Aside from being all the hype in the last month or so, Squid Game is an absolutely brilliant take on constructed societies1. Really, do try to change my mind.
The premise of the show emerges from the existence of a fictional organization which gives regular people the chance to escape their current life for six days, and replace it with a whole different thing. This new game is not in any way guaranteed to be "better" than their current life, but it is different first and foremost in that it's constructed based on very simple rules: participate in a set of games with very clearly defined rules, don't fail the trials and win a shitload of money; or don't, die and get your organs harvested for the greater good, whichever way suits you best. In other words, a sort of North Korea Lite(tm), only with less hunger and much better graphical design; plus, you get to play some of the games you enjoyed as a kid! How's that for a metaphor for infantilization?
So while the first season of Squid Game follows some dude's journey through the competition and his personal losses along the way, the second season showcases an attempt, coming from the same dude, to "take down the evil oppressive system". The major plot point, as we're shown from quite early on, is that he simply doesn't stand a chance2, as "the system" will anticipate all his moves and adjust accordingly, even though initially he had managed to outsmart one of the system's agents without any trouble -- spoiler alert, said agent warned our hero just as he was close to drawing his final breath.
Anyways, Squid Game is brilliant not only due to the way the interaction between the inmates develops. Said development was so carefully crafted that it's really hard to tell it from a reality show. But the show is also brilliant due to the subtleties in such interactions. I think in particular S02E04 is a superb depiction of the euphoria of "winning" on a backdrop of blood pools, standing as evidence of a very specific type of failure. Which brings us to the beautiful imagery and sound which lie in perfect dissonance with the dystopian atmosphere, a picture that reminds me precisely of surrealist-absurdist works such as Brazil. Remember, though, that unlike Brazil, the protagonists of Squid Game have a choice whether to join in the madness or not, hell, they even have democracy! which makes it all the more in tune with today's madnesses.
Actually, the whole micro-universe of Squid Game is an ultra-minimalist depiction of our own societies, maybe with a special leaning towards the Eastern way of doing things. Yet make no mistake, everything in the show is a metaphor for something near you. Hell, they even made it diverse so as to adhere to the Netflix censorship committees3; while most characters' backstories seem to be stolen from some biblical tale or another. Even our hero falls to the sin of his own vanity, and for that he pays by losing those dear to him -- twice! I'm guessing that the third season will follow his "redemption" and his eventually joining "the bad guys".
I don't watch new stuff very often, but so far Squid Game ranks easily among my favourite five video items published this decade.
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Constructed, as opposed to grown. Would you happen to know the difference between the two?
Well, it so happens that I covered this precise aspect of social networks on my blog: one of the main differences between humans and other animals is that the former are able to gather the resources to organize themselves in much more varied structures than the latter. Although however varied and complex they are, these structures can be distinguished through the following question: are they established based on individual or collective interests?
All human societies sit at the conflict and interplay between the two and may be organized more according to one or other set of interests. For example webs of trusts are organized according to the individual interests of their participants and they fracture or dissolve when those interests become divergent; this is how the early feudal societies were built, when individual interests converged towards, say, defending individual properties from migrant invasions. This is, like it or not, what permitted, say, feudal Moldova to exist: one Dragoș crossing the mountains to establish an outpost against Tatar invasions.
At the other end you get societies organized according to a set of abstract, collective interests. How exactly this set is established is perhaps a point of discussion for another time, but it's sufficient to say that these collective interests can and indeed very often do work in convergence with the (possibly varying) interests of a small number of individuals. This is how most late empires are held together, even as they actually dissolve from within. This is how Nazi Germany, the USSR and, more recently, how the entire world under the WHO worked. This is precisely how "defending our democracy" works; I've already discussed at length how this whole "democracy" thing works and how you don't know what "defending" it entails more precisely, at least not until you're told precisely what signifier to attach to those words.
Anyway, far be it from me the desire to turn this article into a synthesis piece for The Tar Pit posts. A "constructed" society is one that is simply engineered towards certain purposes. "A world without hunger" is such an example of a purpose, but so are ads for Facebook and teaching martial arts for your local dojo. Sure, other types of relationships may and do usually grow in such environments, but the environments themselves are built from a preexisting model to encourage or simply put into practice certain kinds of behaviours. And believe me, there is no "objective" reason for the Aikido practitioner to avoid punching while the Karate student avoids grapples. These are just the rules of engagement, as they were stolen from Japanese teachers, sometimes without a clear reason, at least not to the less experienced. ↩
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Funny how I've got a few of similar items on my blog: there's Brazil, Player Piano or We, for example. They all follow the same recipe, namely that at the end of the day the hero's journey towards revolution is entirely fruitless. So then, what do you think the French Revolution or, say, the more recent colour revolutions mean more exactly in this framework? ↩
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I hate to admit it, my good folks, but I surely must do: sane people have lost this round of the cultural war against the pantsuits. Thus I couldn't possibly put "diversity" in quotes anymore, since the symbol is quite well established and part of nowadays' norms. Mocking your adversaries' choice of language was one thing in 2016, when some of the stronger ties with the old world were still there, but nowadays... fuck me, have you talked to any of the younger folks lately? What chance do you figure you have against them? What, you think Trump and Musk are going to save you against them? Oh, spare me the naïveté.
I guess I should really do the '60s and '70s sometime. You really don't get to have either Jimi Hendrix or black folks, my dear reader. They're both the same thing, parts of the same culture. Or what, d'you wanna do gays? Well, Elton John may be too pop for you, but then what say you about Rob fucking Halford? Anyways, I hope we understand each other. ↩