Rehosting "My review of Parasite (2019) and the death throes of American Global Hegemony"
Americans are not “too racist” to appreciate Parasite. They are not racist ENOUGH. This is why China will win
Feb 10, 2020
“Parasite” by Bong Joon-Ho is a good movie. This is understandable, as he has only made good and great movies respectively, one of which is currently coming true. Americans are sadly too stupid to understand it, and in regards to it winning some prise or another? This is pure posturing, an attempt to save face. Emperors new clothes sort of deal.
It is impossible to understand by the American, because when they attempt to understand it, they can only try to understand it as if it was an American movie. They cannot approach it as being truly alien and oriental. The ancient proud tradition of westerners practising vulgar Orientalism is all but dead. Haven’t you heard, in your forest, that we(ebs) killed it!
Why are this family of genius, charming con artists, living in squalor, and can’t even fold pizza boxes right? Couldn’t they just get real jobs? Why aren’t the rich family portrayed as being arrogant assholes, but as loving, if absentminded, parents? Why does it end with the poor family being in an even worse situation than when they started out? It’s supposed to be, through hard work and perseverance, they pull of one great big heist, live, laugh, learn a little something about each other and themselves, and maybe love, along the way, and then live happily ever after in the American dream.
The wrong view to take is that the poor family is supposed to be portrayed as righteous. It is laughable to consider parasite to be about “the crushing weight of capitalism which drives a family of otherwise good people to heinous acts”. This is the sort of vulgar and direct American thinking that permeates American mythology, even today. The moment they see a poor person, they assume class warfare is imminent. Temporarily embarrassed millionaires and all that.
Instead, the movie is a morality play. This is why, despite the articulated misunderstandings, it still resonates with the American audience — they are still human after all. The “class warfare” is window dressing — but a nice, neat arrangement that’s aesthetically pleasing to look at. Unlike the American “Joker” from the same year, in which “class analysis” is used as a duvet to hide the shit that someone took on the windowsill.
The reasons for the poor family’s predicament is not stressed by the movie itself; we enter the story in predicament res. It is ultimately unimportant “why” they are so poor (if they’re so smart). But what is important, is that they love it.
They love the filth. They don’t just make the best of a bad situation, it’s not the western ideal of harmony in the commons, triumphing over bad conditions through friendship, love and the American spirit. When it is flooded by rain, they mourn its destruction. When they have finally fully infiltrated the rich family, the very first thing they do is turn it into a pigsty — they don’t dress up in the rich people clothes and pretend to be them, they don’t attempt to steal their identities. They don’t want their lives. They relish in their filth.
The underdogs of society are humanised, yes, but humanised by the aspects of humanity that american thinking rejects as being “human” at all(formally, not de facto): they are sadistic, exploitative, resentful and completely remorseless. From the view of our protagonists, the nice fluffy feelgood “humanity” of the people they are exploiting is never considered, they just get what’s coming to them, and lose what they have to spare.
Why can’t they fold pizza boxes right, but pull of an extremely elaborate multi-level heist operation? “Because getting a “real job” is degrading capital alienation lmao” — WRONG. Because getting a job is not getting one over on anyone. Getting the money is not the character motivation — exploitation is. This is what the american audience relates to. So these must be the good guys, right?
The rich people are not evil caricatured capitalists, they greatest sin is naiveté, obliviousness, and neuroticism. They are clowns, but not portrayed as malicious. The poor family are remorseless and malicious manipulators — they just have a sense of humour about it. The final thing that makes the father of the poor family snap and react with “righteous violence”, is when he is treated, for one second, with the same disrespect, refusal to acknowledge ones “humanity”, as he has been showing the rich family from the start of the movie. He can dish it, but he can’t take it. It is not portrayed as a proud moment, or a just moment. Nothing good comes of it for anyone. It’s a tragic one.
Rejecting Fetishism
In Parasite, we view the world from the perspective of a working class family, who have fetishised wealth, and the upper class. Isn’t it good to have money? Yes. Fetishism isn’t about liking the “wrong thing”, it’s about liking it wrong.
The fetishizised object takes the form of the object of desire, but it is crucial to the fetish-fantasy, that you can never attain the object of desire. To fetishizise is to formalise what level of distance to the object of desire is safe. The story turns from comedy to tragedy when our heroes get too close, when they attain the wealth — the instant the have it, everything falls apart. The fantasy of wealth is more important than the literal acquisition of wealth.
Fetishizing wealth is of course very common in american culture. But where the American rags-to-riches is a little tease, a little porno that titillates this particular fetish, Parasite, in the third act, completely rejects it.
The movie ends with the son accepting karmic judgement for the unjust treatment of the rich family, by accepting working within the system, folding pizza boxes as it were, to save his father from his imprisonment in the basement, by achieving wealth without resorting to trickery and manipulation. He could just as easily have planned another heist to get the father out — why doesn’t he? The death of his sister, loss of his father, loss of rich qt gf, all from the supposed machinations of capitalism on their bodies — it all results in him getting the motivation to start a business? A real American hero would have just had a third act, in which he busted his dad out of prison/hell/the belly of the whale, and simply took all the millions (which he really deserved all along.)
The movie is a satire on what your shallow ideas of class struggle looks like. You are rooting for bad people. Bong Jung-ho tricked you, and he didn’t even try to. You’re out of touch.
Also it’s gorgeously shot, the soundtrack elevates every scene to something greater than the sum of its parts, and overall it’s just an actual, real movie, that isn’t a hyper-reality hyper-consumer add-within-an-add for consuming even more hyper-reality. Hollywood is dead and the american movie industry is nothing but an add for itself. American cultural imperialism? Omae wa mou shindeiru. Go watch Memories of Murder (2003) next, it’s really good.
This was the last movie I saw in a theater. Still have the stub. Don’t know why I’d kept it. I couldn’t have known it would be my last. Anyway interesting perspective. Some ideas I hadn’t considered. Thanks.