I got in trouble because someone posted a thread telling everyone to watch Parasite because it explains how reactionary chuds are actually good people deep down and they're just the beleagured working class and shit, and I responded to that talking about how in my own lived experience, people at the bottom are actually pretty chill and the working class chud thing is kinda exaggerrated and the reality is that a lot of chuds are middle class Boomer Karen small buisiness tyrants who love to throw their weight around. Everyone jumped down my throat and started putting words in my mouth and it became a minor struggle session. However, some other people were more chill and I tried my best to put it aside and evaluate the movie on it's own merits, thinking maybe those losers had just missed the point and it was actually good but in a different way than they interpred it. Here is my review:
The first half was slow. It was basically just the plot of The Music Man but edgier and more repetitive. I didn't feel invested in the characters and I felt like their definining chracteristics were that they were poor and also jerks. Yeah yeah I know the entire internet is screaming at me that the whole point is that capitalism forces them to be jerks, but like, does it though, in the movie? They didn't have to turn against other workers to get the first two hired, and it wasn't clear (at least to me) that that income wasn't enough to get by.
Then we have the bit with the guy in the basement. They could've absolutely just let him chill down there, but they didn't, because they were jerks. And because they're jerks and the relationship becomes antagonistic, it causes them all sorts of problems. It seemed to me like their jerkishness was more of a liability than an asset.
The climax didn't make any sense and wasn't believable. Like, the father secured this gullible rich fuck through whom he was able to secure a livlihood for himself and his family, and he randomly decides to throw it all away because the rich fucker said he smelled bad? And before everyone jumps down my throat for defending the rich guy, I'm not, fuck him, I'm just talking about the father's motivations.
The resolution was the worst part by far. Is there any sort of messaging about banding together with your fellow worker? Absolutely not. The son just fucking decides he wants to get rich enough to buy the house and that works, because the system is fair and anyone can get rich if they just try hard enough. What the actual fuck. Why didn't he just decide to get rich before any of this happened and save me two hours?
This is basically no different from people upholding The Joker as a socialist film. Socialism isn't just random acts of violence against rich people. Hating rich people, especially hating particular rich people, doesn't automatically make you a socialist. The movie doesn't make any sort of statement on where the Park's wealth came from which leaves the audience to figure out whether it's earned or unearned, and if you didn't already have socialist values then you could easily come away siding with the Parks. So why does everyone act like this is some great socialist masterpiece?
You're wrong, and Zizek has probably one of the best takes on the movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR5RgxTBPxk
His point is that Leftists authors are wrong to so frequently idealize the working class, and make them into paragons of moral actions.
Wealthy people, like the Parks, can afford to be kind, they can afford to be generous in the same way that Bill Gates can afford to be nice to everyone he meets and leave a $10,000 tip every time he goes out for dinner.
Workers being ground up under a wheel of oppression don't have the luxury to be moral, they are forced to do what they need to survive. And if they live in a society with little class consciousness (like modern South Korea) they are almost certainly going to view ruthlessly looking out for their own interests as the only actions they can take to escape from wretched conditions.
The point of Parasite is that we should address the conditions which force the Kims into behaving as they did, acting like it's because of personal moral failings that the working class doesn't band together and achieve class consciousness is plain wrong.
strongly disagree, the most generous people i've ever known are also some of the poorest, this just smells of middle class people looking down on the poor
When I was like 5 I made a comment about how rich people must be generous bc they have so much money to spare and my mom was like, "Do you think they got where they are by giving away all their money?" She's a total chud but I guess she's more woke than half this fucking site.
Are you claiming it's woke to claim that the reason people are poor is because they're generous and not because they get paid starvation wages?
Yes that's exactly what I'm claiming thank you for reading where I definitely wrote that and not just putting words into my mouth.
I genuinely don't know what it means... Like are you saying what being said is if they were more generous they wouldn't be rich? That in my opinion is atleast one thing this site does not deny.
The other interpretation is that getting rich requires not being generous when you are poor. That is why I jumped the gun on how to get richer.
The system rewards people for acting immorally. People who are higher up in the system tend to be worse because of that. People at the bottom can be there for a variety of reasons so it's a mixed bag. Being a sociopath is often necessary, but generally not sufficient to get rich.
Saying "You have to be greedy to get rich" is absolutely not the same thing as saying "People are only poor because they're too generous."
I can promise you that I've heard that take ad nauseum at this point.