How Squid Game does so little to eradicate capitalism

Capitalism. What a concept in the current world we live in. Often times we find ourselves in the entertainment world with late works that serve as a sorts of criticism of the capitalist system we live in. However, there’s so many shows that do this and yet offer no solutions to our current problems, and often serve as white noise that’s only presumably intended to “start a conversation”.

Sadly, Squid Game is one of those.

Squid Game, at least season one, is a South Korean drama about a man desperate to pay his debts through the means of participating in a battle royale game, where people play deadly children’s games to try to achieve the big jackpot. To say Squid Game is a cultural phenomenon that blew up is quite an understatement; often people try to recreate it under other forms of entertainment, without taking in mind the original message of the show, in videogames (like in Minecraft or in original games like Crab Game), in real life (MrBeast is the only one I can come across), etc.

The message of the show is as obvious as “capitalism bad”: rich billionaires will seek to treat poor people as non-people for their own amusement. Squid Game shows a reality of South Korea that’s way below the usual k-pop riddled nonsense; people out there under the capitalist system of South Korea are poor, desperate to get out of poverty, starving even. The disparages between poor and rich people are incredibly high: poor people are basically cattle and rich people will use them as goods or products.

It is clearly evident that the character development and the story of this show are pretty impressive, kinda easy to sympathize with the main cast in some way or another, depending on where you look at, and you can clearly see their struggles and motivations without too much exposition. There’s a perfect balance between “show” and “tell” that this show has, and the show’s signalling of foreshadowing future twists into the story are pretty clever, in all honesty.

Would it be a recommended show to watch? Yes. Would it be the solution to capitalism’s problems? Not exactly, though. As seen by the clear intentions of Netflix and co., this seems like yet another piece of white noise entertainment that’s going to be probably milked, but offers, again, no solutions to how crippling the capitalist system is. In reality, the show’s attempts at “sparking a conversation” are drowned within Netflix’s greed to keep milking the show, diluting the original message of the show even further. Not to mention the countless imitations and recreations coming out of other places like in videogames and YouTube content.

Another consume product.