A terrifying reality
Bong Joon Ho’s best picture awarded, Parasite has yet to dissolve out of conversations among film circles. It has brought forth some terrifying revelations on the class divide that exists in our society and has left many puzzled about the true meaning behind certain scenes. If you have seen the film but still are unsure about its socio-economic implications, then be sure to read this article till the end!
We follow the lives of the penniless Kim family who live in a poor locality inside a sub-basement home. They don’t have many possessions to their name, just the bare minimum to get by. They leech off of every resource they can find and exploit them for their benefit, be it a neighbor’s Wifi connection or getting free extermination via fumigation going on near their house.
Ki-Woo, the son of the family is visited by his cooler and wealthier friend Min, who offers him to tutor a girl in his stead. He brings a landscape stone as a gift from his grandfather, said to bring material wealth to the house it is kept in.
This tutoring job lands Ki-Woo in an affluent mansion on top of the hills inhabited by the wealthy Park family. The Kims see this as an opportunity to deceive the giving and ‘nice’ people in acquiring positions of service in their household; essentially, taking it over.
Their scheme culminates until the film reaches its whirlwind ending which people have been mulling over for months since it came out. Let’s go over each aspect of the movie, leading to the end.
**SPOILERS AHEAD!**
The Rock
The landscape rock given to Ki-Woo by his friend Min is held as a symbol of prosperity and wealth, thus is treated as such by the Kims. After they manage to take over the Park’s house they contemplate its power and how it has turned their life around for the better. The same night, the Kims get into a tussle with Moon-Gwang, the former housekeeper and Geun-Sae, her husband who lives in the bunker. The fight ends with Geun-Sae tied down in the basement and his wife knocked out due to a concussion.
The next morning Ki-Woo takes the rock downstairs to the couple as a peace offering, hoping to mend bridges. But he quickly realizes that the bridge has been completely demolished when he finds Moon-Gwang in a pool of her own blood. The rock he brought with him, is then used by Geun-Sae to bash Ki-Woo’s skull.
A rock considered to hold mystical powers was quickly reduced to an instrument of violence when faced with the realities of society. The rock did not bring prosperity instead, brought ruin into their lives, supported by his sister’s death and Ki-Taek (the father) having to flee into the basement after committing murder. A metaphor for how chasing after material wealth can turn your life upside down.
The Rain
In Bong Joon Ho’s previous films like Snow Piercer and Okja, he had tackled the subject of climate change. In Parasite he shows how climate change has different effects on the rich and the poor. In the opening scene, we see the Kims getting minimal sunlight from the only window in their house. The Parks enjoy the bountiful sun from their living room glass windows and the huge garden. All the while, Geun-Sae who is living in the bunker receives absolutely no sunlight at all.
The director has made it a general rule; that the poorer you are the less sunlight you have access to. Conveying that Geun-Sae is at the bottom-most rung of the economic ladder. The Kims while close, are still a level above him, resulting in the marginal sunlight they are able to get through their window. Both of them however, are far away from reaching the level of sunlight available to the Parks.
Bong shows that climate catastrophe can heighten existing class tensions. The turning point in the film is the powerful rainstorm which serves as a backdrop for the shocking revelation about Geun-Sae and the brawl that ensues. But the director uses it as a vehicle to critique class divide in these climatic conditions. The storm impacts both the families differently; for the Park’s it means abandoning their cushy camping trip in favor of a garden party the next day. While for the Kim family, it means losing their home and most of their belongings to the flood of sewage and rainwater.
The youngest member of the Park family, Da-Song decides to sleep inside his Native American inspired tent but is still untouched by the rain.
The next morning Mrs. Park sitting in the backseat jokes to her friend on the phone saying; that how the rain has come as a blessing, clearing up pollution from the sky, creating the perfect weather for their garden party. Completely ignorant of the fact that a significant number of people had to abandon their homes because of the torrential downpour. A sullen expression appears on Ki-Taek’s face listening to all this sitting in the driver’s seat. Just hours ago he had to wade through sewage water in order to save his family’s belongings.
The Parks lead a life of excess consuming a disproportionate amount to support their lavish lifestyle. But the ecological impact of their excessive consumption is not borne by them. Instead, the poor Kim family, who live well below their means have to bear the cost when the storm drives down the waste of the rich into their homes.
The Stairs
An entirely separate article can be written about the importance of stairs and how brilliantly, architectural design has been used for the film’s social commentary. It comments on society’s hierarchical nature by showing vertical movement among the classes. The higher you climb, the higher status you have achieved, as can be seen with the Park family whose home is on top of a hill, while the Kims live in a locality way down on the hill floor, signifying their low status. The Parks have stairs which travel upwards to reach the main house signifying just how much higher above they are from the Kim family, who have stairs which travel down to the entry of their house.
Before the storm, the Kims take over the Park house, feeling that they have climbed the stairs of status to reach the same level. But reality slaps them so hard bringing them back to the ground. When they have to make their way down so many steps to travel back to their home, they realize just how distant their fantasy actually is.
The stairs which lead into the bunker, where Geun-Sae lives is a metaphor for perpetual poverty. Even though he lives within their house, the parks are oblivious to his existence: he is an outlier, a rat. Just like how the rich and powerful are oblivious to the harsh realities of the poor and the downtrodden. Oftentimes sharing the same neighborhood and yet, seem to live in two different worlds. Guan Sae has acquired a place in society which renders him invisible to everyone else.
