The ingenious structure, the deep messages, and the symbolism within the popular TV show Squid Game serve as an apt metaphor for the society we live in under the current political system.
The second season of the South Korean masterpiece begins with a basic dilemma that torments every conscientious citizen, daily, regarding priorities: to get on the plane or to stop the “game”? Private life or social duty. Individualism or solidarity? The answer had already been revealed by the wager that was played out in the final scene of the first season (see homeless man in the cold). Moral dilemmas (for you to to win, someone must lose their life) predominate at the core of the story, demonstrating the dark side of man.
In the first episode, impoverished citizens prefer to gamble (scratch-card lottery) rather than eat (bread), reflecting the impoverished societies where gambling inevitably flourishes, in the vein hope of escaping the economic mire. In the final episode, the elite gives weapons (forks) to the poor, so that they can destroy each other, as discord among the working class benefits the oligarchy, since it distracts them from the true enemy. In combination, these two episodes rub into our faces the current and historical reality (respectively).
In this second season, greater emphasis is placed on voting, cauterising the role of elections in today’s capitalist system. Voting every four years or every endgame is an illusion of control, an illusion of “choice,” since the rules that are set and the control of the game belong to the economically powerful. Real-life lying in wait, limits, and coerces the actions of ordinary people, in a system that holds the vast majority hostage, under the threat of economic conditions outside the game: a pseudo-democracy in a state of bondage.
People in societies of extreme individualism and inequality are trapped in the “zero-sum game,” carried away by the fairy tale of “success for the few and capable,” which, however, leads to catastrophic losses for the many. As Engels said, workers take individualistic action for their own material interest, when there is no form of organization that would make collective action desirable or even possible.
Players develop camaraderie, compassion, and empathy through family ties, old friendships, and shared struggles, but they are overshadowed by the brutal conditions of the game. Human nature and the foundation of human civilisation that we cannot survive without each other is threatened by the pleasure and greed of the 1%. Anti-capitalism must be organized and led, in the way that Seong Gi-Hun skilfully shepherds the players to the finish line in episode 3.
In closing, an ode to the protagonist. Player 456 evolves from survivor to rebel, shifting the focus from survival to resistance. The fundamental change in the new series. From victim to agent of change, fighting for the survival of all the others, “X” and “O”. His struggle is a metaphor for how we must all resist the systems that keep us trapped, overthrowing them, collectively. And, the overthrow comes from within, by taking up arms, by cutting off the head, boldly, with sacrifices, with revolution. And revolutions (as we have seen many times in history) are betrayed and fall from within, as they did in the past. But Gi-hun guides us to universal duty, the overthrow of the game/system. Because as Ernesto Che Guevara stated: “The life of a human being is worth a million times more than the fortune of the richest man on Earth.”
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