[Epoch Times October 04, 2021](Epoch Times reporter An Jing comprehensive report) Recently, the Korean original TV series “Squid Game” became the first Korean work to be ranked number one by American Netflix, and its popularity remains high. The play describes the complexity of human nature through survival games at the bottom of the society, and satirizes today’s social chaos in a suggestive way.
“Squid Game” (Squid Game) is directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk (Hwang Dong-hyuk), the director of the movie “Silenced” (Silenced), and stars Lee Jung Jae (Lee Jung Jae) and Park Hae-Soo (Park Hae-Soo). A group of people who are burdened with huge debts or desperate are locked in a huge game space and play 5 simple childhood games. The final winner will receive a prize of 45.6 billion won.
These people who gathered together in order to obtain high prizes, learned in the course of the first game that the loser would lose his life on the spot. Before the game starts, each participant is allocated a starting gold of 100 million won, and for every person who dies, the 100 million won that belongs to him will go to the prize pool-a huge golden piggy bank. In order to compete for bonuses, 456 people gradually began to expose the good and evil of human nature.
Cruel rules portray human nature
In the TV series, the participants decided the winner through games such as “123 Wooden Men”, tug-of-war, crossing glass bridges, and playing marbles according to the rules set by the planner. In the game, participants often face various choices: When choosing teammates, should they choose to win the game, or to have an agreement or someone close to them? When a teammate suddenly becomes an opponent, is it betrayal or sacrifice?
When everyone is facing a critical moment of life and death, under the desire to survive, some seemingly devout believers continue to confess, but at the next moment they cross the glass bridge to test whether the front glass is strong and push other contestants to their deaths; but there will also be people The North Korean defector girls who are not familiar with the factors need to find their younger brother who is still in North Korea, who need more reasons to live than themselves, and sacrifice themselves to perfect the girl. But at the same time, there are often helpless responsibilities or promises behind some selfishness… People experience the complexity and helplessness of human nature together with the development of the plot.
However, the audience finally discovered that in the eyes of the rich, these scenes of life and death are nothing but a game for them to play with their lives. These rich people seem to have everything, but the endless sense of emptiness makes them need new stimulation to satisfy themselves, which is why the “Squid Game” was designed. There are many mysteries left at the end, so that the second season of the show has not yet started filming has aroused widespread concern.
Social reality in games
The biggest reason “Squid Game” is popular is that it describes various social realities through plots.
Participants in the game are people who owe unaffordable debts and are forced into desperation. Nowadays, the universalization of social loans has made it easier to pay high amounts of money in advance. The TV series use the words of the characters in the drama to convey to the audience the message that overdrafts should be reduced to avoid stepping into the abyss of debt.
A scene in the play also shows the rampant illegal harvesting of organs for profit. After the loser of the game who was killed on the spot was carried away by the person in black (staff), a doctor-professional participant was found, and at the cost of revealing clues to the next game, he asked him to harvest the corpse and sell it. . After the behavior was discovered by the game planner, although the man in black was unable to get rid of the end of his life, the reason was that “disclosure of clues violates the fairness of the game” and did not make any comments on the illegal trafficking of organs.
At the same time, the “fairness” and “equality” repeatedly mentioned by the planner are ironic every time there is no real fairness in society: the gangsters who participated in the game received two lunches in violation of the rules, resulting in the last person in the line. Unable to claim; among those who witnessed the passing, only one girl stood up to report, and the others were silent; after a conflict between the gangster and the person who did not receive the lunch, the weaker was beaten to death, but the man in black turned a blind eye to it. Increasing the bonus by 100 million won, that is, tacitly acquiescing to the murder of the rogue. After the lights were turned off that night, the participants broke out a cannibalism in order to reduce competitors and increase their chances of winning.
In addition, the suggestive scenes in the play are also quite alarming: while everyone is intriguing for the prompt information of the next game, no one finds that all the game information is drawn on the walls of the accommodation space, just the attention of the participants. All were attracted by cash and other opponents, and ignored the paintings on the wall, failing to realize that the answer he was struggling for was actually by his side.
Praised by major media around the world
On September 21, the US economic special issue “Forbes” selected “Squid Game” as a must-see work for Netflix and commented that the actors in this work are not only excellent in acting skills, but also impressive in character settings and creativity.
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos (Ted Sarandos) said at the 2021 programming code conference held in Los Angeles, USA on September 27th that from the response of the show 9 days after its official broadcast, it will be Netflix’s non-English category. The most popular work among the works may also be the most successful work so far in Netflix history.
This drama is the first work that South Korea has topped the US Netflix “Today’s TOP10” list. CNN, “New York Post”, French BFM Economic News TV and the British “Guardian” and other mainstream media have recently made a series of reports on “Squid Game” worldwide. The reasons for the enthusiastic response are analyzed and reported.
On October 1, according to data from the global OTT statistics website FlixPatrol, among 83 countries, “Squid Game” ranked first in 82 countries except India, and ranked first in the list with a total score of 829. @
Editor in charge: Shao Yi
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