Parasite review

(No significant spoilers except in the very last paragraph.)

The film Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture. It was the first foreign film to have ever done so. It's a South Korean film.

The premise is a poor and unemployed family consisting of a father, a mother, a teenage son, and a teenage daughter end up conning and weaseling themselves into working for a rich family. The father serves as their limo driver, the mother as their house maid, the son as an English tutor for the rich family's daughter, and the daughter as the rich family's youngest son's art therapist. They forged documents to pretend like they have college degrees and work experiences they don't. The rest of the film unfolds from this setup.

I think one could evaluate the film on at least three different levels: a thriller with some dark comedic elements, a critique of "crazy rich" Asian culture, and social commentary (if not metaphor) about contemporary class warfare. Let's consider each of these.

Thrills and chills

At the most basic level, the film is a thriller. Something Alfred Hitchcock might've done. There were many narrative twists, but they were organic to the story, rather than outrageous and incredible. Most of the twists legitimately caught me by surprise. At this level, Parasite was quite suspenseful. I couldn't predict most of its twists and turns let alone its stunning ending. I enjoyed it at this level.

However I couldn't sympathize with any of the characters, though I think the film tried to portray most of the characters sympathetically or at least not entirely unsympathetically. I thought each of the main characters morally gray at best. If anything, I guess I sympathized most with the rich wife who was a kind and gentle spirit but utterly naive, though that's not to say I always found her naivety a sympathetic quality.

On the whole, none of the characters, nor plot, nor themes, nor dialogue, nor sights and sound would be what I'd consider uplifting or elevating at all. In that regard, Parasite is the antithesis of a film like 1917 - or at least certain scenes in 1917. Please see my 1917 review for what I mean.

Crazy rich Asians

At the next level, it seems to me the broader context of the film is "crazy rich Asian" culture. I mean a culture where everyone is obsessed with wanting to be rich and wealthy. A culture where many Asian parents quite aggressively push their children to attend the best schools with the hope they'll become lawyers, accountants, MBAs, physicians, engineers, and the like, because these sorts of Asian parents believe these careers are sure to bring in wealth and prestige.

In addition, for first generation Asian immigrants to a Western nation like the US, becoming a lawyer or a doctor is like scaling Mt. Everest in a single day. Climbing up the social ladder in one generation. It brings instant social kudos and wealth. The immigrant family may enter their newly adopted land quite low on the rung of the social ladder, but if their children can become doctors or lawyers or the like, then they immediately move to the top of the social ladder. They reverse their narrative for the better, so to speak.

At the same time, and despite the tiger mom style of parenting, there are plenty of Asians who remain or end up dirt poor. Although in a crazy rich Asian culture, even if a family is mediocre or average, it's almost shameful if they don't likewise aspire to be more. There's tremendous social pressure within many Asian communities to be more than average, by parents, extended family, and even peers. That in itself is problematic, as if there was something wrong with settling for being socially and financially average, like the majority of people are. As if there was something wrong with being middle class.

I think Parasite more or less works as a criticism against crazy rich Asian culture in general. That's in part because the film shows how hollow a life of wealth is if that's all it is. That's in part because the film shows what unscrupulous methods one must often undertake if one aims at wealth at any cost. One is reminded of 1 Tim 6:10: "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs."

Eat the rich

I think a large reason Hollywood feted Parasite with Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Foreign Language Film is because the film is consistent with their woke progressive presuppositions about the rich, the poor, and class conflict. Of course, it could also be the film is intentionally kowtowing to Hollywood, but I can't say for sure.

In any case, I think Hollywood's perception (true or false) is Parasite shows how the rich believe the poor are parasites, but the truth is that it's the rich who are parasites. The poor want to be rich, and are forced into immoral actions due to their circumstances, but the rich don't really think about the poor. Or if the rich do think about the poor they think the poor only want money as, for instance, evidenced in the rich husband's transactional relationships with others including his wife (e.g. "I guess you can call it love"). Or the rich think the poor are beneath them which is partially reflected in how the film keeps depicting the rich family members finding the poor family members foul-smelling. By contrast, the poor have to literally fight one another just to live in the basement, in underground squalor; they've been driven to animal survival by their poverty. In short, according to the progressive's ethical calculus, the rich feeding off the poor without much thought is a worse sin than the poor trying to get rich by any means. Hence the rich deserve to be consumed by the poor.

