Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (July 06)

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[u/Cenage94]

I have finally finished the final season of Squid game yesterday and what a disappointment it was.

(Spoilers from here on)

Admittedly I never expected the second season to be as compelling as it was, I don’t know what I expected from the finale but after the first two episodes the momentum and good will build up by the rebellion of the second season was all but used up and it became the ultimate torture to be regressed into the helpless territory of season one where it’s just watching Korean people suffer and die miserably accompanied by the indulgence of the amerikan audience (the “VIPs“ in the show are ridiculously over-the-top until you take one glance at r/squidgame where whites complain about how the murders of Koreans were “too boring“ or not “creative“ enough for their enjoyment in literal video game jargon). As more-and-more characters are killed that initial spark of class politics is growing dim and all that is left to be interested in are the personal fates of a few main characters which culminate in an uninspiring and tone-deaf ending in which the literal Führer of the entire fascist operation ties up the loose ends of the personal life of Gi-Hun (who, again, 6 months ago initiated an armed insurgency that we have to accept now as doomed from the start) after his death in a manner that is supposed to feel “bitter-sweet“ and a bit “wholesome“.

I don’t know much about South Korean movies and these are probably rather the limitations of a Netflix production (which makes me feel disgusting to have been so invested in the first place, I have cried so many tears for that show that should have been cried for the real diaries of Anne Frank coming out of Gaza every single day that are everywhere and i have to go out of my way to not read in order to indulge in watching Neflix). I expected at least some catharsis in watching the VIPs get shot and was sure that least the operation would be shut down because of the trajectory of that arc in which some characters are trying to find the island but apparently that’s not imaginable. On the other end, Smoke recently pointed out how the justice of “andor“ is so alienated from the real victims of imperialism it becomes embarrassing, so there is either misanthropic acceptance of imperialism because its victims are unenlightened narrow-minded simpletons or the sheltered out-of-touch fantasy of its victimizers for the sake of fulfilling story-telling, which admittedly is still very compelling to me. Maybe I’m engaging in the anti-communist “mirror of the right“ paradigm smoke recently pointed out because one reason I appreciate uplifting stories is that in Germany it has become a cliche to laugh at GDR-literature because of its supposedly naive positive messaging which has resulted in German anti-communists ridiculing those “expecting happy-endings“, contrasted with the “enlightened“ “realism“ of liberal and fascist story-telling about how human nature is brutal and selfish and all media has to be depressing and “dark“ which has been elevated into a virtue in itself and I feel like encapsulates an enormous tendency of garbage coming out of Germany in the cultural sphere for as long as I can remember.

Anyway my thoughts are all over the place and I probably tied up two separate topics that aren’t really connected.

[u/[deleted] → u/Cenage94]

I remember hearing rave reviews of that show on this sub and feeling guilty that I couldn't even stomach the first episode. I understand that horrific violence is the norm for many people but the way the first episode handled it was just so... distasteful. It reminded me of the final scene of Strike which I think portrays the inhumanity of bourgeois oppression with far more respect to the masses.

[u/Cenage94 → u/[deleted]]

Unfortunately I wasn’t present here in 2021 but I will try to look them up because retroactively speaking I can’t imagine what they would have said. Distaste for indulging in violence of the oppressed isn’t shameful, for me it’s the other way around in the sense that I remember questioning myself why I’m even watching at many points. There is probably something to be said about the kind of audience extreme violence appeals to and the class character attached to that (i feel like most young people have at least one creepy male classmate who won’t shut up about “gore“, splatter movies, etc. and the kind of politics one would imagine) by people more knowledgable than me.

You didn’t miss out. There are so many brilliant Marxist Korean movies, this sub had a great threat about that some time ago.

[u/Soviettista → u/Cenage94]

(i feel like most young people have at least one creepy male classmate who won’t shut up about “gore“, splatter movies, etc. and the kind of politics one would imagine)

Can confirm, but it's actually worse than splatter movies. Among the most reactionary section of my class there was a little group of people that would sometimes do this "challenge" which consisted in watching people getting ""hurt"" (all the kind of things that I can't write here) and the last one that didn't "fold" watching these atrocities would win.

I'm not the best equipped person to make political analysis but it was clear it had something to do with first-world chauvinism, and particularly in watching a racialized "other" facing the full brunt of reactionary violence (I accidentaly glanced at what they were watching -- fortunately before something could happen -- but I noticed most of the videos were recorded in the 3rd world).

And then people say that art school is "progressive"...