What’s up guys? Jared here to talk about the movie that made the Oscars cool again.
That’s right, Parasite, a film so mind blowingly awesome it would leave even the most verbose
cinema enthusiast completely speechless. At this point, repeating praise for Parasite,
and its director Bong Joon Ho is kind of like vaping - everyone’s doing it and it’s
kind of a waste of breath. So we’ll save any further gushing for our diary.
Parasite was celebrated all over the world for its nuanced take on wealth inequality.
But Bong Joon Ho’s scathing critique of modern society goes way beyond its riveting
plot points - which is why today we won’t be delving into the narrative, or the meaning
of the title, OR the meaning of that scholar’s rock - though if you want to hear more on
that, be sure to check out the Parasite episode on our movie podcast, Show Me The Meaning.
Instead, we’re going to focus on some of the visual details of the film, of which even
the smallest elements augment and enhance Parasite’s overarching critique. Fittingly
for a film about money, all of the material things we see on screen, from the pizza boxes
to the windows, serve an important symbolic purpose. Let’s find out how in this Wisecrack
Edition on Parasite. And of course, spoilers ahead for an Oscar winning Best Picture that we
actually, shockingly, agree with!
Alright guys, let’s do a quick recap. Parasite centers around the cunning destitute Kim family,
who dream of escaping their lousy semi-basement apartment. They scam their way into the lives
of the very wealthy Park family, using increasingly devious methods to find work as their tutor,
art therapist, driver and housekeeper. Things are looking up! Until - they discover they’re
not the only family leeching off the Parks - the former housekeeper’s husband has been
camping out in the house’s hidden bunker for years to hide from debt collectors. Tensions
between the two working-class families mount, and everything crescendos at a very bloody
birthday party that leaves several dead. After stabbing Mr. Park, Mr. Kim retreats into the
bunker to hide for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the Kim son fantasizes about earning
enough money to buy the house and free his dad. That’s the bleak, bleak end.
Appropriately enough for a story revolving around a hidden basement bunker, architecture
*really* matters in the film. The grungy reality of the Kim’s semi basement apartment contrasts
with the opulence of the Park’s glamorous home to effectively create two different worlds.
A lot of attention has been paid to the architecture of the houses, in part because the entire
movie was filmed on sets built specifically to fit Bong’s vision. Upon close inspection,
you’ll find that every choice made in creating these sets was carefully calculated.
The Kim’s home is based on real semi basement apartments that were built across Seoul during
the Cold War to provide shelter in the case of a North Korean attack. Though renting out
semi basements was banned for years due to the squalid living conditions, South Korea’s
economic boom led to such overcrowding that the government relented. We see the paltry
living conditions of the Kims - they reside in a dirty concrete building, surrounded by
stink bugs. As if to literalize the fact that they are on the bottom rungs of the economic
ladder, they live below ground and must walk down a set of multiple sets of stairs to get
to their front door. At the same time, everything in the house suggests a solidarity among these
family members - their socks hang from the same hanger, and underwear covers the walls
of the bathroom.
In contrast, the Park’s house feels definitively NOT specific to South Korea. Rather, it mimics
the modernist style that was originated by Western architects like Richard Neutra, Louis
Kahn and Frank Lloyd Wright. The ultimate realization of the modernist aesthetic was
the “glass house,” and the Parks’ home is nearly just that - fish-bowl-like in how
much it can reveal. It also features other modernist touchpoints like a flat rooftop,
an open-floor plan,and an overall minimalist aesthetic. According to art curator Donald
Albrecht, modernist architecture as seen in cinema has developed a “cluster of connotations
of affluence, glamour and escape.” Houses that embody that aesthetic abound in major
cities all over the world - from Tokyo to Oslo in a form that critic Kate Wagner has
dubbed the “McModern” because of their tendency to each contain the exact same hodgepodge
of modernist design aesthetics. That is, all they seem to be inspired by the Kim-ye school
of architecture. Sociologist Sun-Ki Chai agrees that the home indicates a “sort of nouvelle
riche” aesthetic and establishes the Parks as “not just the one percent, but the higher
level of the one percent.” The Parks, as among a select elite who have managed to succeed
in a ruthless capitalist world also, fittingly must walk up multiple staircases to access
*their* home.
