Squid Game and capitalism

Recently, the Korean series Squid Game was released on Netflix. As a longtime lover of Asian arthouse and anime, it seems to me that the plot and characters are C grade there. However, it is clear that this is all new to viewers unfamiliar with genre cinema, plus everything is beautifully filmed - apparently, this is why the series has already broken the viewing record. But most importantly, the public saw in him a "criticism of capitalism." After the release of "Parasite", it seems that only the lazy did not write a column "criticism of capitalism." Since then, it has been like this: a Korean movie comes out - that means it's definitely about "criticism of capitalism."

I remember that it was a shame for these very "Parasites", where the complex plot was reduced to an agitation about the class struggle. In "The Squid Game" the plot is, of course, simpler, but even there everything is more complicated. Of course, the game itself, in which debtors kill each other for the amusement of the rich, has an obvious meaning. However, as the final twist shows, the game is organized by one person, not for fun, but as a philosophical experiment designed to confirm or refute his negative views about human nature. At the same time, the views are mostly confirmed: there is practically no one in the game who would not do meanness for the sake of survival and money - even the main character deceives the sick old man when the question arises point-blank. And in general, among the participants in the game there are few who can be called good people - a Pakistani guest worker, a North Korean refugee, etc. Most of the same: some stealing swindlers, retired bandits, degraded gamers and the like. That is, those who themselves came to such a life. Yes, and in the end, everyone participates in the game voluntarily - they return back even after the exit.

Here, however, we can say that it is "capitalism" that puts people in conditions where they show their worst qualities. But is it correct to call these conditions that way? The struggle in the game is around the cash prize - the death of each new player contributes a certain amount to the bank. In the language of game theory, this is called a "zero-sum game" - when the loss of one player is equal to the gain of the other. Humanity has been in similar conditions for most of history - some economists call it the "Malthusian world". When technology developed slowly, a limited amount of land could support a limited amount of population, and "extra people" were utilized through wars, epidemics and other "squid games". But this is exactly what changed after the Industrial Revolution - when the notorious capitalism allowed us to get out of the Malthusian trap. The hero of the capitalist system is not a feudal lord who robs another by force, but an innovator entrepreneur who thinks out how to effectively dispose of what he has. As a result, we have been living in a world for a couple of centuries that is able to support a rapidly growing population - all because people invent ever more efficient ways to use resources. Capitalism is not about a "zero-sum game", but about increasing the amount so that everyone wins.

In general, a story where people are locked in a limited space and forced to fight for a finite amount of resources is something as far as possible from market relations fundamentally built on win-win strategies. However, such a plot is common for Asian films (remember the anime "Kaiji" or also the recent Netflix Alice in Borderland). This is not a critique of capitalism as such - it is literally a critique of its Asian, Japanese and Korean version. How is it different? The fact that all these are societies with a strict social hierarchy, where even large companies were originally created according to the clan family principle (Japanese zaibatsu, Korean chaebols). It is these archaic survivals that give rise to social racism, inequality and everything else that can often be seen in Asian films. It is this local specificity that must be taken into account when trying to pull Asian cultural products on the usual European rhetoric of "the fight against capitalism."

Mihail Pojarsky 2021-10-15