It’s impossible to avoid now, but for future generations: Squid Game was a TV series on Netflix. It got a viral marketing boost and now all of social media is teeming with foaming-mouthed fanatics insisting that everybody MUST WATCH this show immediately or there will be consequences.
Now I will tell you why, not only am I not watching Squid Game, but you should not watch Squid Game either.
We’ve seen enough class-struggle dystopian sci-fi
The first 10 times I saw a class-struggle-based dystopian sci-fi movie, I thought, “Yeah, great socio-political commentary!” The next 50 class-struggle-based dystopian sci-fi movies I saw, I thought, huh, neat take, but it’s been done. After that, every class-struggle-based dystopian sci-fi movie gives me the kind of heartburn you get from too much grease and not enough substance.
I’ve seen Snowpiercer, The Platform, and High-Rise. Somebody else already pointed out that they are exactly the same movie. I’ve also seen The Hunger Games, and Squid Game is literally the exact same premise. I’ve seen The Purge, Elysium, They Live, The Running Man, Freejack, Soylent Green, and V for Vendetta. Not to mention, as the above image forecasts, that Metropolis fits in this category too; the very first sci-fi movie ever made.
Let me save you some time and tell you all about every single one of the above movies. This is the entire point:
“Proletariat vs Bourgeoisie”
- There are RICH PEOPLE, and they are EVIL for the sake of being EVIL!
- There are POOR PEOPLE who suffer because they are POOR!
- The RICH stay RICH by exploiting the POOR people and keeping them POOR!
- Nobody can seem to do anything effective about it.
- You should be MAD about this! MAD MAD MAD!
That’s all this is. A class-struggle sci-fi movie is not inspirational or instructive or educational or witty or original. It is not deep or profound. It’s not even a story. The entire point is to invoke the Krodha rasa and turn the viewer into the Incredible Hulk. Hulk hate rich people now!
Not only that, but we have a whole wing of literature devoted to the exact same effect, called dystopian literature. They include The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Brave New World, all of which are at the top of the list of most recommended books for required reading in school. I’ve written this same blog post about why force-feeding students these novels is a crime against intellect.
But we’ll go over it again, this time with movies and TV, because what I am saying really IS an original thought which is currently absent from all of world culture.