The Squid Game: What Is The Secret Of Its Success?
What if our favorite childhood game was bloody and deadly at the same time? This is the premise of Netflix’s latest great success: The Squid Game.
This South Korean production is still a powerful allegory about our present and this highly competitive and unequal society. What is innovative is that they show it to us through a simple and resounding lens such as children’s games.
Some people compare this production with titles like The Hunger Games or Black Mirror . It is inevitable to go back to those same narratives, it is true. However, Hwang Dong-Hyuk, the director and creator of this production explains that he already had the script for The Squid Game written in 2008, but found it too violent and uncommercial. He decided to put it in a drawer.
It was only recently that he became aware of something: today’s world is turning deadly in many ways. Suddenly, that story written more than ten years ago made sense. He presented it to Netflix and the directors of this streaming company did not object to the more explicit content.
Hwang was completely free to show what he wanted. And he did. The result has been a complete success.
Elements to understand the success of The Squid Game
The squid game was released just a few days ago and is already in the top positions of the most viewed series on Netflix. We see frames, memes and references to this production at every moment on our social networks. They recommend it to us, we hear about it and the media are already asking its creator if there will be a second season – it seems that, for now, the answer is negative.
Now, why has it caused such a stir? What does it have to have captivated thousands of people around the world? The argument, at first glance, is simple and interesting at the same time.
Seong Gi-hun is a middle-aged man who lives plagued by various personal dramas. He hardly sees his daughter and owes a significant debt to loan sharks. At one point, you meet someone very unique at a train station.
This man proposes you to participate in something that could turn your financial situation around. Gi-hun ponders it and finally agrees. Soon, he is picked up with a vehicle where he is unconscious. You will wake up with other people in a warehouse in a numbered tracksuit.
A fable about modern capitalist society
The squid game is much more than a violent survival exercise. It is a fable about current societies, competitiveness and also class differences. In a way, it reminds us of the acclaimed film Parasites , a revealing and shocking metaphor about the social realities of almost any country.
We live in a world where some elites are obscenely rich and others lose their lives for money. It is very easy to identify with the protagonists of this production. In fact, this is what its creator was looking for: that his characters were known to us, that we could all recognize these types of profiles in ourselves or in people around us.
They are figures with whom we easily empathize when we see them trapped in a dystopian setting. Like one of Dante’s circles of hell where no one seems to survive.
The games are simple, the organization complex
The games are simple, follow very basic rules and are easy to understand. This allows us to focus our attention on how the characters develop, on how they ally, betray each other … However , our gaze cannot help but bond with those who lose. Often times, we have the clear feeling that no one wins and this adds even more drama and interest to the development of the series.
Likewise, we cannot avoid making a reference to the organization of the games themselves. It reminds us a lot of the society of an anthill. The squid game is led by masked men who differ from each other by different drawings on their masks.
Those who carry a circle, for example, are the basic operators. Those with triangular masks are the armed soldiers and those with square masks are the managers or managers. They are like worker ants serving a bloody purpose.
On the other hand, it should be noted that the rhythm and atmosphere are perfect, as well as the script itself and the direction of the actors. No matter how scared we are, no matter how much violence we see … It is inevitable to go from one chapter to another holding your breath and giving free rein to expectation.
The Squid Game and the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment
Hwang Dong-Hyuk’s series takes us back to two very specific theoretical and psychological concepts. On the one hand, we have the classic zero-sum game theory. That approach in which the winnings or losses of one participant are balanced against those of the other player. That is to say, in life there are only winners and losers and this somehow favors the balance of society.
On the other hand, when watching The Squid Game, it is inevitable to remember the famous experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971. This psychologist showed us with his controversial role-playing game in the basements of Stanford University that goodness can be manipulated. He taught us that sometimes when we cannot question certain rules, we become slaves or jailers.
To conclude, this television creation not only allows us to better understand South Korean society. It also forces us to reflect on multiple aspects of this complex and increasingly dystopian world.