Other Interesting Observations
The film discusses how neo-capitalism has reduced complex cultures and traditions into surface-level commodities in the name of cultural appropriation. As shown by the lengths the Parks go, to satisfy Da-Song’s fixation for Native American aesthetics. It all comes to a head when Mr. Park makes Ki-Taek wear a stereotypical Indian headdress for the party. They are to play-act as Indians raiding a kid’s birthday party, trivializing the culture.
The Park's self-imposed isolation from the working class makes them intolerant to their presence and they refuse to treat them with the same dignity, as they would a person with a similar social status. They will believe anything about their employees even projecting a sexual fantasy on their driver. They make an effort to distance themselves from the underclass. Mr. Park’s condition for their employee is for them to not cross the line. What we assume to be a professional courtesy at first, is actually him letting his workers know that he is above them and they must never converse as equals. He is disturbed by their smell and makes it a point to pluck his nose whenever he comes into contact with a ‘lesser person’.
For the ultimate example: Performing his daily routine, Geun Sae gets blood on his face by banging his head on the button, turning the lights on for Mr. Park whenever he would walk up the stairs. The rich patriarch, oblivious to the effort that goes in to make his life as easy as possible, assumes that the lights turn on with the help of motion sensors.
The Ending
At the Garden Party, Geun Sae is finally released from his captivity and is now going to exact revenge on the Kims. When he steps out into the lawn, he naturally makes a B line for Ki Jung (the daughter) and stabs her. This is the most tragic aspect of Parasite, the lack of solidarity among the working class. Some of the film’s most brutal scenes show the working-class people fighting tooth and nail. The Kims must protect their position at the Park household by walking over their fellow workers, even kicking them down a flight of stairs, at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Moon-Gwang and her husband have much more in common with the Kim family than they would like to believe. In a particular scene Chung-Sook (the mother) is faced with this commonality when Moon-Gwang asks for her help explaining that both families are needy, Chung-Sook shoots her down saying that she herself is not. While the workers have to claw at each other and even kill each other just for the wealthy’s leftovers, the Park’s privilege allows them to exploit others without getting their hands dirty.
At the party, the violence of capitalism comes to the surface, exposing the Park’s cowardice and the limit to their humanity. As things get bloody, it becomes clear that the Park’s are not concerned about the welfare of their employees, not even their son’s beloved art teacher. At the slightest hint of conflict, they and their guests immediately try to flee.
Amidst all the chaos Chung-Sook stabs Geun-Sae in self-defense. In his final moments, he looks up at Mr. Park, a man he reveres for indirectly sheltering and feeding him. The respect is not at all mutual though, as when Mr. Park goes to retrieve his keys, he gets a whiff of Geun-Sae’s scent and his natural response is to stop what he is doing and pluck his nose to shield himself from the revolting smell. This reveals to Ki-Taek, who is holding his dying daughter in his arms, the deep-seated disdain his employer has for the poor.
In a fit of rage, he rises up, takes off his headdress, and knifes Mr. Park in the heart. The scene ends with Ki-Taek fleeing the party.
In the letter to his son, he mentions that after the garden party debacle he somehow knew where he had to go. Ki-Taek assumed his place as society’s outcast in that bunker underneath the stairs, replacing the now dead Gue-Sae. Away from the world, where no one will know or care for his existence. Precisely how the poor lead their lives. He is indefinitely stuck in the bunker, wanted for murder and a new family has moved into the house.
At the end of the film, the director supposedly gives us a ray of hope when Ki-Woo writes in his letter to his father saying; that he is going to work hard every day to buy that house and then all KiTaek would have to do, is ‘climb up those stairs’.
Then immediately crushes all hopes with the devastating scene going back into that basement window. Making the viewer face the grim reality, that this is only possible in a fantasy world.
In an interview, Bong Joon Ho said that it would take Ki-Woo 526 years to be able to have enough money to buy that house. Some would call him a cynic, but I call him a realist. Despite the capitalistic dream, which tries to sell us the promise of a better future for all, Parasite brings us back on earth with this scene. It is simply impossible for some people to get out of their perpetual state of poverty because the system the society has adopted, simply would not allow it.
Conclusion
As evident by now the film has not one, but many Parasites. The Kims, of course, warm their way into the Park household but there is another parasite already there burrowed deep, feeding on its hosts for a very long time. The Parks are perhaps the biggest parasites, leeching off the labor and desperation of their workers without giving anything back despite the bare minimum for their survival, easily being able to cast them aside when they outlive their usefulness as if they are just objects to fulfill their needs and not actual people.
The film is without a doubt one of the finest of the decade, it came to no ones surprise that it was the first foreign film in many years to win the best picture at the Oscars. Apart from the social message, it is technically brilliant. Edited to almost perfection it has one of the best montage scenes which plays out almost operatically, crescendoing in the final act. It is extremely well-paced with not a dull moment to be found.
The performances are faultless and each actor conveys a distinct story with their characters without explicitly mentioning it.
Bong Joon Ho is in full control of the direction the story takes and masterfully navigates through the complex and nuanced messaging of the plot to deliver a film that will be talked about for many more years to come.
The beauty of this film is that it does not attempt to paint the rich as evil or the poor as good, it just introduces us to the realities of modern society.
The comedy/thriller worked in almost every aspect it aimed for and turned out to be one of the best motion pictures I’ve ever seen. If you have noticed some hidden meaning or detail in the film which I forgot to mention (because there are so many, this article would never end) then please let me know in the comments.
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