Privilege in the Eyes of a Parasite
There’s this moderately famous reality series from the U.K., Rich House, Poor House, where in each episode, a family from opposite ends of the financial spectrum would swap realities for a week and see how both parties adapt or react to a standard of living far from what they’re adept to. I’ve never watched the show due to the mere fact of the show’s narrative being as crass as it sounds, not to mention the possible messages that would be misinterpreted on such a sensitive topic. All this considered, that didn’t stop me from thinking of the Rich House, Poor House’s concept during the drunken dinner scene of the Kim family in the 2019 film Parasite. The scene exhibited a montage of the impoverished Kims lavishing in the fortunes of the Park residency, a wealthy family they had deceived to get them well-paying employments working everyday jobs for the latter. The plot description alone paints the underprivileged Kims in a profoundly immoral manner, but that’s not the entire story that the movie wants to tell.
Parasite made waves on Oscars week when the South Korean film went down in history as the first non-English recipient of the Academy’s Best Picture. The film also bagged three other major Academy awards, including none other than director Bong Joon Ho, the critically-acclaimed filmmaker famous for his movies of social relevance masked by dark comedy. Parasite has undeniably skyrocketed to being an instant international classic, but amidst the glitz and glamour of winning four Oscars, and then some, reminds us of the real story Bong wants to tell. “I don’t think that I’m burning with (a) revolutionary spirit, instead I’m constantly exploring why revolutions are so difficult,” underlined Bong in an interview with CNN. “Why it’s so difficult to discern our opponents and what we have to fight against. Why the world has become so complicated; where it’s so difficult to identify these opponents.”
He is indeed talking about classism, moreover, the capitalism that Parasite highlights as the slithering poison that brings out the worst in society, no matter at which place of the social spectrum. The way the Kim family took advantage of the oblivious Parks: getting their predecessors fired, mooching off the Parks’ money by pretending to be mere acquaintances of each other to get the jobs; one could say that they do embody the film title, they are parasites.
That’s not to say that it has to be a black-or-white scenario either between the rich and the poor, because the film would lose its essence if all it did was egg on the misfortunate. The way the Parks, or rather, the rich, in general, scoff at the poor as this collective hot pile of garbage was iterated in the film.
“Same smell,” Da-Song (Jung Hyeon Jun), the Parks’ youngest, remarked on the new driver and house help, the Kim parents. “They smell exactly the same!” These words seemed like just blabber from a child and a slight hurdle for the Kim family, but the distinct smell of the Kims proved to eventually be at the forefront of the divide between the rich and the poor in the movie, a seemingly shallow yet powerful symbolism. The fact that the Park family breadwinner, Dong Ik (Lee Sun Kyun), garnered Mr. Kim’s (Song Kang Ho) scent as “crossing the line” meant the one obvious point that Parasite wants to come across: the poor will always be looked down upon. No matter their expertise, their credentials, it doesn’t beat the privilege of connections that the rich enjoy, which was the entire premise as to how the Kims deceptively secured their job working for the Parks in the first place. The rich don’t care how much money they spend or how desensitized they get from society as long as there are lower class people they can take advantage of to do the menial work for them; one could say that the Parks, or rather, the rich in general, are also parasites.
Looking back to the drunken dinner scene of the Kims, that was a highly pivotal part of the story, the mood change that Bong Joon Ho’s movies are famous for, the bridge between the best and the worst in society. The first half showed a sitcom-like story as the Kims go through all heights to get the whole family under the Parks’ payroll without ever identifying themselves as one kin. It showed the resilience and the diverse skillset that the Kims offered. It showed the kindness and the willingness of the Parks to give these people a chance. However, the second act highlighted the indifference of the Parks and the harsh reality that the Kims, and the rest of the urban poor, have to face. One of the most heartbreaking sequences in the movie, the one where the Kims were forced to stay in the gym because the excessive rain the night before had drowned the shanties into impunity, perfectly captured the contrast of the rich and the poor; from the poor having to claw at each other for clothes, while the rich couldn’t even pick from a variety of luxurious choices in their wardrobe, to Park Yeon Gyo (Cho Yeo Jeong) celebrating the rain that had fallen the night before as it has led to a garden party for her spoiled son, the same rain that plunged the houses of the rationalized.
Albeit this train of thought, Parasite goes beyond just simply contrasting the lives between the rich and the poor, it reiterates the problem with the evil system that puts a stamp on these social inequalities. It’s not the rich’s fault that the poor had to go to extreme ways to survive, nor is it the poor’s fault that they’re living under these unfortunate circumstances. It’s the system’s fault for enabling the gap between the rich and the working class to widen, and thus, also enabling the former to easily take advantage of the latter. In a way, we are all parasites of each other, and that is the sudden epiphany that I got whilst seeing the divide before and after that drunken dinner scene.
At the movie’s end, all the tragedies that had unwrapped right before the Kim family’s eyes in a span of less than 24 hours left us with a heartfelt monologue of Ki Woo (Choi Woo Shik). Escaping death and the family’s short-lived fortune has led him back to square one. He mentions the rock, a gift given to him by his wealthy friend Min (Park Seo Joon) during the opening hours of the film, one that he lifted from the murky waters of the flood in the Kims’ half-basement of a house and held tight in that one faithful rainy evening, and placed it in a stream of clear water amongst other rocks. As far as symbolisms go, the rock stood the most interesting to me, as it could be a metaphor for the poor, with the rich just flowing past like water while the lowly rocks stay sedentary.
“There are people who are fighting hard to change society. I like those people, and I’m always rooting for them, but making the audience feel something naked and raw is one of the greatest powers of cinema,” Bong tells Vulture in a discussion about the ending. “I’m not making a documentary or propaganda here. It’s not about telling you how to change the world or how you should act because something is bad, but rather showing you the terrible, explosive weight of reality. That’s what I believe is the beauty of cinema.”
“It clings to me,” Ki Woo spoke of the rock, an unfortunate reality where the poor remain rationalized, the only choice that this sick world has to offer.
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