Parasite with Grace Jung

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Speaker 1: On the Doll Cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef invest start changing it with the beck Del Cast. Hey, Caitlin, Yes, Jamie starting to think capitalism might be dot dot dot not so great with Wait what? Um? Well, that was what I got for an opening love? You know, I just I feel like I've really like my my opening game has really diminished lately. And I don't know if it's just because like my it's nine trillion degrees in my brain is just boiling inside of my skull, or or if it's all finally getting to me, you know. Personal apologies for that real lukewarm opening. I could have done better, and I will strive to do better. Jamie, don't apologize. I mean this is a this is a difficult time. Well, welcome to the Bectel Cast. Name is Jamie Loftus, my name is Caitlin Darante, and this is our our little podcast where we talk about some incredible movies and some not incredible movies using an intersectional feminist lens for discussion. That's right, and we use the Bechdel Tests, often known as the Bechtel Wallace Test, as a way to just inspire a larger conversation in That is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel, and it requires that, for our purposes are sort of modified version of the test. Two people from a marginalized gender must have names, they must speak to each other, and they must not talk about a man. Many movies don't do it, but but but some movies do. But sometimes it happens. That's just the nature. It's kind of a past failed test. There's not really un middling, although sometimes there's those fun ones like like the one we have to have a whole conversation about it. Sometimes two women with with names, or just apologizing over nothing like like I was doing, you know, just two minutes ago. So um, you know there there are shades of gray there as well. But I'm really really really excited to talk about today's movie popular request and uh and one of my face yes, And we have a terrific guest joining us today. She is a comedian. She is a PhD candidate in Cinema and Media studies, and her academic publications have covered such things as television studies, Korean media, Asian American history, gender and sexuality. It's Grace Young. Hello, Hi, welcome, Thank you so happy to be here. We're happy to have you so Grace. Tell us about your general relationship with the film Parasite. Oh yeah, we did. Also we're covering Parasite. We were like, we were like, um, a popular request, but leave your guessing as to what movie. I know. I was like, why am I here? Who are these people? Yeah? Yeah, I I love this movie Parasite. Um. I've been I've been following the filmmaker poem Jun host career for a long time, and I would say that he's like the first Korean filmmaker to really make it into the mainstream zeitgeist in the United States and other parts of the world. Yeah, and I really love his filmmaking. Um. Interesting side note on Punch. You know, he studied sociology in college, so he actually did not study filmmaking per se. But yeah, I would say because of his educational background, a lot of his movies cover sort of that, like the sociological kind of critique of Korean society and capitalism a lot. And uh yeah, I mean I I was very excited to see the movie because I saw in the trades that he had won the Palm door for his latest movie, Parasite, and I was like, Okay, that's a big deal because you know, like a Korean filmmaker, to win a palm door I can is a big deal. And then um, I went to see it in theaters with a friend, another creative American friend. It was her birthday. I went to see it. I thought the movie was so astounding, like such a such an amazing movie. You know, like I watch a lot of films because you know, I work in film and write about film, but like I hadn't seen a movie that made me feel that like elated and so long and um. Yeah. Right after the movie ended, as we were leaving, my friend immediately wanted to talk to me about and I was like, you have to stop talking right now. I just I just need to go home and process this alone. And so I just I just went home processed it, and then I texted like like two other creative American friends of mine, and I just like Parasite, you have to see it. We have to see it together, and like they want to see it by themselves. And then we went as a group together to go and see it again, and um yeah, it's like a film that I could keep returning to. I think it's really well done for sure. Hell yeah, Jimmie, what about you? This was one of I mean, this is in no way a hot take. It was one of my favorite movies I saw last year. I saw it a couple of different times in theaters and this was kind of embarrassingly my first movie from from this director. I hadn't seen anything else because before this podcast started, I didn't watch a ton of movies. Um. But after seeing Parasite, I went back into his film catalog and now I've seen the majority and I haven't seen um I think two of his films. But um yeah, I just kind of uh swiveled into becoming a stand and I love this movie. I hadn't seen it in a couple of months, and it was really fun to go back to after not having been watching it like once a week towards the beginning of the year. Um yeah, but I really love it. Yeah, Caitlin, what is your experience with this movie? Pretty similar? Um? I had seen a few of his films in the past, uh, And I went into Parasite not knowing anything about it, and because I had seen the host and because the movie is called Parasite, I thought it was also going to be like a monster movie. I was like, oh no, just kidding, it's not that at all. Um. I'd also seen snow Piercer, and I was like, Okay, it's more aligned thematically with snow Piercer because of like the class commentary. Um, but I hadn't seen Oakcha, which I saw. I watched over the weekend, and I have never I've just saw being at the end of like the kind of sobbing where you're just you can't breathe because you're crying so hard. Anyways, Caitlin, did you need an out Did you need outlet? I mean it's very sad, but the animals, those super piglets and anyway, Um, I was traumatized. In any case, I I do really enjoy his filmography and I love to Parasite. I only saw it once in theaters, but I've seen it a number of times since then because it came out on Hulu, so I was very thankful. Feminist icon Hulu, owned by Fox was like Disney Capitalist. Have you seen those Disney reboots for sure. They're feminists cash grab at all. Okay, So, um uh should I just dive into of the recap and we'll go from there. Yeah, let's do it. I like how we asked that question every single episode. O, thank you for asking for consent before starting to recap. Well, you know, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page. Alright. So we meet the Kim family. It's a mother, father, son, and daughter. I believe the son and daughter are in their late teens, maybe early twenties. Not entirely sure early because at the end you find out how old the daughter was because it says she was born. Got it, I missed that detail. Good to know in any case. Um, they come from a low socio economic background. They live in this like semi basement level apartment. Their phones have been shut off, they don't have access to WiFi anymore. They do kind of odd jobs like folding pizza boxes for work for money. Then one day and apologies in advance for all of the horrible pronunciations I'm going to do of these Korean characters names. But k the Sun gets a visit from his friend Min, who brings the family this stone that is meant to bring like wealth and prosperity to the family, and he is also leaving to study abroad. It's fun when the when the stone comes in, You're like, oh, it's a metaphor stone. I wonder what the metaphor will be, but it just even when I don't know, you know, you can sometimes tell it's a metaphor just by the way it's framed. You're like, well, it's fun because like it's but it's also like plant and payoff, so it's like it has a narrative purpose, it has a symbolic purpose. Even Ques is like, this is metaphorical. Um, just making fun of people watching the movie in the all time. It's great. Um. So anyway, so Min is leaving to study abroad and he wants to recommend Q for his old job tutoring a girl from a rich family. Q's sister helps him forge a college degree I think um or some kind of official academic document, and he goes in for an interview and he meets Mrs Park, who is naive and gullible. She interviews him and gives him the job. He also meets the teen girl that he'll be tutoring, and the young son, we also would think. At this point meet the Park's