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submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

As far as I could tell in the movie the rich people were depicted as decent parents if not a bit naive, while the poor family were backstabbing assholes who betrayed their fellow workers (the housekeeper and her husband) because of sheer malice. Not once does the film hint at the underlying economical system as the reason why the rich are rich and the poor are poor.

If you are a socialist, you will (correctly) identify capitalism as the reason for the misery of the poor people in the film, and the rich as part of the bourgeoisie who exploit them. But that isn't any different than analysing an IRL crime through that lens, the film didn't help you reach that conclusion, it just presented a scenario.

A chud could easily see the rich family as the honest entrepreneurs and the poor family as poor because of the negative behaviors they exhibited, and there is nothing in the film that would dispute that interpretation.

With the poor family getting punished for their deception, and the son resolving to make money to save his father at the end (presumably through more "honest" means), it even displays the "pull yourself by the bootstraps" belief.

The best case interpretation of the film I can make is that "the rich people should be more conscious of the poor's struggles, and the poors should stay in their place or risk losing everything" which is pretty reactionary and not the class conscious film many people described it as. I guess you could see the ending as punishment for the class betrayal but I think that's a stretch.

Am I overzealous in policing the politics of the media I consume to the point of misinterpreting things or finding an even vaguely leftist film that hard?

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[-] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago

Bong Joon-Ho is a liberal, but yeah I think you're wrong to say the film is reactionary.

I think a major thing you're missing by wanting the rich people to be rude and the poor family to be polite is that these types of behaviours are typically engendered by certain class positions.

There are plenty of rich people who are polite, but despite this the rich characters are shown to be exploitative which is more meaningful. If you watch carefully they are assholes, they're just polite about it.

I don't know if you've ever personally been desperate for getting enough to survive, but that kind of mentality constantly experienced makes being polite much more challenging than it would be if you live at peace because all your material needs have been met.

And you're right to focus on how the poor family acts when they are asked to show compassion or take a personal risk when they meet the destitute couple. This is important because it demonstrates how when the poor can be made so desperate to survive that can, and often does, interfere with class solidarity because survival comes first. That interaction is the most interesting part of the film I think.

Anyhow so while like I say Bong Joon-Ho is a liberal I think you're also being a liberal by choosing to view the characters as having individual morality instead of behaviours shaped by their class position :che-smile:

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Bong is a liberal? I thought he was a card carrying socialist

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago
[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Not the original bit-doer, but I thought his blacklisting in colonized Korea was related to party affiliation? Or is colonial Korea that fash that they blacklist succdems?

I think that+his response to a question about Parasite's international popularity is that it's anti-capitalist has given me the impression he's a comrade but I'm not super familiar and am entirely predisposed to not give famous artists the benefit of the doubt, so do you have more context here?

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this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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