“SquidGame” and the Commercialization of Poverty for Entertainment
SquidGame, the latest #1 series watched on Netflix, has communities around the globe in a chokehold. As much as this show it’s heart-breaking, jaw-dropping, filled with unexpected and devastating cliff-hangers, it reflects a lot of meaning about the reality we live in.
OVERVIEW-Summary of the movie
A Korean series, SquidGame starts in a black-and white-background, with kids playing a famous Korean childhood game and a narrator describing the scene. Shortly after, we see the main character Gi-hun (later known as Player 456) receiving money from his mother for his daughter’s tenth birthday. He later uses the money to gamble and bet on horses and successfully wins 4.5 million won. Unfortunately, a group of men he owes chases him down, and he bumps into a girl who manages to steal all his money. He appeals for more time from his creditors and collects 10,000 won from a receptionist to buy a present for his daughter.
At the end of the night, Gi-hun sits idly in the train station, and a stranger who offers to play a game — ddakji — with him approaches him. In this game, Gi-hun has to pick a blue or red square and use his square to try and flip the other square (laying on the ground) over. If Gi-hun wins, he gets 100,000 won. If the stranger wins, however, he takes 100,000won off by slapping Gi-hun in the face. Many tries and a bruised cheek later, Gi-hun finally wins 100,000 won. However, the stranger gives him a business card with shapes (a circle, a square, and a triangle) and a phone number. He encourages him to call the number and enroll in an obscure competition playing a series of games to win more than 100,000 won. Incentivized by his luck in ddakji, his debt, and his future with his daughter, Gi-hun eventually caves and calls the number on the card.
Gi-hun and 455 other randomly picked individuals are taken into suspicious black vans driven by guards, each dressed in a hot-pink jumpsuit and a mask with a shape — either a square, triangle, or circle — on it. They are drugged with a sleeping gas during the drive, are dressed up in (while asleep) a green and white jumpsuit with their assigned ID number, and taken to their respective beds in a large room decorated with drawings depicting the games they would have to play and win to survive.
Each player is informed of the competition’s rules and escorted to the simulated playground to compete in their first game: Red Light and Green Light. The host, dressed in an all-black suit and an elaborate mask, sits comfortably in his hotel room and turns on his TV to watch the individuals play for their lives. From his screen, the players look like typical contestants in reality show games we would watch in reality. Seeing this allusion, I started thinking of how interestingly reflective SquidGame is to the nature of competition shows we watch routinely.
The Voice, America’s Got Talent, Love Island, Sugar Rush, Who Wants to be a millionaire, Big Brother, The Circle, Too Hot to Handle, etc. The list continues. Every year, we encounter many adverts and commercials of new and upcoming competitions designed to give one lucky winner millions of dollars if they consistently win a series of challenges.
‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’, a popular competition I’ve known since I was little, is an international game where contestants have a series of questions to answer and an opportunity to win as much as 1 million (dollars, or pounds or the or another local currency equivalent).
In the Voice, expert coaches choose contestants who have to win the hearts of their celebrity vocal coaches and the audience to secure a spot in every consecutive round and hopefully win $100,000 and a record deal with Universal Music Group.
Latest competitions, like The Circle, take advantage of the new digital era of the 21st century and invites individuals to compete as either themselves or a catfish and participate in some challenges in the hopes of being an influencer and surviving long enough to walk away with $100,000.
When watching competitions like America’s Got Talent or The Voice or Sugar Rush, there are episodes where we learn of the struggles of some of the contestants — what they’re risking by participating in such a game, what they hope to achieve with the prize money, etc. Such scenes start out warming our hearts and filling us with hope as we wish for all contestants to win the prize money. Over time, at least 90% of dreams are crushed as participants get voted out or not chosen.
For instance, in one of the latest episodes of The Voice Season 21, one of the participants, Camryn B, was set to perform. Camryn B is a young woman who put many things in her life on hold to care for her brother, who severed his spinal cord in football. As Camryn B performs, the audience cheers. The camera shifts to the host, then her family. Both are begging the coaches to turn their chairs for her. After Camryn’s performance, no one turns.
