by Amber Trotter, Psy.D.

Parasite’s popularity in the United States reflects recent changes in class politics. Following the second World War, Americans largely defined themselves as middle class, pursuing the “American dream” in the putative land of opportunity. Criticism or resentment towards the rich was considered in poor taste; conventional wisdom held that people become rich through working hard. Recent decades, however, have witnessed a precipitous erosion of the middle class and widening gulf between rich and poor, as well as ever more blatant influence of money on politics. Talking about class has become a thing. If we can indulge in the perennially dubious transmutation of object relations theory to citizens’ relationship to government and society, it’s as if Americans have shifted from relating to a soft, magnificently abundant breast to a hard and hollow one. The ideology of neoliberalism, hegemonic in this country for roughly the past half-century and heavily promoted across the globe, decrees that with a strong work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit – with a good plan – a comfortable life is available for the taking. Parasite, directed by South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, spotlights the bankruptcy of this ideology, while also elucidating its allure and persistence.

Mr. Kim, the father of Parasite’s working-class protagonist family manifests a shift from neoliberal ideology to class consciousness. Towards the beginning of the film, he tells his son, Ki-woo, that, “The important thing is to have a plan.” When things begin to fall apart at a breaking point midway through the movie, he assures his son and daughter that he “has a plan.” Towards the end of the drama, however, he wearily comments that it is better to have no plan, because none will work anyway, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, and it’s better not to be disappointed. The whole system is rigged against you. As a kind of proof, a flash flood that bursts the sewers in their Seoul slum instantaneously destroys the Kims’ home and possessions. And yet, in a final moment of stinging poignancy, Ki-woo offers a plan to save his father by become rich enough to buy the Parks’ house. As psychotherapists know well, we need hope, however deluded. When the hollow, fantastical hope of neoliberal capitalism is all that’s available, well, we’ll take it.

In the initial plan, the Kims bluff their way into employment with the opulent Park family. The Park’s home is exquisitely beautiful, designed by a famous architect, every detail impeccable. The Parks are naïve, but essentially likable—refreshingly, the film has no real villains, while maintaining its sardonic bite. For a moment, it seems the Parks are helping the Kims climb their way towards a better life. In one scene, the Kims sits in their cramped apartment, below street level, counting their earnings, and praising the Parks. 

The Parks leave town on a camping trip, and the Kims greedily, gloriously partake in the Parks’ sumptuous pleasures. Inebriated, they discover a family in worse circumstances than themselves, eking out an existence in the bowels of the Parks’ home, in sci-fi tunnels built through fear of North Korean bombing. A surreal, layered perversion of trickledown economics begs the question, “Is surviving on crumbs a life worth having?”

When the less fortunate family films the Kims, a frantic fight ensues over the weaponized cell phone. It’s among the film’s many uncomfortable moments, reminding us that the ostensibly liberating, democratizing capacity to record our experience is constrained by the question of control over technology and processes of dissemination. Surveillance is the cutting edge of the capitalism Parasite castigates. 

In the end, violence erupts at a painfully extravagant garden party. In a searing reminder of the deadliness of our current global economy, Mr. Kim stabs Mr. Park. You can only push people so far: humiliated desperation always threatens to erupt. Rich people attempt to insulate themselves from painful, frightening poverty, buying huge houses and drinking bottled water. They focus obsessively on a kind of purity, wary of contamination. But the precariousness capitalism precipitates forever haunts its ill-begotten privilege. Parasite encapsulates this dramaturgy through the Kims’ smell, an undisguisable marker of their class position, offensive to the Parks. Mr. Park tells his wife that Mr. Kim’s smell “crosses the line”; Mr. Parks’ squeamish reaction to the stench of poverty is the line-crossing that provokes his death.  

Blatant and subtle, horrific, funny, and cinematically stunning, this is the rare film that deserves multiple viewings and discursive unpacking for years to come