To Squid Game or not to Squid Game?
This is an article I wrote for the University of Exeter’s student newspaper, Exeposé, and appeared in its print edition.
When first I heard the premise of the new Netflix phenomenon, I was immediately taken back to when I first encountered – probably a little too young – some of the edgier stuff the horror genre had to offer. At that age, they were films that elicited a kind of naïve, morbid curiosity.
You may know what I’m talking about, that revulsion turned excitement you felt the first time you encountered films like Saw or Battle Royale (to which Squid Game has been widely compared). But one film always stood out to me: Michael Haneke’s Funny Games.
Its premise is simple – it’s a violent home invasion film – but what’s different about Funny Games is that it constantly challenges the audience in a direct manner. It’s a film that questions its own audience’s desire for (fictional) bloodshed.
In the same breath that Squid Game decries its blood sports, though, it’s also gleefully indulging in them for our entertainment. In the very first episode a nameless horde is massacred, their deaths depicted unflinchingly, but when it comes time to kill off a main character, the show pulls its punches, granting them more dignified deaths – usually away from the (up until now) cold, panoptic camera – afraid to see things through to their necessary conclusion.
There’s a moment in the show where a group of “VIPs” are invited to witness the penultimate game in person. It’s a moment that should give pause. For the first time, we’re confronted by those whose demand for the televised violence perpetuates it. The analogy here should be obvious, but Squid Game never realises it. Instead, the group are constructed as caricatures, an unknowable wealthy elite. Of course, they’re nothing like us, the innocent viewer.
Though, overall, I enjoyed my time with the show, let’s not pretend it’s a marvel of modern TV. In a world in which systemic criticism is increasingly being defanged and commoditised, Squid Game appears not so much as biting deconstruction but more as a rather shallow piece of entertainment, less Funny Games, more Hunger Games.