"This is so metaphorical"

Thinking about Parasite

What more can be said about Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite? It won the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, then went on to be the first foreign film to win an Academy Award for Best Best Picture in 2020. It was a viral phenomenon--along with a lot of other recent Korean pop culture--that stayed in theaters for months and was seen by a lot of people who would normally never go see a movie with subtitles. It joined a very small list of films that I saw in theaters three times during their first runs. It is in the top 50 best rated films on fan-rated sites IMDB and Letterboxd, if that means anything to you. It also inexplicably entered the BFI’s Sight and Sound poll of 100 greatest films of all time in 2022. Parasite is charming, brilliant, tight filmmaking, and one of the only films in recent memory that actually deserves all the hype given to it. 

For those of you who have not seen it, or need a refresher, it is about a poor family in Seoul who are barely able to survive, until they all con their way into getting jobs in the house of a rich family. In quick succession Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) the son becomes Kevin an English tutor, Ki-jung (Park So-dam) the daughter becomes Jessica, a children’s art therapist, Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) the father becomes a chauffeur, and Yeon-kyo (Cho Yeo-jeong) the mother becomes a housekeeper. The process is clever and funny, and everything is going great for this family of amoral anti-heroes until a major, creepy twist occurs halfway through (I will be spoiling this twist later in the article).

Now that a few years have passed I am more critical of Parasite, but the negative aspects are more about the film's reception than the actual work. It’s great that Parasite won the Palme d’Or, but I have the same complaint as I did with Triangle of Sadness--they are films about class warfare gaining recognition at a festival that represents the excess of glamor and capital related to international cinema. Bong Joon-ho has dealt with themes of class in previous films like Snowpiercer (2013), and is known for having leftist politics from a young age, which may be seen as clashing with the capitalist nature of the mainstream film industry. That being said, it is incredibly difficult to slow down a machine like Cannes, which was only really done once in 1968, when the jury and some filmmakers were joined by iconic French film directors like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard to shut down the festival in solidarity with the student protests occurring in France and around the world at that time. 

Meanwhile, Parasite represents a new direction for The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who have been working to change the structure of the organization in recent years. Hundreds of new members were invited to join The Academy in order to include more input from women and people of color. That being said, The Oscars have always been a self-serving performance celebrating the economic and cultural viability of those in the industry. Most of the represented performers are not of the working class, although they occasionally play them on screen. Is it possible for The Academy to ever genuinely represent economic equity? They could start by supporting the current WGA/SAG strikes. At least Parasite is a step up from winners that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, like Titanic (1997). Maybe what they should do is create initiatives or categories for films based on budget. I guarantee the film world would be far more interesting if 200 films with a budget of $1 million were made instead of one film with a budget of $200 million.  

Perhaps the IMDB and Letterboxd ratings are the most important achievements for the film. Currently at #35 on IMDB and #6 on Letterboxd, the popularity of Parasite indicates that movie audiences are enthusiastic to watch good foreign films. If we can get more spectators into watching films with subtitles, this can only have positive effects. One of the ways I initially became interested in parts of the world other than where I came from was by watching foreign films as a teenager. This activity helps in creating empathy for people who come from different places and who live in different cultures than you. This is a surefire way to create solidarity all around the world against forces that are becoming more and more authoritarian with each passing year. It is vital for us to consume media from other cultures if we want to continue living with a semblance of freedom. Otherwise it is too easy for xenophobia to take over, with our neighbors living in fear of anyone superficially deemed Other.

It is also interesting to think about how popularity on websites for fans compares and contrasts with polls of reputable critics like The Sight and Sound poll. The list released last year was quite frankly a bit bizarre, as many critics decided to inject their lists with more films by/about women, queers, and POC. This is a noble effort, which propelled some of the best films onto the list which were not there previously (or were, but lower down) like Jeanne Dielman (1975), Beau Travail (1998), Do the Right Thing (1989), Daisies (1966), and Killer of Sheep (1977). The utterly perplexing thing was the amount of films in the top 100 that had come out only a few years earlier. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Moonlight (2016), Parasite, and Get Out (2016) were all included. These are solid pieces of filmmaking, but did they already earn this distinction so quickly? One of the most important aspects of “best of” lists, in my opinion, has to do with how films affect greater culture, in addition to how good they are. This can only be determined with the passage of time, as films that seem to be monumental upon release are sometimes viewed more coolly a decade later. There are other involving about race, queerness, women’s lives, and the class struggle from far earlier in film history that are probably more worthy than these recent titles. If anything, it shows contemporary critics’ enthusiasm for Parasite has stayed strong for 3 or 4 years.      

This whole piece has ended up being dedicated to the critical reception of Parasite, that I have almost forgot about the reason why I re-watched it in the first place--how does the movie relate to Luis Buñuel’s films? Parasite is full of strange moments and imagery, but very little of it would be deemed surreal, as they are all intricately mapped out in the script. One of its strongest points is how tight of a picture it is. None of it is surreal because it is all so “metaphorical” as Ki-woo takes note of at various points. The huge scholar’s rock that Ki-woo’s friend drops off at the beginning has a mystical feel to it, until it comes back at the end as an instrument of violence. The references to colonialism and American influence, like the Native American headdresses Ki-taek and Dong-ik (Lee Sun-Kyun) wear near the end seem to stick out like a sore thumb, but work thematically as a marker of perceived savagery by the upper classes. The man living underneath the house for over 4 years--and imagining what his daily life must be like--adds an almost supernatural strangeness to the second half of the film. It seems unrealistic and impossible, but it is also the thread which explains the title of the film.

The thing that ties Parasite more closely to Buñuel is humor. Buñuel’s films are full of funny situations at the expense of the upper class, probably culminating late in his career with The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). One thing that has not been discussed too much in light of the Academy Award success of Parasite, is how it relies so much on genre tropes. The first half is borderline comedy until we reach a massive tonal shift into horror, with the creepy basement and violent conclusion. The Oscars are not known for their love of genre, so it is gratifying to see a film like this getting top honors, in addition to its outsider status as a foreign film.

In retrospect, the thing that Parasite instilled in me is something that was already there--the importance of having a plan. It does not matter if the plan comes to fruition, or if it needs to be revised over and over again. Having a plan, no matter how outlandish or attainable, is at least something that propels us into the next day, giving us some kind of vague hope for our continued existence.