housekeeper, so Mrs Park then also tells him that her son, let me check the pronunciation here, her son Dosson, needs an art teacher, and Q is like, I know of someone who might be a good fit this classmate of my cousin, and who he really means is his sister Key young and Um Illinois, Chicago. Yes, yes, And so Mrs Park gives them English names, Kevin and Jessica, which I might default to using for the sake of again not continuing to embarrass myself every time I fail and pronounce pronounced them just fine so far, Okay, thank you so much. I'm very self conscious about it, but you're welcome. You're so welcome. I just don't want to be disrespectful. Okay. So Jessica, pretending to have the necessary credentials and experience, gets the job doing art therapy for the young son Um. And then we also meet the father of the rich family, Mr Park, and his driver takes Jessica home and she leaves her underwear in the car, planting it as incriminating evidence, knowing that it will probably get him fired, which it does. So now that driver position is open for Mr. Kim to be able to get that job. Now, the only thing they have left to do is to get rid of the Park family's housekeeper, um so that their mom, Mrs Kim, can have that job. Enter the Peach. Yes, this one's a little trickier because the housekeeper has been working in this home for years and years, but they use her peach allergy against her, and they're able to get her fired by convincing Mrs Park that the housekeeper has tuberculosis. Just like one of the funniest secrets in the movie that the whole sequence is just so fucking funny. It's like when they're like shaving the little peach fuzz off the peaches and collecting it in like a tiny little vial the house at the end. It's just great. Yeah. So then Mrs Kim gets tired as the Park family housekeeper, and now they're all working for this rich family and one day the Parks go on a camping trip up the Kims are like, well, let's see what it's like to live lavishly in this upscale home. So they're eating, they're drinking, they're carrying on. But then someone shows up at the door and it's the old housekeeper who says she left something behind, so Mrs Kim reluctantly lets her in the house. She goes down into the basement and it turns out there is a secret bunker down there. This is what we would call the midpoint of the film. Um, and it's not as though I have a screenwriting master's degree or anything like that. I'm the least educated person in the chat and killing me, Okay. So they go down into this secret bunker where the former housekeeper's husband has been living for the past four years because he is hiding from debt collectors. Now Mrs Kim threatens to call the police on the former housekeeper and her husband, but just then her family, who had been eavesdropping on this whole interaction like like tumble down the stairs, uh and accidentally reveal themselves, and the old housekeeper, who recognizes all of them and realizes that they have been lying about who they are, threatens to expose them to the Park family. A big fight breaks out between them, and then the Park family calls to be like, hey, it's raining. The camping trip has been cut short. We're on our way home. We're we'll be there in eight minutes, so everyone has to scramble. The Kim's drag the housekeeper and her husband back down into the basement. There's violence, and then the Park family arrives back home and the meal is made. It looked so good. The Kim family hides in the living room under the coffee table. Uh. They try to escape, but get delayed because Mr and Mrs Park are right there jerking each other off on the couch in matching pajamas. Too. It is just never not disturbing to watch. And I'm like, I know, you're like, I don't know, I'm do do your thing, but in matching pajamas the realist portrayal of a married couple of sex life. Yeah, imagining gray pajamas jerking each other off, joylessly, each other off like their their son is an a tent mirror yards away, like alright, gang, do you? So they're right there and Mr Park thinks that he can smell Mr Kim's smell because he has commented on how different members of the family have commented on how the Kim family has a distinct kind of foul smell about them. So eventually the Kim family are able to escape, so Kevin, Jessica, and Mr Kim return home, but their basement level apartment has been flooded with sewage water because of this storm that's happening. And then they're trying to figure out what to do about this situation with the previous housekeeper and her husband. Then the next day, the Park's throw an impromptu birthday party for the Sun and they invite Kevin and Jessica and Mr and Mrs Kim are there working and helping out with the party. And then during the party, Kevin goes down to the basement. He discovers the old housekeeper who has died from her head injury, and the housekeeper's husband bashes Kevin on the head, and then he goes out into the party. Also she's she's told her husband to like vow to kill Mrs Kim or at least attempt to kill Mrs Kim right yes, And then the housekeeper's husband goes out into the party and stabs Jessica. All hell breaks loose. Then Mr Kim sees Mr Park being disgusted by the smell that he smells on like the housekeeper's husband. So Mr Kim stabs Mr Park and then runs off and no one knows where he is at first, but then some time passes, Q has survived his head injury. He figures out that his dad is in the bunker, and he forms a plan to become rich enough that he can buy the house that his dad is hiding in and then they can all reunite. And we see this play out as a kind of flash forward, but it cuts back to the present. He is still in like the basement level apartment, implying that that's probably never going to happen. The end. That the end, it's a very uplifting film. Yeah, just brings joy. Um, So that's the story. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back to discuss and we're back. Um. Something that I wasn't totally aware of before I started researching for this episode was I mean, I know that this movie really resonated with American audiences, but I didn't know that much about the socioeconomics of uh, South Korea. I am kind of running on like a basic subpar American history education as it is. So I prior to preparing for this episode, only new kind of the basics on South Korean history like next to nothing, And so for those of you that are in the same boat as me on that. Uh. Here are a couple of quick facts. This is from uh literally socialist dot net, if you can believe feminist icon socialist it's a little website called socialist dot net. But just to contextualize the class disparity in South Korea. So this is from a piece by Andy south work about parasite. Quote. Korea had barely developed under the yoke of Japanese imperialism at the end of the Korean War in nineteen fifty three. The South remained a largely rural economy with a very low standard of living. In the period immediately following the war, the South was totally dependent on the US. It followed the guidance of their American masters by relying on the quote unquote free market to provide development. This growth was driven by the rise of state sponsored conglomerates called I don't know if I'm seeing this correctly UM shy balls uh C, H A, E, B O, L S, Shabou, which came to totally dominate the economy. The shade balls were run by the country's elite families, who use corruption and their state contacts to a mass humongous fortunes. They of course made sure that their wealth was passed on to their children. On the basis of this development, a new working class was formed in the cities and a massive wealth divide opened up with skyrocketing inequality. After the Asia find aancial crisis, several shape balls went bankrupt, and Korea entered a period of mass unemployment. Parasite hints that this is the background to both the Park's wealth and the Kim's poverty unquote. So that was just I wasn't aware of the context of I mean, I guess that this story certainly reads to any audience that has a background of mass you know, income inequality. But yeah, I just didn't know that for listeners that don't know, Yeah, tip is the word, not shape boat, but yeah, tip is a it's a it's a huge problem in South Korea, Like, for instance, Samsung is a chip boy corporate conglomerate, Samsung, you could kind of imagine it to be like a massive it's like, you know, you have Apple iPhones and tablets, you have Samsung mobile phones and tablets. In fact, I saw a Samsung cell phone that blew my mind. It's it's a it's just it's a glass, you know, typical, but it folds. My god, oh I've yeah, I've heard about these or