I watched the Netflix Korean mini-series Squid Game and enjoyed it.
The show is about a group of people with life problems who agree to participate in a series of children’s games where if they lose they are killed. However, despite that premise, it is not a gore fest or torture porn. It’s relatively violent, but I didn’t find anything about it offensive.
After watching it, I found the leftist reviews of the show to be fully retarded. For example, here’s one at Forbes (which is now apparently a communist outlet). Forbes gives unmarked spoilers, for anyone who cares. The show is definitely more enjoyable if you don’t know how it ends. I originally thought this was a horror show, so I didn’t watch it, and instead read the entire plot synopsis on Wikipedia, which I regretted upon actually sitting down and watching it. Part of that is that the ending is really Asian and retarded, and takes away from the show’s strong points, which are the visuals, characters, and the function as a modern fairy tale. In general, the writing has a lot of problems, which makes advanced nuance in the meaning more difficult to interpret (more on that next time).
Here is the defining leftist analysis from fat, gay, thought-policer YouTuber Vaush:
The overwhelming success of Squid Game has forced conservatives into a position where they have no choice but to either pretend it’s a bad show or pretend it’s not the most obviously anti-capitalist piece of media to go mainstream since Parasite
— Vaush (@VaushV) October 21, 2021
I will write my own review in the future, and try to break down why the leftist analysis is so gay and retarded. Basically, the themes of the show relate to human problems and problems of modernity – not some nebulous “capitalism” spook.
Until I have time for my review, I wanted to share a comment from a reader, who hit on most of the points I myself had in my head.
This is pretty much spoiler free (though my review will not be).
He writes:
“Squid game has forced right-wingers to acknowledge capitalism is bad” says the guy who wants to ally with big corpo to ban people from the internet for making “racist jokes” despite saying the n-word himself. K
For leftists the word “capitalist” is a magic word. When you start investigating deeper it loses any meaning besides “some people are richer than me” and “greed is bad”. Characters in the show all end up playing Squid because they are all gambling addicts or something of the like, with rare exceptions.
What is the capitalist component here ? Gambling addiction ?
“But rich people get off on torturing poor people !”
Yeah, so what does that tell you about like Pol Pot who forced people with glasses to work the fields for barely any pay or African warlords that throw prestigious ceremonies that bankrupt their countries while doing human sacrifices ? Third world “anti-capitalist” shitholes don’t have human trafficking, torture, etc. ? Or leaders in Socialist countries living like kings while everyone else starves ?
AnCom leftists will then say “hierarchy and oppression” is the problem in a general way. But that’s like saying water is wet.
The more you dig in the less meaning “anti-capitalist” has, especially coming from champagne socialists like Hasan Piker and Vaush. To them “capitalism” is some magic juju.
If we are talking about high degrees of social inequality, then yes, I do agree that having 0,0001% of people control 50% of resources is bad because it makes them unaccountable, lose touch with reality and so on. But that is not an exclusively “capitalist” problem, see any third world shithole and socialist states. That is a general human problem.
Moreover, this situation was caused by government intervention. Not to be a libertrarian, but all these oligarchs are government monopolists. That’s just a fact.
So while I do agree with Vaush that unaccountable billionaires is bad, I do not believe this is somehow an exclusively “capitalist” problem, having seen how people live in shitholes. Also, the solution is some kind of pro-Middle Class mixed economy, with some freedom of enterprise and breaking of monopolies, so alternatives to Youtube/Facebook/Mastercard can appear.
But Vaush doesn’t really care anyway. They would rather harass a right-winger for questioning the number of genders then do anything about Bill Gates besides calling him “toxicly White bigoted” etc. and argue that somehow Middle Class White people are also a problem because they are also White toxicly bigoted or defend gay black millionaires because they are black and gay and therefore still oppressed.
I don’t take these people seriously anymore. They are a caricature, they are static noise. They should just be ignored at this point.
Leftist star Hasan Piker sparks debate over his $2.7 million L.A. mansion
As I say, those were many of the same points I had. In particular, the fact that all of the characters had serious personal problems that caused them to end up playing a game show to the death doesn’t mix with the idea that the show is somehow purely designed to promote some kind of political ideology.
Also, very obviously, like virtually all South Korean media, the show attacks the DPRK, meaning that it is definitely not promoting actual communism.
Also, though Vaush is too dumb and dishonest to really respond in any kind of serious way, I would also note that when he says that rightists would have to say the show is bad or admit that communism is good, he’s misunderstanding the basic nature of the disagreement between right and left. Right-wingers are not so obsessed with making everything political, and even if he was right, and this is a communist show, rightists would be able to appreciate the show on artistic merit.
Ironically, the show should be offensive to Vaush, who only really cares about enforcing the bizarre Democrat social agenda. There are no gays or diversity, and the female characters are hardly strong females – instead using sex and psychological manipulation to survive the game.
At the very least, Squid Game is mostly well done and actually worth discussing, making it unique in the current media climate.