What Parasite’s Conquest of the Oscars Says About the Film Itself
Parasite’s triumph at the 92nd Academy Awards was a historic moment for filmmaking. Never before has an international film won Best Picture, nor had a South Korean movie even been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. For this century-long trend to reverse itself so dramatically is undoubtedly a cause for celebration. Parasite is a remarkable film, and it deserves such monumental cultural recognition. Yet, despite its unexpected victory, it’s impossible to shake the nagging feeling that the forces that propelled this film to the heights of recognition have a warped understanding of the film’s message at best, and at worst, an ignorant perspective that will prove actively harmful. Spoilers for Parasite follow below (please see the film).
The pondering began when Neal Brennan posted this (frankly moronic) Tweet about the theme at the core of the film. He was insistent that the film was meant to vilify the rich family whose house the protagonists come to inhabit. In fact, Bong Joon-ho goes to great lengths to emphasize that the rich family are not the film’s antagonists. The father seems to be a legitimate businessman who works hard and long hours. They care for their children: going on vacation, getting them tutors, and supporting their artistic endeavors. The parents remain attracted to each other. Their lives are good.
The true antagonist is the societal structure that impacts itself upon every strata of character in the film. This is literally represented by the dwellings of each group. The rich family lives in a beautiful mansion of stone and glass in the highlands. Our protagonists live in a vulnerable basement beneath street level. And the family our protagonists replace lives in a subterranean cellar, out of view from the gaze of the common citizen, left to rot as their support system is ripped from their grasp.
The actual titular parasite is an omnipotent devotion to capital, a worship of wealth that fosters desperation in times of scarcity and gluttony in times of success. Those at the top become indebted to those below them, as the rich rely on an ever-growing set of goods and services to be provided for by the poor. To the rich, these responsibilities are pocket change. But to the poor, this reliance is their livelihood, and oftentimes insufficient to enable a comfortable life. In the film, as that reliance deepens, the protagonist family becomes parasitic in nature, leeching off resources and widening its influence unbeknownst to the host. However, in what seems like a triumphant victory to our protagonists, the systemic imbalance cannot rise all boats. Their presence has ignited a desperation below them, as the former parasite struggles to survive. Now expelled from its host, the former housekeeper and her husband are without a paddle, forced into beggary by an entrenched societal structure.
This broken system, taken to its furthest extremes, engenders a despair that can only result in rage, represented by the murderous events of the film’s climax. The rich family did not cause this. They didn’t even know about the man underneath their home. They had no idea about the hopelessness caused by these menial service jobs, or how challenging those jobs really are. In their eyes, they are pleasant bosses, and these workers are their extended family. But they are also not innocent. They are an ignorant accomplice to a system that rots from the inside, and their demise was no direct fault of their own, but the inevitable conclusion of a broken order.
It is in this analysis that I became uncomfortable with the film’s conquest at the Oscars. Parasite, at its heart, is about the toxicity of a society whose bedrock is capital and its pursuit. In Joon-ho’s eyes, modern society is built on a political and economic foundation that is fundamentally unjust and immoral, and the wealthy are unintentionally complicit in promoting this decrepit structure. How ironic is it, then, that this film is being celebrated as an artistic achievement at the Academy Awards? Who is more unintentionally complicit in this dystopian, parasitic culture than the titans of Hollywood? Do the people honoring this film understand it? Or do they just see it on its most basic level: the poor have been neglected too long, it’s high time they fight back? That reading irresponsibly eschews their abetment of the system that Joon-ho is critiquing, and illuminates the precise ignorance the film is skewering.
Bong Joon-ho is undoubtedly thrilled with the recognition and rewards of his masterpiece. It has gone a long way in the mainstream appreciation of international film, and it has catapulted him to heights that he likely never imagined. But, in watching him over the past several months as well as on Oscar night, one has to wonder if he scoffs at some of the praise, and has come to appreciate the irony of his politically radical movie being commemorated by those who benefit the most from the system he is attacking. He called the Oscars a “local film festival”, neglected to give a deeply personal speech, choosing instead to emphasize the filmmakers who inspire him and preview his forthcoming bender, and attached his trophies at the mouth in a mocking gesture that denigrates the purported seriousness of the award. Now months into awards season, he has walked red carpets, given speeches, received accolades and appeared on late night shows, rubbing elbows with the same folks he is subtly blasting for their benighted involvement in this spiraling, broken societal structure, all while they praise him and his efforts. It’s hard to imagine this was intentional, that Joon-ho could ever have expected that those he is lambasting for their ignorant complicity could be simultaneously ignorant that they are the subjects of his critique, but it results in a euphoric irony, and a testament to limitless possibilities of cinema.