like say no, no, no, no, you have to see it. You have to see it with your own eyeballs. It's like watching it is still mind blowing. Like I would see this in Korean dramas a lot because that's you know, embedded marketing. And when I saw that, I was just like, I want that phone so badly, you know, funck Apple, I don't care anymore. Samsung, you have outdone yourself. But yeah, others are a huge problem. For instance, some this film was executive produced by Mickey Lee. Mickey Lee is the daughter of Samsung. Corporate conglomerate because Samsung is associated with c J and c J well it's actually a food conglomerate, but c J has a subdivision called c J Entertainment, which handles filmmaking, TV and some music, so they have a lot of cable channels. They own a newspaper, so it's a huge corporate conglomerate. Damn um. So yeah, these tippos are a problem, and there are a problem because it's again it's like a family based thing, right, So Nepotism is a big issue. Corruption is a big issue. Cronyism is a big issue. And so Mickey Lee, what's ironic about this film winning an oscar and some I saw some people on social media talk about this too, is that Mickey Lee is like this daughter of this huge tipo establishment and yet she's the one that's executive producing a film that has a very sharp social critique of capitalism, right, And that goes to asking like, well, how, like what's what parallels do we have in the United States? Like you know, I mean Fox is now owned by Disney, but before that, like you know, when when you have The Simpsons or Family Guy on on Fox, which always has a critique of these mega corporations, right, it's like, how how impactful is that critique when it is owned under the umbrella of a huge corporate conglomerate. Right. Yeah. The irony, the like perhaps hypocrisy of it all is yeah, But then it comes into that whole discussion of like it feels fucking impossible to make to get anything funded without some sort of corporate underlying It is possible, but it's like the hill is infinitely higher, and like, you know, imagine how much harder it would have been for this movie to get funded without the corporate underwriting. And I mean it just goes back to like the no no ethical consumption argument. Yeah it's I mean, even even if a person does make a film without any of those corporate ties, the goal is still to sell it, you know, to have it distributed. And if that film, let's say, a pure little film grassroots right, somehow made it big. The first person that's going to be on the phone contacting the filmmaker is somebody who is going to compromise all of those things for that person. And will that person say no? Most likely no, they will say yes all right, if you want to if you want to be successful as an artist, if you want to pay off your your three credit cards that you maxed out in order to make that film, you're gonna say yes. And um yeah, I don't blame Punju at all for for doing that. You know, it is like how much awareness do you have of that? Like do you make these things with that full awareness? You know? Um, knowing that all of us, all of us are are tied to that. We're still bound to that, um whether we like it or not. I mean, we're on iHeart radio right now, Like exactly, I noticed there is quite honestly no escaping it, right, And how do you like without that funding, Like it would have been as difficult to make as it would have been for Q to like earn enough money to buy the that Park house and like rescue his dad. Like it's just it's not in the socio economic structures that many countries operate under. It's simply not possible social mobile like upboard mobility, damn near impossible. Yeah, And I think that's so important to highlight. Like, first of all, what that shows, or what this discussion shows, is that capitalism is actually a lot more complex, right, It's more complex than us just saying capitalism is the evil of all. It's like, yeah, okay, that's true, but we're still working within this framework of capitalism. What what can we do? You know? And then what you just said about social mobility is like I think it's so it's key to this film. It's like a key marker of this film, this concept of the odor, right, this odor that offends Mr Park so much. And then Mr Park goes and tells his wife, Mrs Park about she didn't even have any awareness of it, he tells her about it, and then the next day she notices the stench of Mr. Kim right, which goes to show like, oh, well, she's really under the thumb of her husband, you know, a very impressionable wife. And he says something very interesting about this odor. He's like, I like Mr Kim because he never crosses that line. I don't like GI when people across the line. But that odor crosses the line. And that's a very very like clear cut rationale that all rich people have. They don't want the poor to be socially mobile. They simply do not, because as soon as a person is socially mobile, right they crossed this so called line, they loose that person to to continue to function in their big houses, with their cars, you know, with their with their regular lavish, convenient lifestyle, and so they do not want social People with power do not want the poor to be socially mobile, because then they don't have anyone left to exploit. The smell works on so many levels on like I don't know, when I first saw the movie, I was like, I I guess like semi triggered myself because that was, like, I don't know, I grew up in like a family with that smell, and it's a literal metaphor in some ways where it's like the most deeply humiliating thing. You Like, it's one of the most deeply humiliating feelings I've ever felt, is hearing someone else talking about how you smell, thinking you can't hear them, like it's the worst feeling in the world. And then on top of that, I thought it was really interesting that even when I mean it's also metaphorical right, where there's nothing they can do to get the smell off, they actively try to use different soaps. They're like trying to strategically. That's like the one part of this whole ruse that the Kim family has going that gives them away. It's like that somehow being poor is you can't wash it off, you can't hide it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can't hide smells and a smell offense, right, it's a well, it depends on the smell. But if it's a smell you don't like, it offends and it's something you can't hide, yeah, like you said, it gives it away, gives your status away. And yeah, I thought this use of the odor was really clever. I thought it was a really clever device in the film. Yeah, And like I was reading this piece by Laura Marks. She writes it's like a it's a it's an academic piece, a journal article, but she talks about the smell as a potential sensory tool for analysis, like analyzing a film or media. And I was just thinking about like colonization to a certain extent. So, like Korea is. South Korea is now a developed a nation. It's one of the wealthier nations in the world now, but there is still such a thing as global hierarchy, right, And as we as we know, after the Korean Civil War, South Korea and North Korea were separated because of USSR and US Cold War tensions. So Russia Soviet Union was like, will take care of North Korea. US, you take South Korea and will be cool. Right, So Korea was divided because of foreign Cold War tensions, and you know, South Korea was pretty much right after its liberation from Japanese colonation, which lasted from nineteen to nine, South Korea was like, okay, well, I mean, I guess we're technically free, but now they weren't free, right, Like USSR and US took over all of those spaces and occupations and roles that Japan was occupying, right, And when the Japanese colonized South Korea, they had this notion that like, oh, Japan was going to be the new imperial empire in Asia, and they were going to colonize all these countries and you know, they were going to become just as successful as the West, just as you know, imperial as the West. That was the dream Japan had. And then of course, you know, the United States bombed the ship out of Japan and destroyed the country and you know, lost World War Two. But Japan, the Japanese, like during this colonization process with Korea, they had this sanitation policy. So the Japanese would look down on the Koreans and say, you know, they're so backward, and you know they're very agrarian. Like you said that it was a rural economy. South Korea's full of mountains and fields, a lot of farming um, and they were like, they don't know sanitation, you know. And and the Japanese didn't like the smells of of South Koreans because of what