Squid Game, Netflix’s newest binge worthy Korean survival drama follows desperate, poor, and debt-ridden individuals who are offered the chance to win billions of dollars in exchange for their participation in a series of Korean childhood games. What sounds like innocent fun is met with a deadly twist –– the losers are shot to death and the winners progress until the last man is left standing. It resembles the competitiveness of The Hunger Games and the brutality of Saw coming together to create a bone-chilling yet humanising portrayal of survival at all costs.
The participants become pawns in a cruel game crafted by powerful men with obscene amounts of wealth for their entertainment. In the face of powerful authority, male players are thus emasculated as men and consequently, these masculine anxieties are projected onto the female players who are degraded and ostracised — but as the series shows, bitches cannot be underestimated.
Losers are created by the wealthy
What stands out about this series is that it is entirely centered on “losers”. When interviewed about the series, the director of Squid Game, Hwang Dong-hyuk poetically remarked that “Winners in this society stand upon the corpses of losers, so we must remember the losers”. This thought aptly encapsulates the theme of the series.
The idea of a ruthless competition where only the winners survive reflects one of the driving forces of neoliberalism: the separation between the winners and losers, the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the successful and the unsuccessful. An excellent article by The Guardian about neoliberalism expresses this best:
“In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers…”
Driven to the edge by a system that favours the well-to-do and neglects the poor in the “outside” world, the slogan of equality that Squid Game promises its players and the sensationalism of the games –– as seen by the unique symbols on the recruitment namecards; the guard’s masks; and the vibrant gameshow-like aesthetics of the battle grounds –– gives them a certain excitement, control and hopefulness to escape the identity of a “loser”.
“So what if we leave?! Tell me, what changes? It’s just as bad out there as it is in here, goddamn it.”
– Han Mi-nyeo
Mi-nyeo’s exclamation speaks for the brutality of quotidian existence whereby survival is a cruel battle either way.
A “man’s world”
To win in Squid Game is to channel a violent and aggressive kind of unflinching masculinity that shows no mercy or humanity. It is no coincidence that all the symbols of authority are overwhelmingly male, from the robotic army of masked guards in red jumpsuits to the glistening masquerade of loathsome VIPs. One thing’s for sure though, power likes to hide behind anonymity and a domineering male voice. Squid Game however, condemns this idea of a man’s world by refusing to deny those who do not fit into the caricature of masculinity their humanity. Instead, it forces us to confront the uncomfortable and complex ways in which masculine ideals manifest.
Right when the series begins, the protagonist, Gi-hyun is seen living off his elderly mother’s hard work and gambling her savings away. However, the urge to write him off as a terrible person who deserves what’s coming for him is constantly averted. It is later revealed that he was wrongfully laid off by his previous company, leaving him in a cycle of debt; his inability to provide as a man thus convinces himself of his failure as a son, father, and husband. To be a man in this case is to have the money to fulfil these roles. Society is unforgiving of men who diverge from their “roles”. Poverty leaves him and many other players vulnerable and at the mercy of overt violence from debt-collectors, the slaps from the game recruiter and the game itself.
The man’s world is thus a ruinous pursuit of money (or power) driven by the fear of not being “man” enough.
The same violent greed plays out in Sang Woo’s strategic use and betrayal towards Ali, the migrant worker who’s rendered vulnerable because of his foreignness. Sang-woo uses Ali’s marginality to his benefit by “helping” him survive in order to exploit his strengths and later toss him aside. It’s easy to categorise Sang-woo as evil however, in his final moments, we realise that beneath all the machismo is a frightened, cowardly man haunted by the shame of no longer fitting into the image of the ‘golden boy’.
Bitches create their own narrative
We can’t have a conversation about masculine anxieties without confronting gendered slurs like “bitches” and “whores” — labels that are too often thrown at the prominent female characters in the series. These labels are used to establish dominance and power over characters like Mi-nyeo, Sae-byok and Ji-yeong who are initially perceived as weak liabilities. In a study about the culture of toxic masculinity, Psychology Today observes that:
“Hypermasculinity objectifies and exaggerates stereotypical male behavior [and promotes] masculine ideals of toughness, success, and anti-femininity. [Displaying] power over the opposite gender is used to bolster male low self-esteem and deeply denied shame.”
Squid Game actively challenges these hypermasculine behaviours through situations where its female characters shame and expose these fragile masculinities for what they are.
The hysterical, wailing Mi-nyeo who’s always making a big scene exemplifies this. She knows the strength of her body as a woman and she makes sure to use it to her advantage. We see this in the scene where her demands to use the washroom are met and she symbolically removes a condom stuffed with a bunch of cigarettes from her vagina to have a quick smoke. This is a woman who knows and gets what she wants despite how impossible it seems. She uses the very same lighter she pulled out of her vagina to save Doek-su from getting eliminated in one of the games because she saw him as strategically useful. Mi-nyeo subsequently tries to establish a sacred alliance with Deok-su by having sex with him. Although Doek-su immediately betrays their pact, Mi-nyeo holds on to her greatest trump card against him — his tiny dick.
Mi-nyeo: All of those people are dead and the worst thing is… I let you fuck me in the bathroom that day. Such an idiot. Did you really believe I’d die so you could go on? Don’t you remember, we said we’d stick together till the end.
Doek-su: You fucking bitch get your hands off me.
Mi-nyeo: You coward. Doek-su, I need you to know… you’ve got such a tiny dick.
After which, she falls to death with him. I don’t know about you but this is the greatest reversal in power play of all time.
Speaking of power play, how can we forget Sae-byeok and Ji-yeon, the two terribly traumatised young women whose strengths outshine any other character in the series. Having had their lives screwed over by the men they trusted, they form a fleeting yet powerful duo. While all the male teams struggled, cheated and displayed utter selfishness during the marble game, Ji-yeon and Sae-byeok confronted the truth that either of them was going to die; and they made it easier and fair for each other. They held onto their humanity till the end; and Ji-yeon stuck to her word — to make sure Sae-byeok won. In a single game, these two ostracised characters made their stories known and their vulnerability was incredibly powerful. I still tear upon remembering Ji-yeon’s final words: “I’m honoured… that we were partners.”
What does it really mean to win?
Beneath the funny memes and fanfare of Squid Game lies the criticism of a neoliberal society that caters to the privileged and successful while the poor fall between the cracks. We are made to sit through the uncomfortable realisation that the binary of a winner and loser exists for the entertainment of the rich. Gi-hyun’s refusal to accept the prize money and his final resolve to hunt down the Squid Game organisation is therefore a brilliant open-ended conclusion that challenges this sadistic system. It calls for a different kind of victory that centers on the inherent value of human life — the kind that remembers the “losers”.