In recent years, the Oscars have become notorious contributors to the rampant lack of diversity during award season. After Moonlight won Best Picture in 2017, it seemed that the Academy swiftly decided that its win was enough to rectify past and future let downs of diversity in Western awards ceremonies. This issue was met with outrage on Twitter, with many trending hashtags branding the Oscars as ‘#SoWhite’.
And then Parasite happened.
A movie too loudly magnificent in its genre-bending social commentary for the Academy to ignore, Bong Joon-ho’s dark comedy swept the recent Oscars ceremony, with four awards taken home by the Korean movie and its creators. Despite being up against highly acclaimed American movies such as Joker and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it was an international movie that took home the biggest award of the night.
As well as winning Best Picture, Parasite also won Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Foreign Language Film.
And Joon-ho’s unmatched drama is more than deserving of the history it has made.
From its crisp execution and cinematography to its enthralling screenplay, Parasite is a perfect example of the way we can use film as social commentary. It is clear from the opening, as we watch the camera pan down to the view of the poverty-ridden Kim family, that class hierarchies play a huge role in Parasite.
But it is not just the power differences that Joon-ho focuses on. He also comments on the relationship between class and its effects on everyday people. For example, Bong Joon Ho’s use of stairs and height as a motif for the perceived difference in class (literally because the rich Park family live above ground, they are sheltered) and the Kim family’s determination to climb the social ladder, is beautiful. The height preventing the Park family from being affected also means that what they cause has only one place it can go: down.
Poverty, climate change and cultural appropriation are all showcased in the film, specifically highlighting the effects these have on both the wealthy and the poor. Rather, the lack of effect they have on the wealthy and the dangerous implications they have for the poor.
And the excellent blending of different genres perfectly establishes the dissonance between the classes. The movie flits from a comedy to a drama and back to a comedy before finishing as a terrifying horror. And yet none of it feels clunky or messy. It is clean and immaculate in its conception all the way to its delivery of that final punch.
Despite being an international film, Parasite hits very close to home.
The unaware nature of the rich families in the film feels wildly similar to the perceptions of poverty in our society, living in perfect bliss as their mild inconveniences cause discrimination and danger for those that live (both literally and figuratively) below them. In Parasite what the wealthy cause, affects the poor.
And I think there is something beautifully metaphorical about Parasite receiving an award from the very kind of people it so brilliantly criticizes.