Why is desperation and struggle — especially around money, wealth, success — so fascinating to watch?
Horrified by the first game’s outcome, Gi-hun and a slim majority of players vote to end the competition and go home. The show focuses on how some of the characters who go home — i.e., player 456 (Gi-hun)and player 67 (Sae-byeok) — return to their lives on the brink of financial ruin, which appears ironically to be worse than the horrors they witnessed playing Red Light Green Light. Subsequently, each player (remaining from the aftermath of the first game) returns to continue and win the competition.
Though it appears random, the players in SquidGame are chosen precisely because they are on the brink of financial ruin. They are selected because they are desperate. No one in their right mind would agree to participate in a series of sadistic and traumatizing games unless they are desperate — unless their lives (poverty-ridden and constantly on the run from creditors) are far worse than the possibility of making it out alive with 4.5 billion won at the end of a competition.
Many competition shows are well known for capitalizing on the struggles of participants fortunate to be a part of such an opportunity to win millions of money and fix many of their problems. Watching these competitions and being a part of the contestants’ journey is entertaining, especially for those lucky enough to make it to the end. But, there’s something strange about competition shows creating and promoting the concept that only a few — and in most cases one — can enjoy the riches and fame of elites.
Watching SquidGame opened my eyes to see from a new perspective how the reality shows that we view for our entertainment are life-or-death situations for many contestants who risk it all to participate.
In America’s Next Top Model, Tyra Banks usually asks several contestants about their struggles in the first stage of auditions. Their stories may or may not determine whether or not they succeed, and sometimes we would hear about how being a part of such a competition is life-changing for them, only for a majority of them to be sent home.
Particularly fascinating in competitions is how the camera zooms in on the despair and heartbreak of contestants not chosen, despite giving them and their family members a whole segment being given to them to tell a story of their struggles and why they want to win.
When watching these competition shows, we hear how these contestants grew up in rough neighborhoods. The opportunity to work with a record label or be signed by an agency, or win 1 million dollars is the key to saving them or their families from hardship. These competitions put enormous pressure on contestants to perform as if their lives and futures depend on it because, frankly, they do.
Sound familiar?
Capitalism continues to thrive because it keeps us entertained.
SquidGame is such an insane and binge-worthy show because it shows how desperate people are to free themselves from debt. We watch the show with our rational hats on, arguing how one should’ve either ignored the strange man offering them money at a train station or calculating how we would’ve been successful at the games. I was disgusted by the sight of the white men who sat casually, watching the players risk their lives for money like it was your typical competition show — like the usual competition shows we watch off-handedly throughout our lives.
It’s easy to watch SquidGame with a moral conscience and point fingers at the audience watching these players like it was some video game, but those viewers are a lot like us than we would like to admit.
In the second episode of SquidGame, we see how truly horrible the lives of some of the contestants are. Gi-hun finds out that his mother had an accident but refuses to stay in the hospital because she had to choose between constantly working to make a living or accumulating more debt from resting in a hospital bed. Player 67 (Sae-byeok) fled from North Korea and struggles to get money to help her brother out and support her mother, who is yet to join them in South Korea. Player 199 (Abdul Ali), an immigrant from Pakistan, is deep in poverty because his employer ignores his demands to receive payment. The struggles these characters face are no different from the issues crippling many of us worldwide — expensive and inaccessible health care, labor exploitation, and the obstacles of integrating and making ends meet in a new country after fleeing your home due to oppression. For the most part, many of the contestants in SquidGame were in poverty primarily due to the lack of accountability on institutions responsible for providing their basic needs.
As we recommend SquidGame to our many social circles, let us also pay attention to an important lesson — no one should bear complete responsibility of saving themselves or their family from struggles caused by institutions profiting off their exploitation.
Abdul Ali (Player 199) shouldn’t have to play a game where he’d get shot if he loses because his employer actively refuses to pay him his wages.
