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?
I agree with the take that its not a socialist movie, you can come out of thinking poor Parks if you lean that way. I do think the mother's monologue about niceness being hard for her is meant to create sympathy for working class people being scabby and not awesome. Maybe it is overdone in America, but it isn't in mine. People just hate poor people, as thieving and horrible. And it is a reality, that poverty comes with economic 'crime', and people do turn on each other. I think you'll really like Terry Pratchett's view of the working class in Guards! Guards! – quiet dignity, community kindness and protecting one's own etc. I think people forget that queer ghettos were working class and liberating spaces before.
Why it's still a good movie?
I think it's the rich details: the 'rain' affecting them so differently, the sex scene where they roleplay working class people, the expensive beef in the ramen, the automatic light that is actually literally a man in their basement, never having travelled underground. The stay away me, from don't get to close, don't get real vibe from the Bossman. You see how strangely warped culture is, the Indian fetish in Korea (like wtf), the man who worships someone who doesn't know he exists. It's a good movie for creating class consciousness. You're automatically saying sorta, yes the poor people should have banded together after the movie, or atleast my lib parents did.
if you missed the plot but they did want to let the underground guy chill, but the housekeeper took a video of them that she threatened to send because she wanted her job back.
you also missed the part where the rich guy asks the father to leave his daughter bleeding to death and while taking the keys from him that condemn his daughter to death, still manages to insult him.
It's a fantasy sequence, it's shot like that, he's brain damaged, it ends with him still at home.
Also don't say shit like they seemed okay, like they had jobs and seemed fine. They were relying on temp jobs, one of which got fucked & almost lost their free wifi... that was a precarious existence. They're never able to stop worrying.
No, that's wrong. The mother was not willing to cooperate with them and that's what prompted the housekeeper to respond negatively when they tried to negotiate after she got the video.
No I didn't, I just still didn't think it was a believable response.
I did miss this.
Yeah but they were slightly less desperate after they got two of the family members employed and both were getting lucrative payments, and that's the point when they started turning on their fellow workers. And they're the most secure that they've ever been when they turn on the people in the basement. That makes me see it less as being driven to it by desperation and more just being assholes.
It's been a few months since I first watched it, so I'll take your word on the fight between the two poor families. I think then that does make your point in the end stronger I guess, once people start seeing themselves as middle class (he thinks himself worthy of their daughter) they're willing to fight tooth and nail against the working class.
And it's all for naught, because when the ship is sinking, the rich will still make fun of them and leave their kids to die.
His daughter being left to die imo is the last straw among all the little cuts by the rich dude. 'Do your job' 'Don't cross the line'. He wants to just punch him in the face, let it out – the murder is how that anger manifests. He thinks his son is dead too. He has nothing to lose.
Also for what it's worth, Snowpiercer is a way better film, because it quite explicitly calls for revolution.