A MOVIE REVIEW ON PARASITE FOR ARTS 1-B by Danielle Ysabel P. Ladia (BASS Economics 1) The big gap between the wealthy and the poor is not new to us. Even to date back into history, given that it started way before modernity, can prove its accumulation to be trivial and normal. The idea of “life is unfair” and “poverty as a result of social evil” became obvious on the rise of caste systems. Rather to live in a horizontal line, caste system introduced stages, levels or classes of lifestyle structured to emphasize the difference between being poor and being rich passed onto generations. It’s a never ending cycle in life where the rich continues to become rich or richer while the poor remains to be poorer and poorer, most of the time. Which then divides society, originally, into the rich and the poor, but has now complexly transformed into a series inserting what’s in between the two. It continues to persist, although not formally practiced by all, as instinctive discrimination continues to persist, too. That led to this considerably “normal” idea into becoming a “natural” one as time passed by. Under the mystery genre, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite was initially released at South Korea on the 30th day of March 2019. The South Korean director is renowned for making films, besides Parasite like Snowpiercer and Okja, about class. But with this black comic thriller, Bong has won the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes film festival. Besides Bong, Parasite’s cinematographer Hong Kyung-Pyo did a marvelous job in showing different symbolic and visually stimulating features, vital to composition, shown in film. More than ever, it would not have been complete without the excellently casted actors and actresses: Kim Family consisted of Song Kang-Ho as Ki-Taek (father/husband/driver), Jang Hye-Jin as Choong-Sook (mother/wife/maid), Choi Woo-Sik as Ki-woo (brother/son) or Kevin (tutor), and Park So-Dam as Ki-Jung (sister/daughter) or Jessica (art therapist); while, the Park Family was composed of Lee Sun-Kyun as Mr. Park (father/husband), Cho Yeo-Jeong as YeonKyo (mother/wife), Jung Ji-So as Da-Hye (sister/daughter) and Jeong Hyun-Jun as Da-song (brother/son); and in addition, Lee Jung-Eun as Moon-Gwang (previous housekeeper), and Park Seo-Joon as Min-Hyuk (Ki-woo’s friend). All of which have performed well and carried the character they have represented throughout the movie, with utmost emotion, in showing each of their roles and indications. Basically, the movie exhibits how Kim Ki-woo and his family, who were unemployed and lived on the edge of poverty, made a huge turn when his friend Min-Hyuk, who gave them a landscape stone charmed with fortune and who’ll be studying abroad, needed to vacate his highly-paid-job of tutoring the daughter of the Park family and offered it to him. Due to the lack of educational attainment or job experience, the whole family landed a job under the roof of the wealthy family by conning them and slandering those in their way. It all seemed perfect for both Kim and Park families but, just like how fortune never stays on your side, the film constantly started to threateningly come apart — to take one tricky turn too many in ways that shaped the plot — but Bong holds it all together, and the result is spine-tingling. With Bong playing with perception and stereotyping, the film starts out as a riff of the classic heist, where the criminal act of forgery, fraud, and misrepresentation are elegant spectacles and the perpetrators are celebrated for committing illegalities with creativity and cleverness to put make the audience appreciate a desperate family of bottom-dwellers who would abuse not just the gullibility but also the generosity of a wealthy family for gain – like some parasites that suck as much blood as they just to leave you itching and sore. Subtly, there’s also the reason why the Kims’ apartment is halfway underground — they’re caught between worlds, stuck in the growing gap between the haves and the have not’s. Despite the poverty and becoming imposters, it was also faintly demonstrated how they somehow still held onto their own dignity as the mother’s previous career as a medaled athlete was hung on the wall, as the son storms out of the apartment to fend the intoxicated man out of their sight when a drunkard proceeds to pee near their semi-basement home, and as they respected and looked up to the achievements of Mr. Park, as a businessman, and his family who were not necessarily evil-doers but cornered participants in a society that has created a culture of divide based on class and fortune. But there’s also so much going on underneath about how the rich use the poor to survive. Similar to how lemons become lemonades, rich people are the ones in the superstructure which cannot stand up high without the poor ones (their workers) who are the infrastructure because, indeed, everything the rich does becomes easier with the help of those below them who suffers the most for them. In a way, this observation can support the exchange of dialogue between Ki-Taek who initially said, “She’s still nice even though she’s rich,” but was argued by Choong-Sook stating, “She’s nice because she’s rich,” as money is a very accessible iron for them that flattens out creases (resentments caused by suffering or discomfort) for the wealthy. Suffice to say, the wealthy in any country survive on the labor of the poor, whether it’s the housekeepers, tutors, and drivers they employ, or something much darker. In this sense, we can see how the Kim family depicts the poor living like cockroaches or “parasites”. Besides the fact that they can easily be stepped on (or even killed) for being small and poor especially up against rich and powerful people, they tend to scatter and hide, scared to be caught as the light is turned on as the owners arrive home. But by being small is a good way of getting by unnoticed and sneaking into places on your host organism where they would probably rather you didn't – perfect in conning. This was demonstrated in Park family’s house that’s similar to a caste system as well, where below the floors Park family members reside at, was the existence of the underground basement used by Moon-Gwang and the Kim family which was hidden from the owners’ knowledge. Furthermore, the parasitic are portrayed to be disgusting – worse, intolerable. We can see it from the “mark of poverty” and how the rich perceive it. In the film, poverty is symbolized with the musty smell of basement that sticks on their clothes. No matter how the poor washed their clothes, no matter how the poor tried to appear decent and fit in, they would never get rid of this mark. As people who don’t experience this smell so often, the rich were so sensitive of it and even Mr. Park hated this smell very much. He even figured it as “almost crossing the line”, as something that might be a reason if Ki-taek might be fired one day. In addition, he even pinched his nose when he flipped Moon-Gwang’s husband’s dead body to take a car key. This smell – or this mark – was perceived as a disgusting smell by the rich. Of course, even the poor and parasitic try their best way to survive, by hook or by crook. Although due to this very eugenics way of thinking of the rich as fit and the poor to be unfit, once they start climbing up the ladder and stepping near those of the fit, it proves that not all of those ‘under’ would succumb to the power of those ‘above’. Thus, chaos starts with shaking and possibly breaking the structured inequality that has come to define the world. To further interpret, the poor, like parasites, are most likely to be encountered in our daily lives at home, work and school – everywhere – and we, more likely than not, see being parasitic, considering how we react to them, or poor to be unpleasant. Parasite may not have shown a legal way of trying to succeed such movement legally, it has successfully portrayed the reality of life today – driven and controlled by greed, needs, and dreams that are veritably very human. Bibliography AsianWiki. “Parasite (Korean Movie).” Accessed October 3, 2019. http://asianwiki.com/Parasite_(Korean_Movie). Medium. “Why I Love Parasite (2019).” Accessed October 3, 2019. https://medium.com/@balya.sulistiyono/why-i-love-parasite-2019-52b085f60b22. Polygon. “Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite might be the best movie of the year.” Accessed October 4, 2019. https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/25/18637592/parasite-review-bong-joon-hocannes-2019. Roger Ebert. “Parasite.” Accessed October 4, 2019, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/parasite-movie-review-2019. The Guardian. “Bong Joon-ho's Parasite wins Palme d'Or at Cannes film festival.” Accessed October 4, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/25/bong-joon-hosparasite-wins-palme-dor-at-cannes-film-festival.
