Willie Wonka Run Amok

Oh that beloved Willie Wonka, inviting kids on a great adventure in a colorful, magical playland with the promise of a wonderful lifetime prize! And if terrible things happen to the other kids, does that stop the fun? Does everyone insist they be allowed to leave immediately? Do the parents resort to violence to save their children from a possibly terrible fate? Why no! There's a prize to be won and the terrible fate is only possible, not certain. Besides it's the other guy who's most likely to lose.

And thus, Hwang Dong Hyuk pays homage to a treasured children's tale and turns it into a gory story about beleaguered, debt-ridden adults in Nightmare Joseon who receive a golden ticket (actually a business card, because, you know, adults) to play in a game that could forever change their lives. Like the kids at the Chocolate Factory, the Squid Game contestants sign a contract with murky fine print and the fun begins. It doesn't take long, however, for the players to stop playing against the house and start playing against (and preying on) each other. After all, the rich and powerful can never be rich and powerful enough to allow the unwashed masses play against them indefinitely. By sheer numbers alone, the unwashed would eventually become the conquerors. In order for the rich to continue to win, they have to ensure that the masses turn on each other. And the masses do. They always do. Even in children's games.

Seong Gi Hoon is a ne'er-do-well chaffeur from a small town who has had a hard time at life. A failed marriage and failed business ventures have left him a middle-aged, debt-ridden, deadbeat dad who has no qualms about stealing money from his hardworking and sick, elderly mother for a day of betting on the horses. When his luck at the racetrack goes pear-shaped and he learns that his mother needs surgery, it is only with the most minimal modicum of shame that he demands that his remarried ex-wife give him the money he needs. His ex-wife's new husband acquiesces with one small caveat: Gi Hoon can have the money only if he agrees to stay away from his family (including Gi Hoon's 10-year old daughter). Drawing the line at losing access to his child, Gi Hoon refuses the money then meets a mysterious stranger in the subway who invites him to join the Squid Game.

The other contestants (both friends and foes) in the Squid Game have sad and sorry stories similar to Gi Hoon: an old man dying of a brain tumor, small-time loser gangsters, embezzlers, fraudsters, desperate immigrants and pickpocket defectors from North Korea. Whenever one of the contestants dies from the rigors of the game, they are placed in beribboned coffins that look oddly reminiscent of the last-minute gift from an arcade claw machine that Gi Hoon gets for his daughter's tenth birthday (the present inside the gift box is a nice little foreshadowing touch as well). Although the brutality of these games hearken to the Hunger Games and Stephen King's The Long Walk, these contestants are here totally of their own free will (as are the contestants in another dystopian/art-imitates-life classic, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?") and all of them can stop the games and leave at any time if the majority of the contestants vote to do so.

One of the flaws of this story is that the contestants have nothing more than the masked host's word that the winner will actually receive the cash prize. Unlike with Willie Wonka (and other dystopian tales)--where the media and the public were aware that a major prize was involved so that there would be some accountability--the contestants of the Squid Game are whisked away to a private and secret location and don't even know who their host is. Even the gun-toting Oompa Loompas at the funhouse are masked. The contestants don't even know if the money they are shown in a giant piggy bank is real money, or if the stacks of cash are only blank sheets of paper with real legal tender only on the outside. They are willing to put their lives on the line simply on the Squid Game's host's word that they could win a life-changing prize.

Another flaw is the incredible stupidity of some of the players, even in a game where they have bet their lives. In real life, people can make some incredibly poor choices, but some of the choices the contestants of Squid Game make are beyond the pale. Trusting your opponent when it is clear it's his life against yours, annoucing your game strategy to all and sundry, being fine with killing a whole bunch of people one day, hesitant to kill a solitary person the next. Some of the players obviously have a code, it's just really difficult from game to game to ascertain what that code is. There are no heroes in this extended voluntary death match, which is why it is so strange that the screenwriter is so determined to make it appear that there is one.

The imagery in this series is impressive: the bright, primary colors, the children's playground, the baggy costumes of the guards that evoke blindly obedient Oompah Loompas, the maze of staircases the contestants tread to each new game. Behind the colorful and child-like facade the brutality of the games is revealed and the hardships began. The contestants are given adequate food at the start of the games, but with each subsequent game the food becomes less substantial. The area where they take their rest literally shifts beneath their feet and becomes dangerous and hostile. Bit by bit, the contestants are stripped of provision for their basic needs, peace and security and eventually their humanity.

There are traces of Snow Piercer and Battle Royale in Squid Game as well. Westerners, rich Americans in particular, are portrayed as effeminate, obnoxious, sex-obsessed VIPs who bet on the games and desire to make Asian men their bitches. The acting abilites of the men who portray these VIPs is terrible (as is the stilting dialogue) and I am not sure if they couldn't secure better casting for these roles or if they wanted to portray Westerners as incapable of competent acting as well. Nevertheless, the message of contempt for the West is not subtle.

The eventual winner of the Squid Game becomes disillusioned with money and the workings of the world after his victory and in possible foreshadowing, adopts a hairstyle and hair color strongly reminiscent of Batman's violent counter-cultural revolutionist, The Joker. He learns more about the game as he prepares to take an important journey and once again, the Squid Game changes his life. In subsequent sequels, will the victor find out that like Willie Wonka, the master of the Squid Game was manipulating his life all along? Or, as in Snowpiercer, will he outsmart, outplay and outlast long enough to view the Squid Game as a lesser evil for the good of society and be chosen as the new master of the game? Will elements of another dystopian tale, The Watchmen, factor into future sequels? After all, as today's billionaires show us daily with their ability to circumvent laws and achieve what only the gross natural product of whole countries could heretofore do, money is the new superpower and without it, the rest of us are just desparate contestants in a never-ending, Everlasting Gob-stopper of a Squid Game.

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