It’s also worth noting that modernist architecture has some pretty deep cinematic roots, most
playfully identified by designer and writer Benjamin Critton in his books “Evil People
in Modernist Homes in Popular Films” and “Sad People in Modernist Homes in Popular
Films.” As Critton’s titles indicate, films will
frequently depict modernist homes as the lair of a villain, like in Blade Runner or the
Big Lebowski or even The Incredibles 2, or as a metaphor for the emotionally-empty lives
of its residents, as in A Single Man or The Ice Storm. This makes it a fitting home for
the Park family, who, though not exactly the antagonists, nonetheless emerge as the central
subject of Bong’s class critique. They’re part-villain in their obliviousness to the
suffering of those less fortunate, and they’re part tragic figures, with the mother apparently
suffering from substance abuse and the young son harboring some trauma. All in all, the
perfect residents for this modernist mecca.
We could spend forever talking about the architectural choices in this film. Take, for example, each
house’s main window. The Kim’s is short with a severe frame, facing a fence that gives
it a cage-like feel. Part of our view out the window is obscured by a hanging rack of
plain socks, as if to accentuate the fact that, in such a cramped space, every bit of
wall or ceiling must serve multiple purposes. What we *do* see is a garbage-filled alley
way, where drunken revelers often relieve themselves. The window is rarely illuminated
- according to Bong, most semi basement apartments only get about 15-30 minutes of natural sunlight
a day. The film opens with the Kim’s son, Ki-Woo slouching on an uncomfortable-looking
couch, soaking up a few of these precious rays while struggling to steal wifi access.
Not the stuff capitalist dreams are made of.
In contrast, we have the Park’s jaw-dropping floor-to-ceiling window - which was designed
with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, like a movie theatre screen. It looks out, sans any obstruction,
at an Eden-esque garden that overflows with sunlight. The well-thought-out interior design
includes a plush couch to lounge in while gazing out the window and generally feeling
pretty awesome about your life.
That brings us to another central difference between the two houses - the issue of space.
Every surface of the Kim’s home is cluttered with odds and ends - cleaning spray sits next
to a pair of shoes, boxes are piled floor to ceiling, and the hallway doubles as a closet.
What’s more, some proportions of the home seem almost comically misconceived - like
the elevated toilet, which production designer Lee Ha-Jun designed to be as close to the
ceiling as possible, as if to emphasize the constant discomfort the Kims experience. The
family is frequently crammed together in close proximity, as if to emphasize both the uncomfortable
claustrophobia of their conditions and their deep connectedness.
In contrast, the Park’s home seems to have never known clutter - the only things we see
are strategically intended for display - from the wine fridge to the family glamour shot
to the sprawling glass cases of pricey dishware. The small touches of disorder that crop up
from time to time - like the young Park boy’s toy arrows, are quickly confiscated from view
by a keen-eyed housekeeper. Fittingly, and contra the Kims, the Parks are rarely seen
in the same room together, almost as if the excess of space has compartmentalized each
member. And unlike the basic layout of the Kim’s apartment, the sprawling design of
the Park home is rife with hiding spots that make for easy eavesdropping, and glass walls,
that make for easy well.. Eyedropping. This suggests that, though their house might be
well protected from the outside world - with its fancy video security system - once a crafty
family like the Kims make it inside, the Parks are left relatively defenseless against their
manipulations.
Just as architecture helps tell Bong’s story of wealth inequality, so too do the choices
he makes about representing food. Food is an issue indistinguishable from class, particularly
in a country that has experienced severe food price inflation in recent years. On a basic
level, food serves as an important indicator of wealth in Parasite. At the beginning of
the film we see the Kims folding pizza boxes for “Pizza Generation,” doing low-paid
labor for a restaurant that seems to encompass the globalization that’s made life in South
Korea so competitive. It seems that they can’t even afford to eat the pizza. Indeed, the
screenplay notes the “sad, empty fridge” and Korean food journalist Joe McPherson points
out that we see the family early on subsisting on moldy white bread, cheap chips and F-Lite,
which according to McPherson is “the cheapest malt beverage on the market.” Once the Kims
start working for the Parks, they gain some disposable income, and their rise in class
is illustrated by the gradual improvement of their diets. First we see them eating at
a Driver’s Cafeteria, which Chai notes are known for cheap, filling buffets that working
class chauffeurs could enjoy. From there, we see them kicking back and dining out at
Pizza Generation, being served by the same employee who previously docked their pay.
They’ve risen from lowly workers to customers. Eventually, they’re able to afford beef,
which they cook at home in an LA Galbi style. By this point, three of the family members
have progressed to Sapporo beer, an expensive Japanese import.
Their food journey culminates when the Parks go on vacation and the Kims get to play pretend
in their fancy house. They enjoy bottled sparkling water from the fridge as well as a wide array
of classy foods, like shellfish oysters, and an even wider array of alcohol. Most amusingly,
Ki-Jung accidentally noshes on the Parks’ dog treats, confusing them for human food,
underscoring the fact that the Park’s pets likely eat better than the Kims do.