whatever their lifestyle was like. And so not only do you have that, but you also have this the cuisine of South Korea, where there's a lot of fermentation. So you have like you know, ten jong, which is a soybean fermentus soy being paste, and then you have kimchi. As everybody now knows. Back in when I first immigrated to the United States and I brought my Korean food lunch to my ps Brooklyn Public School, Okay, the horror, right, the trauma that it left on everybody because I brought a role of keep up to class. I mean, it was just unbelievable, right, the smell of sesame oil, the smell of fermented kimchi. The smell and this this lunch story is like universal. You could ask, you could literally grab any Asian off the street and be like, do you have a lunch story with white people? And they would be like, yes, yes, I do. It's like a childhood it's like a ritual. It's a rite of passage into childhood, immigrant childhood trauma in the United States. And so you have the smell that fence, the fermentic cabbage smelled a fence. But today you have white people eating kinchi in their cars like a salad with no problem. Why how how does that happen? Right? And so like South Korea went through this huge globalization process in the in the nineties, this president in Kim Yong's ham was like, I want South Korea to be just as globally branded and successful as Japan. Right, because by the nineties, like Japan was kicking as like Sony was global. You know, Japan had a huge steak in Hollywood through Sony. Um. You know, you know they had Walkman okay, Walkman's you know that came from Japan. It Hello Kitty everywhere, right, Japanese fashion sushi was a huge thing, right, and um, you know, everybody was getting down with Japanese products, and Korea was like, we need to get there, right because you know, the Korea doesn't have a lot of natural resources, they don't have a lot to explore, and they needed to make it economically and so um, they started, you know, doing this global branding process and kimchi was a big part of that. So it's it's no accident that's suddenly white people are eating kimchi in their cars like a salad. Okay. This was very much like a step by step procedure that South Korea went through as a government. K Pop being global that's also not an accident. Korean dramas being on Netflix is not an accident. Korean films winning a can palm door is not an accident. You know, like the Korea has been trying Korean films Finally winning an oscar is not an accident. Korea has been trying to win an oscar for decades and they finally was able to do this and so um, yeah, globalization is a big part of this. And uh, I will also say, you know, US neo colonialism is also a big part of this because it's like Korea had to convince the United States that, you know, Korea was not a stinky country or you can get down with the stink. You know, it's an acquire your stench. It's an acquired odor, acquired taste, and you can get down with it. And it's like this the branding thing tricks to you, you know, it gets people on board and South Korea has been doing it for thirty years and they finally did it. Damn wow. That yeah, that's such helpful context. Thank you for truly like there, we we are very much on a learning learning curve here, so that is incredibly helpful for I mean even in understanding how the Parks behave in this movie where there's like I had I was sort of guessing my way around it previous in my previous reads of the movie, where I mean they are very responsive to Western culture. I think that there's like that commentary in there with their son's fixation on Native American culture and the native culture and also the cowboy culture that is kind of the you know, false colonial inverse to it, and as well as how easily they're fooled. So like one of the themes that I really that like hit for me more on this viewing, um, just having read through more interviews with the director is the fact that the Parks aren't necessarily They're not made out to be these villains necessarily, which is cool. I mean, you still aren't extremely upset when Mr Park dies at the end, like he has it coming. It is cathartic, uh to see him go down for treating poor people so dismissively. But I there is a quote from Bung junho Uh that he did in a really incredible Vulture profile from last year where he says basically that it is a movie with no heroes and no villains. And even though the Parks are made out to be more gullible, dismissive, and ignorant of the lower classes, rather than actively whatever rubbing their hands together, patting the cat and saying like I know exactly what they'll do, they're completely unaware, uninterested and I mean even to bring back the smell metaphor like upset when a reminder of the lower classes is intrusive in the smallest way to their to their daily life, especially because like the Park family only wants to deal with anyone from the lower class as long as they seem also like elite, you know what I mean, We're like they he gets that little business card for like the care which is like this elite housekeeping membership service and with a lot of gates. Yeah, right exactly, And they find Mr Kim as the driver appealing because he was working for this wealthy family of and like the forgery of the college degree document you know you had, like in the and the two kids uh Kei Jung and Q Jessica and Kevin, they actually presented themselves as fellow equals, like fellow socio economic equals, like to say that they studied abroad like Jessica says she studied in Illinois, you know, to say that as a marker of elitism, the way that Mrs Park specles in English whenever she can, you know, to give these people, like to address them in English names, Jessica and Kevin. You know, it's it's a marker of elitism. And that's why I say that US neo colonial kind of tones are in there, because Korea, South Korea equates elitism and success and financial security with America. Well, it's not working out for anybody in this concept of I mean, I really like that poem mentioned that because in the context of like I don't know, I don't know if this might get two head, but in the context of in a melodrama as a frame, right, melodrama is oftentimes used. They say that there is a narrative mode within melodrama. So when you watch a melodrama, there's a very clear evil person and a very clear hero. Right, Like a young girl, an orphan girl working class, works so hard, so honest, you know, so beautiful, so caring, right, but she just can't get out of the ships, right, So what does she do. He's just to meet a hot, rich guy and she does, and the hot rich guy likes her because she's so honest and hard working. But there's always an evil bitch who likes that rich guy too, and she'll do anything to bring her down, right, And so it's very clear who the villain is and who the victim is. But in a neoliberal context of melodrama, there's no clear villain. There's just a victim. You know, nobody ever names the villain. Everybody always names the victimhood like my victim and my plate. But and that that's just a very clever way to present that, is to say that, yeah, like in in capitalism, maybe there is no villain after all, you know, to say, like all these people are evil doers, is you know, perhaps not realistic. Right to vilify these people would make it the characters would be caricatures. They wouldn't be relatable at all. And that's something we talked about on the podcast quite a bit, although in a different context. We usually have discussed it from the point of view of like certain male characters in movies being predators and then being so cartoonishly evil that no one would ever be able to see themselves in someone so cartoonishly evil and they're like, well I can't. I'm not a predator like that, So I'm not a predator. But like exactly, not all men like you would never make and it's I mean, it's and in a frustrating way, it's just like good business to make that choice, because you don't want your average consumer to look at something and be like, wait a second, I feel called out. I'm leaving, you know, like yeah, so it's easier to go to the cartoon route exactly. And like Amy Schumer talked about that too, where when she was like, you know, people think that like rape is, you know, or sexual assault is like they think of it very conveniently, you know, like a stranger attacks you and an assaults you, r rapes you. But most sexual assault happens with people you know, people you trust, you know, somebody that's completely human in your life. And that's what makes sexual assault all the more traumatic and confusing. But it's not almost never depicted that