist inside, either allowing the communists to take over the outside state or letting them operate the organization as the hindsight by being confidential about the presence of such an inhumane organization.

For instance, the third last episode portrays a cop, Hwang Jun-ho being by the Front man, discovered later with the progression of the storyline to be his brother (Front Man 00:30:10-40). This suggests a strong possibility of either the emergent group, the communist, to be taken over by the currently dominant, the capitalist, rendering the emergent powerless, or the current dominant to be bogged down by the emergent to replace it with the residual group, themselves becoming the new dominant (Williams 124). This confers a social dilemma of 21st-century societies restating the debate of adequate and promising government, here with the symbolic suggestion of North Korean and South Korean governments. At last, but not least the people's ability to recognize and choose the panoptic schema they want to consider suitable for themselves. But to exercise that power people need an awareness to recognize the functioning of both the social groups or in Foucauldian terms the power.

The second analysis of the Williams model suggests the current dominant and emergent groups by the American and South Korean society respectively since all the elites/VIPs, governing and funding the organization of the game are Americans except a Chinese, where the games are being contested and laboured by the South Koreans. This stance holds much evidence in real-life considering the housing debt at its peak in South Korea and the capitalist endeavours of the Americans leaving a huge gap between the affluent strata and lowest extremities within a society. This paper aims to brief this stance and the real-life scenario of South Korean society in the forthright segment of a vicious circle.

GROUND REALITY

The panoptic schema upheld the capillary functioning of power in the political domain and the mediation of games besides the prevalent interpellation and inherence of power through practices in the cultural domain against the backdrop of a South Korean society, evidently infers a vicious circle of the political and economic influence, restating each other in both, the series and the real life. This leads the analysis to expound the real-life evidence to further prove the stance and hypothesis of the paper.

The series depicts a poverty-stricken image of South Korea, wherein all the contestants lack money and none of them except the protagonist owns a house, indicative of the hiked housing prices in South Korea for real. The New York Times in a news article named The Den of Thieves: South Koreans Are Furious Over Housing Scandal, suggests the corruption among the government officials advancing the hiked housing prices and the economic crisis, restates the poverty and corruption in South Korea. The Korea Times in a news article named What ails Korea's housing market? states the rapid surge of 20 per cent since January 2020, in the housing prices of South Korea, indicates the gap between the lowest strata and the highest strata of the society.

Stance and vicious circle

These reports confirm the prevailing crisis and the relevance of the series to the real-life outline portrayed in the series. The mediation and the power play encompassing the politics represents a vicious circle of the panoptic region where the power prevaricate in the outside of the machinery and remain unverifiable for the ones who are subjected to it. Foucault says, “the productive increase of power can be assured”, with the continuity and its functioning residing outside the “violent sovereignty” and the machinery (Foucault 11). This is symbolic of the violence in the games being stated by the organizers as democratic i.e., the choice to die is the sovereign individual, if not found productive (especially economically) to the society. Therefore, the political, cultural, economic, and social domains are all tied up with each other to represent a forged image of corruption, seeking the continuity of power in all domains.

At one point it tends to represent the anti-capitalist stance and corruption in the society. This series is a perfect representation of a real-life vicious circle of the political and cultural vicinity in a society fastening the advances of power through individuals. Such a functioning assures forging free will among individuals, but in reality, fastens them with panoptic machinery. Putting together the knowledge about the presence of such machinery has become a survival instinct in the 21st-century; because of the vicious circle, it is difficult to recognize whether the culture influences the political domain or vice versa; where to start from- whether the mediation being influenced by the panoptic machinery, or the panoptic functioning being ensured through the mediation of cultural practices; whether it raises the matter of survival or the fate of the society. Conclusively, besides all the arguments across the unequal despair in 21st-century society, the ability to recognize the functioning of such panoptic machinery is the first step towards any changes that follow.

Continues...