Squid game
the breakout Korean series about
players competing to the death
for a giant piggybank full of cash
is Netflix's biggest series launch,
and the streamer's CEO Ted Sarandos says
"There's a very good chance it will be our biggest show ever."
Critics have argued that the show
offers a devastating critique of contemporary capitalism
INSIDER: "This could be seen as a metaphor for capitalism..."
"...the players represent the working class..."
"...and the guards, the middle class..."
In a Jacobin review headlined,
"Squid game is an Allegory of Capitalist Hell,"
the writer asserts that Korea's extreme inequality is
Squid Game's central theme.
A New York Times reporter wrote that is has "tapped a sense familiar to people in the United States
...that prosperity in nominally rich countries
has become increasingly difficult to achieve
as wealth disparities widen
and home prices rise past affordable levels."
And the show's creator told Variety that,
"I wanted to write a story that was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist society...
something that depicts an extreme competition
somewhat like the extreme competition of life."
Is there a theme more unifying in global pop culture than
"Capitalism is bad?"
asks Vulture writer Roxanna Hadidi in her recap of one episode
before continuing,
"It helps that the statement is true, of course."
But Squid Game has a much richer, and more resonant message
than, "Capitalism Bad."