Through the British "Guardian", we analyzed the current fire of the film and television drama "Squid Game".
I used to know that the Guardian's words and sentences were very advanced, but I didn't expect it to be so "advanced", and it took me 1 and a half hours to read it.
The article begins with a sentence explaining the popularity of "Squid Game" in the world:
It’s the first time a Korean drama has ever been at the top of the US charts; 95% of the viewers are outside Korea,
Translation: This is the first time that a Korean drama series has topped the U.S. ratings charts, and 95% of the audience comes from outside Of South Korea.
The following paragraph summarizes the core setting of the whole play, which is very powerful:
The premise: 456 people are catastrophically in debt, and they’re competing for untold riches in a series of feats that are sometimes whimsical, sometimes terrifying, usually both. If you lose, you get shot in the head. And there can be only one winner.
The plot is set up as follows, 456 highly indebted people, in order to compete for huge prizes, participated in a series of game sessions, these games are sometimes whimsical, sometimes cruel and terrifying, but most of them have both. If you lose, you'll get headshots and you'll only win one person.
It is this contradictory setting of "childlike on the outside and cruel on the inside" that has attracted a large number of audiences, especially young people.
This paragraph of the whole text distills the essence of this type of film, which is the most difficult to understand in the whole text, but also the most profound, and it is worth learning repeatedly:
Violence and mortality defanged by carnivalesque, primary-coloured depiction have been with us since at least the middle ages – think the Mexican Day of the Dead, the French danse macabre etc. But this is a more specific and recent trope so called the “death game genre”.
Translation: Since the Middle Ages, the violence and death of "pulling out fangs" by the joyful atmosphere and colorful renderings have always accompanied us. Think of the Day of the Dead in Mexico, and the French Skull Dance. This time, Squid Games is a more specific, updated form of presentation, known as the "Game of Death" genre.
Mexican Day of the Dead
French skeleton dance
The author also gives some other examples:
whether that’s Battle Royale, the Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Exam…
Translation: Whether it's Battle Royale, The Hunger Games, Maze Runner or The Ultimate Interview.
If you like "Squid Games", I recommend that you also check out the above works, which belong to the same genre - death game genre.
Battle Royale Stills
This paragraph actually profoundly exposes the reasons for the popularity of this type of film critics.
Human emotions about violence and death are complex, with fear on the one hand and wanting to understand on the other. And "Squid Games" is a game that packages violence and death as childhood.
As the author puts it – defanged by carnivalesque, primary-coloured depiction – allows the audience to feel the thrill of violence and death in a controlled, relaxed state.