Ironically, Hollywood is chock full of people who would be in the 1%, but who delight in such class conflict, struggle, and even warfare. But I doubt most celebrities really know what full-blown class warfare would entail. They've never thought deeply about it. They've never considered the lessons of history or the ramifications of political ideologies like socialism and communism which have a fundamental basis in class warfare. It's just trendy or fashionable for celebrities to virtue signal that they'd join arms with the supposedly downtrodden - the poor, minorities, women, and so on. That they'd support the poor rising up against the rich. In this respect, Hollywood praises Parasite like they praised films such as BlacKKKlansman, Get Out, and Moonlight.

However consider that socialism and communism call for the proletariat to kill the bourgeoisie. A bloody revolution if necessary. Consider the historical empirical evidence where those who were educated or well-to-do were murdered in cold blood (e.g. the Cultural Revolution, the Killing Fields, Tiananmen Square). Hollywood celebrities wouldn't survive unless they fled.

So Hollywood elites (among others) are playing with fire by advocating supposedly "soft" socialism including class conflict or warfare. At some point, the cozy fireplace may become an uncontrollable blazing furnace that threatens to engulf their house as well.

By the way, one would think S. Korean filmmakers would be more attuned to the dangers of a socialist or communist society. What might be unleashed upon them if they take class warfare to its logical conclusion. After all, communist N. Korea and red China are no more than a DMZ or a small body of water away from them. Perhaps many S. Koreans (like many Westerners) have become too affluent and decadent to be cognizant of the existential threats near their shores. Like hobbits blissfully slumbering in hobbit-holes while dark storm clouds gather on their distant horizon and ringwraiths inch their way toward the Shire.

At any rate, if the film promotes class warfare in some capacity, then I can't enjoy the film at this level.

The scholar's stone

A word about the scholar's stone or rock (gongshi) in the movie. I don't know if my take is correct, but I'll give it anyway and others can decide.

Traditionally East Asians have placed a high value on the confluence of mountains, water, and trees. It's considered ideal (feng shui) if one can live in a house with a mountain behind it, a garden around it, and water flowing across it or in front of it. That's why many East Asians love coastal cities with mountains in or around them like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Vancouver, because their homes can face the ocean with the mountains to their backs along with a garden around them. People can likewise see the importance of stones in evidence in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean gardens. Asian gardens will always have everywhere uncut stones or rocks which represent mountains, trimmed plants or foliage around the stone which are a garden in miniature, and water flowing down the stone. Likewise look at some of the most appreciated East Asian art or paintings. My point is the trinity of stone, water, and tree are important and valued in traditional East Asian culture (for various reasons which I won't get into here).

By the way, scholar's stones should never be touched or altered by human hands. They must always be found in nature as is.

I think in the context of Parasite the scholar's stone initially represented the poor family's hopes and aspirations of becoming wealthy and living in their dream home. The stone was a symbol of what they could become someday. A symbol of peace and perfection like a stone in an Asian garden. A symbol of the Asian dream, as it were, à la the American dream to have a house with a white picket fence around it. Of course the scholar's stone was given to the poor family's son by his rich friend, because a poor family wouldn't normally be able to acquire such a valuable item.

As the film progressed the stone became more of a curse than a blessing. As such, it was like the albatross around the sailor's neck in Samuel Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" which began as a good omen but ended up a burden and a cross to bear. In addition the stone is symbolic of a futile endeavor like the rock Sisyphus pushes uphill but it keeps rolling back down. Worst of all, the stone in Parasite became a weapon to kill in order to survive and "evolve" like the bone the chimps used in 2001: A Space Odyssey. By the end of the film, instead of a soft trickling stream flowing across the stone as found in serene Asian gardens, the stone no longer floats but sinks into murky waters, and all hope is lost.