way in media. Never. It's never your beloved, handsome boyfriend who has a stable job and knows your parents really well and takes care of your younger brother. It's never that guy. But in reality, it but more often than that it is. It is, it's actually the prime candidate. And that's what's so interesting to me about this movie is that a lot of movies that comment on class will be like rich people bad poor people good, poor people can do no wrong, and it's the poor people taking down the rich people. Which, don't get me wrong, I like a lot of those movies, and I think they have a lot of value and I find them to be very catartic. But on the other hand, this movie has a much more complex examination of that where it's like it's almost like, well, the desperation of poverty makes you have to compete with other lower class people, and that's why that's when see to push a second family into the basement so that you can live upstairs, get other people fired so you could take their place. Yes, exactly. There that there's the scene where the Kim family is drunk. I feel like this is stated most succinctly where they have this conversation. There's a few different poll quotes from this conversation that you're like, Okay, this is kind of the thesis, or it felt to me what the thesis of the movie is. But one of the moments that really stuck with me that I hadn't I don't know, I hadn't given a ton of attention to in previous watchings were when they're talking about I think it is Q and Mr Kim start to talk about how the driver got fired, and they're like, oh, what do you think he's doing now? He probably got a good job, he's fine. Their conscience plagues them, Yeah, but but then uh, the daughter, who is more drunk than everyone interrupts and says, we're the ones who need help, worry about us, okay, And that line it never really jumped out to me before, But that is so much of what it seems like it's trying to be said about. Like you can't really fault her for that mindset, because this is a family that's trying to lift themselves out of poverty, and that is a brutal experience that often requires pushing other people down to get there, Like it grat we we we were just saying about, I don't know, just kind of the narrative we're presented with over and over and over of you know, being lifted out of poverty, and then you're just you've taken the place of the rich people and you're probably gonna do the right thing. Uh, and it's very easy and it's you know, but but this is like the most one of the most brutal, like funny interpretations of that experience, to the point where it's like, yeah, she kind of has to say, we're the ones who need help, worry about us, because if the Kim family was worrying and doting on these other people, they wouldn't be where they are. And that's not to say that poor people are not helping each other out. That's certainly not true. I mean we're seeing around us currently, um, how much mutual aid is going on and how people are. It's it's not to say that people are completely disinterested in helping each other, even if they don't have a lot of privilege themselves. But in this example and in this large metaphor, it totally makes sense and it's like brutal to hear. But yeah, I don't know that line had never really jumped out to me before this viewing. Yeah, I totally agree with everything you said. Statistically, it's the people with a lower income who have more compassion and empathy. This is this is factually true. The more money you have, the less in touch you are with humanity and compassion and all of that, no matter how many you know, text adaptable charity donations in the person makes right. But h so you have this sense of guilt, this conscience that Mr Kim and and Q both kind of share. And then ke Junk gets angry and says, you know, focus on us, you know, we're the ones living in poverty, and Mrs Kim also says that she's like, there's so everybody in the family is so sweet and kind. They have no goals because if you're wealthy, you of course you'll be kind. Of course you'll be happy, you'll be nice. You know. She was like, if I had money, I'd be just as nice. It's like, yeah, it's kind of true. You know, when you come from the ships, you're gonna have some of the ship marks, the odors, and you know you're gonna have more wrinkles, You're gonna seem a little more refrainda edges, you know. Yeah, I loved that exchange. Yeah, the whole as a family unit, it's like that that dialogue was like, uh, it's a commentary on how complicated it is to live in a capital society as a low income household. And I like that it's Kei Jung and Mrs Kim that point these things out because there I mean in general, and this is it's not even a criticism of the movie. I think it's just kind of like, uh, something that shows up in male autour movies all the time. It's like, at the end of the day, it's about fathers and sons. Uh. And that's so many movies, and that is I mean, it's not from June Hoo's fault. It's just the fact that men make most movies, and so this is a theme we see a lot. So I don't know if on this viewing looking for those like really clarify, like most of those clarifying moments come from the women in the family um and the fact that Kei Jung is the mastermind of basically this entire plan and gets them to where they are, which I think probably contributes to her frustration that they're talking about something else when she is like basically gotten them to all this in the first place. That yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess one of the only things that I wish I had we had more of in this movie. I wish that there was a little more Mrs Kim, Like, I feel like she steals every scene that she's in. She's amazing, and but of the four, I feel like she's kind of the least present. She's the last family member to get hired, and then I don't know, I mean I think it's just the father son dynamic that kind of takes up more of the air in that plot, which again isn't a problem. I just swished it you saw a little more of her. I like her. I just really like that. Yeah, she's Yeah. The actress's name is Um Tongue Hid and she's actually in a very very popular Korean drama right now on Netflix called Crash Landing Onto You Anyway, Yeah, she's remarkable and her character is also really interesting. I mean she was like, what is it, like a shot put thrower. Yeah, I don't know what sport that is, but she was like an Olympic athlete maybe, like she was like she was an athlete. She was a silver medal winning athlete, and like sports is such a big deal for Korean's. You know, it's like sports is usually a form of way out of poverty. Usually, you know, it's like what went wrong? What we're what were wrong? For her. I'm so curious, you know, like a silver medalist. Like and the father, it's like he's done a bunch of objects. Maybe he's the person who brought her to and you know, she married the wrong piece of ship, and you know, and oh and another interesting parallel was that the Kim family they were also like they also faced financial ruin with the cake shop. They say, like a Castella Taiwanese cake shop, and like Costella is like this this sponge cake pastry that like Koreans loved, you know, like in the eighties and nineties because it was so airy and fluffy and delicious, and like it was a popular cultural product that they were selling in a lot of bakeries. But anyway, that went bust and then they were just stuck in you know, financial ruin. And in the basement, the guys says the same thing. He's like, oh my Costella bakery went bust and and then the wife was like, yeah, and we took out money with loan sharks, you know, it's much more severe than debt collectors. Loan sharking is a huge issue in Korea. They're essentially gangsters and thugs will come and break your leg you know, destroy your house, destroy your business, kill people whatever, in order to collect debt. And the interest rate is ridiculously high, and it's like beyond credit cards, you know, and it's impossible to get out of debt when you get stuck with loan sharks. And so yeah, that's that's also like this interesting parallel. It's like and how the Kim family was in the same circumstances as the the housekeeper and her husband, and yet they are not willing to give up their position as of now, right, they're not willing to really work with them. They just wanted to kind of call the police and asked them right until the family fell from the stairs and ruined everything. And I would I would also say that, like I wouldn't say Ki Jong is the mastermind and all of it. I would say it's it's a it was a collective effort between Kei Jong and Q, because Q wouldn't