What Made Parasite Work?
Amal Das
The glamorous arena of the Academy Awards witnessed something very unusual this year. Parasite (2019), a South Korean dark comedy directed by 50-year old Bong Joon-ho, stunned the American film world by winning four of the prestigious awards, including “Best Film”. It became the first non-English film (the first Korean film too) ever to win the Oscar for “Best Film” and “Best Director”, one after the other, after a long 92 years of dry spell. This incredible feat adds to director Bong Joon-ho’s collection of accolades for the film, starting with a Palm d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
It is quite surprising how this movie has been so well-received in prominent film festival circuits in both the US and the UK. The Oscars are known for their cruelly narrow selection of films, based on very specific aesthetics. Family drama, war-period drama, survival drama, biopics and sports drama are the genres that tend to score in big industries and award nights. The pretty universal narrative form of these films make it easily relatable as well as a saleable commodity amongst voters all around the world. Studies have shown the demographics of this voting population as 94% white and 77 % men voters. Minorities form a miniscule 9% of the population and therefore, films of their voices get muffled for the majority. On the other hand, people have been raising issues of institutional racism and other forms of discrimination in the selection and nominations of Oscars for quite a while now: #oscarsowhite, for example.
So what has enabled the same critics and industrialists, actors and technicians, directors and distributors to rally behind this non-white, non-English film? What is this new enthusiasm? Why this sudden embrace when there was only one black nominee in the entire nominee list of the Oscars? It’s a worthy thing to ponder upon.
Parasite is about two families at the two extremes of society’s socio-political hierarchy. The first family, the Kims, is literally at the bottom (they live in a basement apartment), trying out various felonies to survive in a highly exploitative world. The second, the Parks, is ignorantly at the top, with accumulated wealth to spend and generate profits in millions. The film centres around the struggles of the Kims to get through as servants of the Parks, the elite lot. The Kims condition is so pathetic that they’re desperate enough to fake their identities to dupe the Parks. The film’s title is derived from the portrayal of the first family as living off on another set of humans by sucking up their resources.
However, the impostors eventually realise their real fate as ‘parasites’ when things start going in the wrong direction. The Parks family goes for a picnic, leaving the entire mansion to the servants cum impostors alone. The latter start a booze-party, in the middle of which the ex-housekeeper, Moon-Gwang arrives at the mansion. Fearing that all their planning would go wasted, mother Kim hides all others and lets Moon-Gwang in. They soon realise that all this while Moon-Gwang had been hiding her own husband in the mansion’s basement in fear of loan sharks, living off leftovers that Moon-Gwang secretly supplied to him from the kitchen. Mother Kim starts to blackmail the ex-maid of informing the owners, the Parks, about this but bad luck hits, for the Kims too fall onto the scene. Moon-Gwang starts threatening the Kims back of revealing their true identities. The Parks, at the same time, cancel their trip due to bad weather and arrive home in the middle of all this. Following a brawl with Moon-Gwang, mother Kim manages to hide the rest of the Kims and push a terribly injured Moon and husband back into the basement. Kims too manage to escape from the mansion while Parks remark on the same stench all their new servants had. The whole slum gets submerged in flood after the storm and returning Kims find their basement overflowing with filth. They spend the rest of the night at a flood-relief centre brooding over their existence.
The ignorance of the elites play out the next day when the Parks decide to celebrate their son’s birthday, rather grandiosely. They designate roles to the Kims to play out during the celebration to much dismay of the latter. When the mere possibility of surviving the day becomes impossible, the father reacts to this insensitivity. A ghastly violent incident happens and then the father goes missing.
The basic plot-line of the film could be the primary reason for its wide reception. This plays out with the guilt of the upper/upper-middle class for being ignorant towards the plight of classes below them (especially in capitalist welfare states like the US, the UK and, Europe). This is to be contextualised in the current political milieu where there is a rise in ultra-nationalism and far-right political groups across the world. Its been understood that that they rode to power by cleverly banking upon the frustrations of the lower-classes for being left out of the neo-liberal economic project.
A highly polished, staged family drama has always been a favourite for critics and big industries alike. Parasite, irrespective of it’s Korean settings, cleverly establish that atmosphere. The relatively familiar spaces such as households, neighbourhoods, and social circles strike a dramatic balance with anyone. It was a clever move from the director to fix the whole thread around two families since it very definitely conforms to the choices of the big industries. These award galas give over deserving considerations to family dramas because of its easy market. Hence, Parasite creates and indulges in a very familiar setup of any other typical Oscar product.
One set of characters are living in a lower class neighbourhood. They are skilled but unemployed, and use smartphones for their daily survival. The claustrophobic mise-en-scène, limited movement of the camera with fluid cuts (almost linear) is very much a Hollywood-like style for dramatic effect. Short lenses to restrict the on-screen space again establish the poor household, and the elaborate use of space inside the mansion to showcase grandeur helped the audience to grasp class difference. The contrast in both the households is conveyed through this obvious use of space. Inside the vast mansion, the camera moves more, from characters to an expanded shot length. Carefully crafted vast, wide shots have helped create a magical aura to the mansion.
These meticulously planned choices in the entire film make it easy and dramatic to connect with the characters’ universe. Elements of black comedy have been constructed to build a theatrical and emotional effect on the big industry audience. It plays more with the guilt of the elites giving short reliefs for laughs rather than developing a nuanced critical perspective.
Tragic End
The tragic end of the film is a favourite trope for recognition again. It has been made cathartic using a very clichéd situation, built on the above-mentioned guilt. The intensity of moments and emotions lead to a momentous outburst for the audience. It is very eerie and distressing thus creating a dramatic effect on audiences. This again goes back as the prominent narrative feature of all main Oscar winners. It may be a very distant connection, but quite a convincing one.
So, Parasite‘s stunning Oscar victories show that the choices of the Academy have not changed much. The three Oscar wins for a mere technical spectacle like 1917 indicate the same. Critically acclaimed Hollywood films like The Irishman and The Lighthouse did not even make any achievement at all in this hullabaloo. Parasite was fresh only to the extent of eeriness and theatrics. Hence, the big win in the big industries.
This does not suggest that Parasite is a bad film. It is a cleverly crafted dark comedy built around the usual formulas of a typical Oscar-winning industry film. It really explores a serious issue, but to a very limited extent. In fact, the real craftsmanship of Bong Joon-ho as seen in his earlier films like Memories of Murder (2003), Mother (2009), and Snowpierecer (2013) is not visible in Parasite. It felt more like Bong did a film in an ‘Oscar way’, and won everything, rather than Bong doing a ‘Bong film’.
Amal Das is a research scholar at the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.
Follow us for regular updates!
Telegram
t.me/studentstrugglein
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/studentstrugglemonthly
WhatsApp
https://chat.whatsapp.com/BvEXdIEy1sqIP0YujRhbDR