Talking like the squid game games like they were only written on a basis of audience entertainment (or written like they're supposed to entertain at all tbh*) is wild to me because in each version of the games we see, the actual games follow trends of capitalism and portray what it takes to accrue the cash they gain every time a player dies. It's symbolic.
The first game, RLGL weeds out the majority of the crowd, it's a mass slaughter. The vast majority of people are just normal and aren't rich and just have their necks under the boot of capitalism. To survive RLGL you need to be canny, not to panic and to keep your wits about you.
Being able bodied helps Significantly (even if it's not impossible to survive if you're not. Junhee -and all commentary around disability inherent to her story- survives Only beacuse of Gihun's intervention. Her flinch of pain because of her pregnancy is unseen by demon doll girl as she's hidden in a line specifically designed to hide most of the players). But my point is, you do not hurt anybody else in this game to advance. Now you Can hurt other people if you're just like that, but unless you are actively malicious your own survival and advancement under capitalism is not harming another person's survival and advancement. You're just trying to live.
Game two is also not a game where your survival is incumbent on another person's failure. You successfully cutting out your shape harms nobody. A team successfully competing the pentathlon harms nobody. Yes it's hard, yes many other's have an advantage (especially in s1), but you don't hurt anybody by default. In the pentathlon your failure at a game very much can get four other people gunned down, but that's taking the team down with you by accident. After all, one incompetent person at a job can bring the whole place down.
Game 3 is where it starts with the brutality. The further up the ladder you get, the more money you gain, the more you're hoarding from somebody else. In game three, you getting through is Directly at the expense of somebody else dying. In tug of war, you are forced to pay for the money you're gaining by participating in killing a whole other team. In carousel, a place in a room is a place in a room some other poor bastard isn't getting. The price of your gain is their death because there are not enough recourses for everybody (the guy running the games even felt comfortable just saying it out loud as he larped as a player). Mind you, the lack of recourses to go around is artificially controlled by the ruling classes. There's no reason they couldn't just give everybody money and send them away. But no, this is entertainment.
Game 3 is when your survival becomes your culpability in the system. You're no longer doing no harm, just trying to survive. It's an active choice to take from somebody else to advance.
Game 4 is more of the same, but it's more ruthless, more personal. In one they trick you into pairing with people you like and then make you advance by cutting them down. To gain, you must kill not just random people, but this person you teamed up with. The ruthless level is getting higher. They're getting really rich by this point.
Or you have hide and seek, and I don't need to explain how ruthless That one is. Either way, even if you're a blue, your very act of survival is killing a red that did not kill anybody in the game. The only difference is that the reds lack the distance the blues get in that situation, no lying to themselves about it. I imagine they allowed players to swap vests because for the viewers it'd be boring if the reds weren't capable of killing, they Wanted the right people in red.
The further the money has risen, the more violence against your peers it takes to succeed. Again, this is what capitalism really demands. To stick a knife in the back (or front, to be fair) of somebody you know.
Game five appears to be the game that is the final cull. It removes anybody who is physically not able if they've made it this far. Capitalism, to put it mildly, isn't great for disabilities (i am still irritated at the view that Junhee died because of her pregnancy. She died because she had a broken ankle and couldn't jump). There is a great deal of luck involved here also, and by this point most of the people left are ruthless enough to try and cull the herd off their own backs Just for more money. Their survival in jump rope doesn't depend on other's deaths. They've just been well trained into killing by now. Or were always like that. Stepping stones was more dumb luck but functioned the same (except for the part where other's deaths Did benefit the survivors, they could not have lived without them dying). Either way, most of the herd is culled. Capitalism on some level Is pure luck, you can't get to the top without a lot of That as well. And game 5 is a lot of luck.
Game six however is the ultimate personal showdown. There must be a victor. You have to kill or be killed. Gihun surviving the first time was So shocking to Inho because men like Gihun don't just Survive these games. He Was made culpable in the horrors that got him to the end, very much so, he was forced to kill and fight dirty to survive in ways that made him hate himself, but he was not the pure picture of ruthlessness that capitalism demands you be to reach the top. He lived because Sangwoo was that ruthless and knew gihun would not kill him and that they'd Both lose the money if they gave up, so he killed himself knowing gihun would give his mother the money she needed. He made Himself the victim for his own capitalistic gains. My niche take is that the only person who won anything in S1 was Sangwoo.
In S3 it was literally a meeting or committee to decide who'd win capitalism, like boardrooms across the world that kill people en masse without a care in the world. I know people hated it but i Loved the idea that they're symbolically the board of directors or whatever just deciding who'd succeed at capitalism depending on who They think was worth surviving. Note that it had Nothing to do with anything quantifiable, it was just who they personally liked. Pure bias and personal gain.
They didn't consider a drug user worth life because they thought themselves better, or some weird guy who actually Cares about people that makes them look bad. Or a defenceless little girl. A group of rich men denying a baby girl the right to live, for easy money. What biting commentary. They did not even consider her human. A bunch of 'rich' able bodied men deciding anybody Not like them doesn't get to live? Yeah, way of the world. Or not, because, you know, Gihun wasn't like that. A glimmer of hope in a sea of hopelessness. Compassion and selflessness amongst a system meant to deliberately eradicate all traces of it.
An act that struck the comically evil VIP's silent, at least for a few seconds.
Anyway, the game choices were a deliberate portrayal of the system of capitalism in kids game form. Them being fun to watch was So far from the point. Each game serves a specific function of a metaphor of capitalism.
*the audience is not meant to symbolically be the VIP's, unless you happen to be reading this as a multi millionaire and above, you're supposed to be watching and saying 'wow this could happen to me' about the Contestants... This isn't the hunger games where your self insert isthe capitol audience. The entertainment factor is for the VIP's which we are not. They were all very much gripping and horrifying and left me unable to look away at times, but I would not personally use the word entertaining because it implies a positive experience.
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
prguitarman
janainaart
snowghoul
jacobvanloon
dededos
theartofmadeline
stormborns