have gotten that job if it wasn't for his friend right to come in and give him that position. Ki Jong was kind of like the a facilitator. She was good with the documents this and that. I would say Q was more of the mastermind, the one that was making all these plans so called plans, right, just kind of calling back to what you were just talking about Grace, where it's kind of like the Kim's seem resistant to seeing themselves in this other family, even though, like you were saying, they had a very similar financial problem. Uh, and we're taken advantage of in a similar way. Um. And another example of where again it was just not something that had jumped out to me on previous viewings, where it's it's the scene where it's just Mr Kim and the housekeeper's husband in the basement and Mr Kim is kind of disgusted by the basement and it is asked basically like how can you live here? Like how can you live like this? And then the husband replies by saying, like, well, it's not that dissimilar from you know, he doesn't know that he said, it's not that dissimilar from your own apartment, but that's essentially what he's saying, if like we are not that different at all, say, and then to see the environmental differences of and this is something we see in the States all the time, of how something like a rainstorm can seem so like nothing to a rich family and they're kind of like, ah, the weather sucks, but let's finger each other and our sons out in his tent and cares and blah blah blah. They're like fingering each other. And then people's homes are being destroyed. You know, it's like there's a friend like community that the kids are a part of and their whole life is being destroyed. And then you've got these rich people fingering each other on a hill and exactly, and it was so that. I mean that scene of the rainstorm and the father, daughter and son walking, you know, all the way home through the rain and they're coming down that huge you know, that was metaphorical, right, I mean, like you have this rock shaped like mountains, you know, and it's like how do you get there? But you know all that does is come down, like you know, you just follow them going down down down. That that living is this huge metaphor of the basement every everybody, all the poor living abasement, you know, and all that rain and ship goes down there, all the rich people, ship goes down there, and that's in their clothes, that's in their stuff, and that's the smell that that comes wafting out of them when they come in try to meet with people in society, you know. I think the house structure that that that big scene with the stairs going down to their little town there, I think that is like just the this visual metaphor of class infrastructure, you know, and that mobility going upwards is so impossibly difficult and high, and how does one do that. It's like barely, it's barely doable. And then and then like it's like no, it's like everybody just replaces one another's shoes, right, It's like the Kim family kicked out everybody that was working for the parks. And then even even the guy that was hiding in the basement contentedly, right, he was like, I mean, I just feel like I'm just of this world now. It's like as if I was born here. It's like it's like as if I got married here, as as I live here. Right, That's what the housekeeper's husband says. And it's like even that position is replaced by Mr Kim, right, Like they really took over that house like fully, and um even like I mean the motif of the parasite is like it's like what else can they do, you know, in order to survive? It's like they have to lie, they have to steal. They have to sneak out at night and try to steal some fruit and take it back down to the basements so they could eat and survive. You know, It's like what else can they do? Yeah, certainly no one else is making space for them to exist, so it's just a matter of taking someone else down to take up where they are. It's just yeah, I also like how like we use the audience don't really even call into question, like, well, wouldn't the Park family like what if they were to meet like Mr Kim's spouse, But like, because the Park family is so just consumed by themselves, and don't they don't think about people lower class than them. You would just imagine that Mr Park would never ask Mr Kim about his wife or his children or like bother to learn anything about them because they're far too self absorbed exactly. Yeah, Like when Mr Kim, like as he's driving Mr Park ground when whatever, he turns around to say something, you know, and they almost get us an accident at one point, like Mr Park says, just keep your eye on the road, turn around right, You're you're supposed to face that way. Not back towards me crossing a line, crossing the line that offends him so much, you know, it's so interesting, and like, just to talk a little bit more about the basement, Like this is something I've been thinking about a long time. And there's this there's a short story that's very famous in Korea called Wings. It's written by a modernist called He's Hung, and it's a story about a man who is living in a room that is it's like in the farthest back of the house, and then there's this partition, and then beyond the partition is the wife's room. And in order to access his room, you have to go through the wife's room, right, So this man is essentially stuck, right, and the wife is like the gatekeeper, and the man is like unemployed, jobless, He barely eats, barely gets any sunlight. Whatever he does in that room is only permissible if the wife allows him to. And the wife is a prostitute, so she works in that other room. And and the man says, in this other room, he's like, I'm very content with my living here. And I felt like that was very present in the basement scene with the housekeeper's husband. You know, it's like and and he's hung wrote that story when Korea was occupied by Japan, right, And it's like, when you're colonized, let's say you're colonized by another imperial country, or if you're colonized by capitalism, whatever it is, and you become content in living there and you don't have any desire to be mobile whatever, get out, then it's like what happens? Right? And I thought that was very much a theme in that, especially because I don't think anybody does. That was just my reading of it. I need to write about it before some household does well, especially because the housekeeper's husband he worships Mr Park He like almost looks at him as a god of sorts. And I feel like that's also very I guess, just kind of allegorical of the way society teaches people you need to respect these rich people. You need to respect the people with the rich jobs, and and but if you encounter them, they're like, who the funk are you? They don't smell, I don't like you exactly, like do you know me? Right? And he's like he's like subservient, like you know, ritualistically whenever when when anybody else walks up those stairs, those lights don't go on. It's only when Mr Park goes up those stairs then the lights go on like that. And it's like when the housekeeper's husband's down there, he goes into this like militaristic mode, like he's saluting him, right, And I feel like again, there is that you know, this colonial commentary again, like a lot of Koreans before the division were recruited by the Japanese for World War One and World War Two. You know a lot of those kamakaze pilots were Koreans who were unwilling to kill themselves, okay by crash landing onto other countries. So yeah, there's that huge, huge US military presence in Korea and all over the world. Actually there's like, you know, over eighty countries with U S military presence, and um yeah, I think I think a lot of that is in there. And that's another example too of Mr Kim kind of having a similar trait to the housekeeper's husband that he, you know, probably wouldn't want to admit that. There's I think I can think of two examples where Mr Kim specifically. There's one when they're drinking beer in the basement after they start getting paid by the parks, and he's like, let's pour one out for Mr Park, Like, it's so good of him to give this to us, even though he doesn't know he's giving it to us. And then again when he's in the basement at the end of the movie, he I mean, he's murdered Mr Park, but he like apologizes to all the time, and and it's still like Mr Park, even at his time of death, didn't know who he was really, I mean, he just knew the facade that he was presenting to survive. Yeah, we could have taken another quick break, but then we'll come right back for a more discussion. I wanted to bring us something that I thought