Calamari of all countries unite, revenge is near. At least on screen. It is the planetary lesson coming from Netflix, the platform that measures the tastes of the public under the post-Covid skies, revealing unthinkable fears and passions. And so it happens that in the days in which the manipulator Mark Zuckerberg ends up on trial, the antitrust is targeting the excessive power of Google and Amazon's shares fall below the level at the beginning of the year, Netflix's shares score a rise of more than 5% by breaking every record. Merit of "Squid Game", or "The game of the squid", the series that has shattered all previous records, tearing up the results of the "Paper house", the populist serial that at the time conquered the public fascinated by the assault on the powers that be, or of Bridgerton, the popular telenovela in which the handsome prince of the fairy tale is a black sex symbol, in homage to the philosophy of "black matters".
The squid that comes from the country you don't expect, South Korea, he tore up these precedents. Since September 17, the day the series was launched, Squid Game has become the most watched show in over 90 countries served by the streaming giant. Including Italy. All to follow the deeds of the disinherited who agree to participate in an isolated island in extreme races in which defeat means certain death. Hundreds of desperate people crushed by debt ready to do anything to win the final prize, more than 40 billion dollars, up for grabs by VIPs with faces hidden by masks, as well as guardians, a transparent metaphor for the excessive power of capital in a world stressed by Covid, which has increased inequalities between rich and poor.
It is certainly no coincidence that the script developed by the author, the Korean Wang Dong Hiuk, has been rejected several times in the last ten years by film producers, bewildered by a dreamlike script, not very credible because it is unreal. Save then to convince Minyun Kim, the head of Asian dramas at Netflix who sensed that this violent and cursed story represented a a convincing metaphor for the post-Covid world. If anything, it is surprising how the story, set in the suburbs of Seoul, a hypermodern megalopolis in the Far East, immediately met with the favors of Western audiences, starting with the youngest.
Of course, thanks to its algorithms Netflix is able to offer the voice acting in 13 languages. But the vast majority follow the plot thanks to subtitles (31 languages) not at all disturbed by the sound of a completely incomprehensible idiom that often forms the background of the 14 billion videos with the hashtag #SquidGame published on Tik Tok. Nor is it a problem for the 40 kids who, writes the Wall Street Journal, downloaded the 3D mask of the island's jailers from YouTube on Monday alone: plastic squid, even in Italy, will be the more worn for the next Halloween. Also because, unlike "Star Wars" or other Hollywood sagas, to take on the role of Seong Gi Hung, and Kang Sai-Biok just plain green overalls, no copyright issues. They are the two most popular heroes of the ruthless challenge: the first, displaced ex worker who at night relives the nightmare of the police squads unleashed against the pickets of strikers against the Hyundai lockout, the second a repentant yuppie, emerged from the ruthless selection of Seoul University, on the run after an unfortunate stock speculation.
Stories that, like the Oscar winner Parasite (also featured on Netflix to invest $XNUMX billion in Korean stocks), offers a harsh picture of social inequalities in Korea, as well as in many other countries. But the theme addressed, that of the many citizens pushed to the abyss by the capitalist system, is extremely topical at many other latitudes. There brutality of games of Squid Games it is but an allegory of the violent, cruel competition to which modern society pushes us every day. Especially in the borderlands disputed by the superpowers: the Korea of the chip giant Samsung, undermined by the nuclear missiles of Pyongyang, a few kilometers from the hot border of Taiwan, by now has the role of vanguard of the Cold War which at the time held Berlin. It is no coincidence that the liveliest and most cultured cinema matures here together with the K-pop boom which conquers the US public: "political nightmares and violence - said Orson Wells in the Third Man - were the theater of the Renaissance, 500 years of peace in Switzerland they gave us the cuckoo clock”.
Updated October 8, 2021