The Parks nosh on colorful plates of intricately-arranged fruit, a particularly expensive commodity
in South Korea. In contrast, the Kim’s pile their plates with rice and vegetables at the
buffet. For the Parks, food is a matter of enjoyment. For the Kims, it’s a matter of
survival. While the Kims carefully ration every piece of bread in their pantry, the
Park boy can tear into a leftover birthday cake without a second thought.
At other points, food embodies the dichotomy between classes that fuels the film’s drama.
Most notably, this happens when Mrs. Park instructs Mrs. Kim to cook “Ram-don,”
a name made up by the film’s English translator to describe a Korean dish that mixes elements
of ramen and udon. Mrs. Park emphasizes that the ram-don should be topped with expensive
sirloin steak, and confirms that it’s been cooked through before she indulges. In an
interview, Bong noted that choice was very intentional-- this dish is typically seen
as a meal for poorer folks, but it happens to be the Park boy’s favorite dish. Bong
explains that, while children might not understand the class connotations of food, the rich wife
would still be uncomfortable feeding him cheap noodles for dinner. So she added the ritzier
sirloin as a topping. Appropriately, this means that the pricey sirloin steak sits on
a bed of common noodles, as if literalizing the message of the film. Like steak over a
bowl of noodles, the film shows multiple images of wealthy folks metaphorically and literally
on top of poor folks.
But there’s another layer to the interplay of food and class - namely because food has
played a central, and devastating, role in the Kim family’s economic history. At one
point, the Kim’s reference a chicken shop they owned that went bust, as well as an unsuccessful
Tawianese cake shop. As journalist S. Nathan Park notes, the number of fried chicken joints
in South Korea tripled between 2003 and 2013 and then more than doubled again from 2013
to 2019. Part of this was a response to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which left many
middle class Koreans without work, and forced them to become self employed. Low interest
rates made it easy to take out a loan, and thousands took the gamble on opening a mom
and pop fried chicken shop, of which many, like the Kims, would inevitably fail. Then,
the family opened a Tawainese cake shop, attempting to capitalize on a fad that swept Korea in
2016. This turned out to be an even MORE precarious business, and when the bubble burst thousands
of shop owners like the Kims were left bankrupt, or like the housekeeper and her husband, were
left deeply in debt. In this way, the references to the family’s history, according to Park,
evoke “a whole world of middle-class failure — reflecting economic hopes and tragedies
that still resonate throughout the country.” It shows us that the Kims weren’t always
living in poverty - they were once middle-class business owners. It was their inability to
turn food into a livelihood that ultimately crippled them.
There’s one other aspect of the production design that feels too important not to name:
Specifically, the array of Native American-themed toys accessories that the Park son constantly
plays with - ranging from a teepee to a headdress to a bow and arrow. Here, we see the boy enjoying
American commodities. The mother even brags that the teepee comes from America, which
Chai says probably makes her feel “cosmopolitan.” Chai notes that, in South Korea, “there
is still a sense that certain things from America are high class, particularly education.”
Aptly, Mrs. Park perks up immediately upon hearing that a potential tutor has been educated
at Illinois State University.
At the same time, it's interesting that the boy is imitating Native American culture,
rather than playing, say American cops and robbers. Here, we think Bong is being a bit
sly - the Park boy is unknowingly taking on the fashions and cultural objects of a historically
brutally-mistreated demographic of Americans for his own amusement. This only bolsters
our sense that the Parks exist in a blissful bubble of privilege. As Bong puts it, “The
actual history of Native Americans is very complicated, but the mother and the boy don't
care about the complexity at all. It's just a decoration for them.” At one point, the
boy sleeps outside in his teepee in the rain, as if “role playing” a less fortunate
life than the one he leads. Brilliantly, and uncomfortably, at the exact same moment, the
Parks lie on the couch, sexually role-playing a scenario in which Mrs Park is selling sex
for drugs. The two simultaneous narratives evoke the family’s obliviousness to and
disregard for the realities of living in poverty. Safe and secure in their wealth, pretending
to be poor turns a grim, brutal way of life into a fun, daring game.
Parasite creates a modern-capitalist fable that warns of the immorality and dark implications
of income inequality. And, within the film, every set, prop or slice of pizza contributes
a little bit to that message. But what do you guys think? Is Bong Joon Ho a freaking
genius? Is Parasite a fun family thriller, or a subtle invitation to set fire to the
system? Let us know in the comments. Thanks again to our incredible patrons for supporting
our podcasts and channel. Go ahead and click that subscribe button, and as always, thanks
for watching. Peace.