was funny and didn't really know how to fully articulate until I m read the interview with Long Dunho where he says there's no heroes and there's no villains. Intentionally, UM, I think it does make it really challenging read for rich people and people who are inclined to be like but the rich people were nice. Um, And I wanted. I wanted to shout out. I want I wanted to shout out in a negative way. Comedian Neil Brennan who famously could not figure out the themes in Parasite. Um it was. I remember there was like a big everyone was like dumping on him on Twitter when this happened, and he for some reason did not delete the tweets. But this is back in February this year. Um, he tweeted, is it too early to say the central metaphor and parasite didn't actually work? Who is the parasite, the richer the pool? With that in mind, explain the third act to me? Like he just it was really listening to this podcast. Neil Brennan. He would never but he's very problematic. Yeah, he's the worst. I don't like his general perspect outlook on gender. Yeah, his his outlook, I just I've yet to see it. And yet he is such a victim right as we've seen in three mics. I thought it was so interesting how like nobody gave Neil Brennan any ship for doing three mikes, which was like a third of it was just like this, you know, him groveling on stage of his victimhood. And then when Hannah Gadsby did her thing, everybody was so up in arms about whether or not this is comedy for cultural pasttime dumping on her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's like, uh, why don't you start with Neil Brennan's special which came out before the Net and then question how to Gadsby if you want to be fair New York Times, right. I think his most recent funk up was immediately defending Chrystal Lia but oh my God, which which really swept his not understanding parasite even one under the rug. But I remember that Neil Brennan insisted that Twitter explained parasite to him. And it's funny. He's too rich. He's like, the rich people were nice, So what's the problems like? And that's kind of the brilliance of this movie is like there the problem is looming over them, but it's not personified. Grace and Jamie two people have mentioned the idea of like the Plan and the master plan that the Kim family kind of have like crafted and are trying to follow, and this is a huge motif and themes throughout the movie be And we talked about this a little bit on our recent set It Off episode, where in that movie, different characters discuss having a plan for the future and what's your five year plan and stuff. Like that, and the you know, upper class character is always like, well, yes, of course I have a plan and it's this, and then the lower income characters are always like, I'm just trying to survive one day at a time. And just the idea of like having a plan is such a like middle or upper middle class or wealthy, privileged thing to be able to have. And and this gets explored quite a bit in Parasite, where you know, they form this plan to infiltrate the Park family and to end up working for them. It works for a very short amount of time, but then like ship hits the fan, even like when the former housekeeper shows up on the doorstep, like Q is like, this isn't part of the plan. We don't know what to do, This isn't the is unexpected, This is not part of our plan. And then Mr Kim gives this really great monologue after their apartment has been flooded and they're like having to spend the night in a gym. He says, um, you know what kind of plan never fails? No plan at all. If you make a plan, life never works out that way. That's why people shouldn't make plans. With no plan, nothing can go wrong and if something spins out of control, it doesn't matter. None of it fucking matters, because yeah, like people from a lower socioeconomic class just simply don't have the resources and the privilege to form and execute plans that actually ever work. And then the movie ends with Q being like, here's my plan. I'm gonna get a job, I'm gonna go to that university. I'm gonna, you know, have a career. I'm going to make a bunch of money, and then I'm going to buy this house. And then you know, Dad, you're going to come out of hiding and we're all going to reunite. But it all plays out again is a flash forward. It's like a dream sequence more than anything, because then it cuts back to Q in the in his basement level apartment. It's a fantasy. It's completely a fantasy. Yeah, there's no way he's going to get out of that basely the way he suffered a huge brain injury. You know, I mean he's he's a disabled man, and he has a record. You know, he has a criminal record, and I mean having a criminal record and carea is also like a huge damning thing, you know, um, being a disabled person is huge damning thing. He actually does play with themes like that, like criminality and disability in his other films. I would really strongly recommend Memories of Murder by the Way. I would say of all of his films, that's his best work. I haven't seen that one. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, where did you see that? I'm just curious. I had to find a rip of it online. Yeah there's It's like it's not available anyway. Yeah, it's such a good movie. The man who plays Mr Kim is also in that. But yeah, anyway, Uh, yeah, there's always somebody with a disability and like a lot of his movies, and I think that's there intentionally. He has, like is making a commentary about South Korea not making it that easy for people with disabilities to survive and like live among everybody, you know, harmoniously in society. Yeah. There was a read of the planned theme that I really liked was from that same Vulture profile. It was for I guess, from a follow up of that profile by a writer named e Alex Jung who we've we've quoted him before. We put him Alex alex Jung, the same as my last name. Yeah, okay. So Alex Jung, we have quoted him a number of times. He writes most of the major profiles for New York Magazine, and he's just a fucking incredible But he argues in the follow up to the profile that Hope is the emotional parents. So I'm quoting him. Hope is the emotional parasite in the film, the thing that keeps us going but sucks our marrow dry. So the whatever the true parasite being discussed, because I feel like in the initial wave of reviews and discussion about this film, there was a lot of who was the parasite? Who am the parasite? Neil Brennan, who what is a parasite? Was like, But they didn't tell me who the parasite wasn't my third act? People are so basic? Yeah, I mean, it's even It's like, I mean, there is a very different example. When things are spoon fed to them. They want somebody to say, and I am the parasite. Oh that's why the title's parasite. I am the devil wares product, I am the parasite. Everyone wants that Spartacus moment, like that moment Poisoned, I am a demon Prince. I'm quoting I Frankenstein. Now I am I Frankenstein. Uh he does say that though, Uh he basically does, But but I do. I mean that is I think the most discinct read of what if there is a parasite that it's it's that desire to want to keep trying to make a plan in spite of all evidence to the contrary, which is kind of what capitalism encourages you to do. Is like, oh, who cares how many times this dream kicks you in the face and tells you to funk off and tells you you smell and tells you you know, just works against you in every way. Just get you know, bootstrap, get back up, try again. You've got this American capitalist Christian mentality. Yeah, like pay your dues, Yeah, suck it up, keep going. And it's like, what does that say? They're like, if you keep doing something over and over again, expecting a different result every time, you're a psychopath, right, Like that's everybody in a capital of society. That's literally everybody, you know. But yeah, I mean with the planned thing though, I think alex Is reading is so beautiful. It's like an inverse Shawshank redemption. Right, Morgan Freeman is like Hope kills a man, like hope drives a man crazy. And then like the guy he's like, you know, he writes work your freemane letters like hope is a beautiful thing or blah blah blah. Yeah, yeah, and it's like like, no, it doesn't. It makes you cool, destroy you, It will destroy everything inside of you, your family, everything you love. But yeah, I think that's a really lovely reading to say that Hope is the parasite for sure. I mean his plan at the end that I mean, in a way, it feel like hopes like that even though in your heart of heart, of heart of hearts, you're like, this is not going to fucking happen like that, I could see how