HOW PARASITE DEPICTS CLASS AND INEQUALITY
FOOD, ARCHITECTURE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF BONG JOON HO'S CLASS CRITIQUE.
*Dusts cobwebs*
Hello my people, how are you doing?
Happy new year!
I know, I know, it’s March (at least when I am writing this) and I am saying happy new year.
I have been very much fighting for my life. I am not exaggerating when I say capitalism has been crushing my soul.
*I can’t believe I started writing this in March and I finished this in April, I really do need to do better 😭😂*
Anyway, away from the chaotic madness of my life, I have a new movie analysis/criticism. I got a lot of positive feedback from my last movie analysis (which you can read here), so I decided to do another one. This time I will be delving into the 2019 film titled Parasite, directed by Bong Joon Ho.
Parasite was brought back to my consciousness because it was Oscar season and TikTok brought Parasite Oscar win to my timeline and I was reminded why I love Parasite so much.
I love it so much that I had to re-watch it. So why do I like Parasite so much?
Before I discuss why I like it, let me discuss what Parasite is about. Parasite is a dark comedy thriller that revolves around two families: the poor Kim family and the rich Park family. The Kim family worms their way into the lives of the Parks by posing as skilled workers. As their schemes unravel, it devolves into a tragic turn of events. Now, why do I like Parasite? I like the movie because it is a nuanced and blistering critique of class and inequality. Everything in this movie was created to interrogate inequality.
Let’s start with how Bong Joon-ho depicts food. Food can serve as symbolism in a movie for example in Mary Antionette(2006) was used to signify luxury, indulgence, and overconsumption while in The Menu (2022), food is used to depict control, wealth, and pretentiousness, especially with some of the characters relationship to food. In Parasite, food is used as the visual representation of the class each family belongs to. In the early parts of the movie, we see the Kim’s eating mouldy bread, cheap chips, and FiLite (which is a cheap beverage in the market).
Once the Kim’s get more money through working for the Park’s we see a change in their diet and where they eat. We see them go from eating mouldy bread to the Kim’s eating a buffet in a “driver’s cafeteria”. Click the link here to find out more about the driver's cafeteria.
Juxtapose that with the Park’s family with a fridge that never isn’t fully stocked even though they don’t cook the meals themselves. There are fruits, wine, and all aspects of fine dining. Then we have the famous Ram-don, what is ram-don? It’s noodles and sirloin steak. You may be wondering what is so special about this meal? According to Bong Joon ho, he came up with the dish to show how the wealthy housewife wanted to please her son while also not wanting her son to eat noodles because it is food that commoners eat.
There is another layer of how food depicts class in Parasite and it happens in the driver’s cafeteria. At a point while serving their food Ki Jeong (Daughter) and Choong Song (Mother) reference a chicken shop and a Taiwanese cake shop the family opened that failed. That reference highlighted the time between 2003 to 2013 where Korean chicken shops tripled in South Korea. This was a result of the 1997 Asian financial crisis which transformed the South Korean economy from one where a typical Korean wage earner, (overwhelmingly male) worked in one company till retirement because things like his pension, housing etc were paid for, to an economy where people don’t have reliable employment not to talk of pensions. That reference showed that not only are the Kim’s poor but they are poor in part due to the shrinking of the middle class in South Korea.
In many scenes in this movie we see Bong joon-ho use food to describe the class i.e the excess of wealth or the brutality of poverty of the two families in the movie.
Another great tool Bong joon-ho uses to illustrate his point is architecture. The level of poverty of the Kim is really shown in the structure of their house, they live in a semi-basement flat.
What is a semi-basement flat?
Semi basement flat (also known as banjiha) were flats that became popular in the 1970s (during the cold war) when the South Korean government pushed house developers to build semi-basement flats that would act as bunkers in case of an attack from North Korea. It wasn’t made to be lived in but it has become one of South Korea’s symbols of wealth inequality and poverty.
You can see the Kim's poverty in the decrepit semi-basement flat they are living in. The semi-basement helps you visualize their economic state because you see them live below ground. The flat is so small and doesn’t really allow for privacy but the tightness of the house helps in showing a certain level of closeness that the family has.
Compare this with the Park’s house with so much space that people hide in it. The space can also be symbolic of the distance in the relationship between the Park family. Shout out to the spectacular set design done by Lee Ha Jun. Things like the elevated toilet and the big windows in the Park’s home really were a good visual tool in conveying Boon Joon ho’s intended message.
One major thing that makes Parasite stand out is Bong Joon ho’s attention to detail. Bong Joon Ho uses visual language to help aid the audience in understanding what the film is saying about class. From how he used the scholar stone to the staircase (especially in his use of upstairs and downstairs) he clearly deployed a show don’t tell technique in communicating his message and I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us in the future.
Links to things I read/ watched to write this post:
Gisa Sikdang | The History Of The Taxi Driver's Restaurant In Korea
Ram-Don and Societal Issues as Seen On Academy Award winner Parasite
‘Parasite’ Has a Hidden Backstory of Middle-Class Failure and Chicken Joints
Thank you for reading, if you enjoyed reading kindly share, it will mean the world to me 😘
I will also be starting a series called voice notes, where I do a short “podcast” where I talk about topics I have been thinking about but can’t really write about. See you next time, I know we are off to a rough start this year but I am going to try and do better 😂😂😂.
Maybe I will finally watch Parasite