If you are also a Netflix subscriber, probably these days you are watching Squid Games: is a Korean series, which in Italy has not yet been dubbed and therefore can be seen in English or Korean with subtitles.
Put like that, it seems the furthest away from something we want to look at and instead it seems that it is about to become the most watched TV series ever. More than Game of Thrones, to be clear, or of the House of Paper. We’ll see if that’s the case. Since it came out on 17 September, the videos that talk about it have been viewed almost 30 billion times on TikTok alone. Kids love it. Because? Squid Games refers to a game for children played in Korea, the squid game: it is a dystopian drama in which 456 debt-ridden desperate people are enlisted and taken to a mysterious island where they compete in different games for children (the rope, marbles, one-two-three-star), in which the loser is immediately eliminated. Killed. And whoever wins in the end takes home a prize money of 38 million euros.
All in one climate of Big Brother by Orwell, with guards dressed in pink overalls and black masks imprinted with a triangle, a circle or a square depending on the rank. Why is it successful? For many reasons. Because it recalls the battles of video games and the deadly challenges that sometimes pop up on social media, and the epic of certain sagas that are very popular among young people such as Hunger Games. But not only. Because, in a sometimes grotesque way, it speaks to us of the life of the poor christs, of the injustices of the world, of the importance of having another chance when you are desperate, and of those who manage not to lose a shred of humanity even when surrounded by monsters.
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