that would be necessary to his continuing to survive is like hoping that things will change or hoping that this might be attainable, even though we watching it know that it is deeply unlikely that that will ever happen. Right. It's like everybody has this inner will to live for some reason, even the guy in the basement with who has literally no life, no sunlight, no Netflix, you know, how does he pass the time? Right? And it's like he's still living, he's still stealing food and living. He's going on. Oh and in the Mr Kim's monologue, which I love that monologue, Um and you you read it beautifully. But he does also say, you know, when you're making these plans, like even if you don't even if it's not in your plan, you know, in the spur of the moment, like you might kill a man, you might say country. He says those things. I think that's very important because you know, again like create as a colony had to do those very things. You know, like a lot of people had to in order to keep their wealth or attain wealth, they had to sell their country out and you know, align with the Japanese imperial forces. A lot of people had to do that. And then when North and South was divided, a lot of South Koreans had to go into hiding because they were like, well you were you you were a traitor to your country. You know, there was a lot of that too. But a lot of those people continue to retain their wealth. I knew that's where Samson comes from. Um. Yeah, you have a lot of that, a lot of murdering, especially you know during the Korean War when when you know, it's like you couldn't tell who is a communist who is not? You know, how can you tell that there's no marker of communism per se. A lot of innocent people lost their lives because of this whole this paranoia which comes from McCarthyism, you know, because from the US it's a it's a constructed paranoia that was injected into other countries, right, this paranoia over the Kami and a lot of innocent people lost their lives. And there's actually a a movie um that was set on Chiju Island, which is like an island just off the coast to South Korea. It belongs to South Korea, but it's like they're an island. So their languages, like their their dialect is also very unique too in Chiju. But a lot of innocent people lost their lives on that island during the Korean War, Like people showed up and they were like, are you a communist? And they're like, what's a communist? And they get shot? You know what I mean? It was literally like that, you know. And when Americans were there, you know, in Korea bombing the ship out of Korea, they couldn't tell who was a North Korean who was a South Korean. Right, They just simply couldn't how could you tell? You know, And that's where the word gook comes from. You know a lot of these derogatory, racially and ethnically derogatory terms come from military speaking military, because you have to create an enemy, right, and you have to make them consciously, have to lower them in your brain, right, you have to dehumanize them in order to kill justify them. Exactly. Yeah, So this rational this hyper rationalizing of killing a man, of selling out your country. It's also kind of this capitalist motif. You know, this hyper hyper rationalizing is done in capitalist systems. This happens a lot. It's like, oh, like I will lose thirty five pounds in a month because I will fit into that dress for that film role, because they told me to. Because it means wealth, it means fame. I will do it because I'm not I'm not selling my soul out, I'm not disrespecting my body. I'm doing it for a job. I'm doing it for money, which I will give to my family to whatever. Right. It's a hyperrationalizing. We're all under that, including the Kim family, including the Park family. Everybody well even yeah, in the way that the Kim family needs to lower a family very similar to themselves in order to rationalize killing them, like even like and when they first encounter the housekeeper and her husband in the basement, and the housekeeper is like pleading with the Kim and like, sis, come on, sister, we have a sisterhood, we're in the we're of the same ilk, we are in the same class and and and Mrs Kim is like, no, we're not, like fuck you uh. And then as soon as the tables turn she has to take the exact same approach and be like, please, sister, come on. And it's just like everybody's replaceable. Everybody's replaceable. And on the other end of that, where the Kim family has to, you know, bullshit to survive so often and so much, and they have to do it with people who are in there who are also poor, and then they have to do it with the Park family, where I mean, like, some of the funniest moments in this movie just involved how easily the Park family is able to be convinced that something is luxury is top of the line because of how it's framed to them and how it's presented to them where the Key Jung scene where she's the art therapist and she's just like speaking bullshit and she says later like I googled art therapy and like ad lived the rest. But she just she's the word schizophrenia, yeah, the schizophrenia zone. I'm like, well that's not good. Yeah, she just made that, not a doctor, just made it up. And again I think it's because she was English. You know, like these English words you know, make it sound like key Jong knows what she's talking about. And so Mrs Park is just like okay, yeah, yeah, Mrs Park is interesting too as a character. I would say she's really interested. I had never I guess that this is the closest I've ever looked at her character specifically because I was curious, and I mean, the Park family represents a lot of you know, elitism and a lot of rich people, uh stuff right, But but it feels she really encapsulates the ignorance of a rich family where I mean it's mentioned in that scene we talked about that she's so nice and she's and naive. Yeah, yeah, that deep naivete that she will. I mean that we hear her described as young and simple before we ever meet her by men um in a scene where they are I mean, we haven't even talked about the relationship with the teenager atte but we'll get there. I mean, it's like, I feel like it's clear to the viewer that she thinks that she's doing the right thing. She is trying to be a good mother, she is trying to be a good wife. But it's not what she's thinking about that's the problem. It's what she is not thinking about defines her like and makes her look bad. Is she's not thinking about the people around her. She's not thinking about her employees. She doesn't I mean, her and Mr Park don't ever ask the Kim's anything about themselves, which is part of the reason there is because that the way with so much is because the Parks don't care who they are or what their background is. They just need the right pitch of like the elitism we talked about before. You know, I have studied abroad, I've done this, I've done that, And they're like, okay, great, I will believe whatever you say good enough, and I don't want to hear anything else about you ever again. Stopped talking to me. Yeah, yeah, that's such a good point. Like when Mr Kim gets Mr Park the care card and then Mrs Park calls the care's phone number and then Keep Jong picks up the phone and pretends to be that gatekeeper, the manager at the care. She's like asking for all these documents, a the ded to your house, social security number. She like she knows the Parks inside out right takes all of their information down and Mrs Park is just like, okay, you need the title to my house. Fine, makes sense, it makes sense to me, right, And she's like so desperate you could see and mean the nisan sin is like she's pulling out the dishwasher that's overpacked, like you should never moan a dishwasher like that, yeah, you know. And then and then it's like, you know, she's clearly suffering, like you know, and Mr Park says, it's like my wife sucks at household duty, you know, and she just desperate to stop doing that, Like she wants to sit out on her in her garden on her patio and take a nap like we that's how we first encounter her, right, and you know, just to not do those things, she'll she'll give away the house, like all of those all that information, no problemoy, she thinks housework is beneath her. She never got good at it because she's never had to do it. Yeah, why, just like it's been spoon fedts over spoon, Like, what do you mean I have to do these things? Just make the lady do it. And in the same way, Mr and Mrs Parker able to be convinced the absolute worst of people that they find lesser than them. And that's part of the reason the Kims are able to get their jobs is because immediately, I mean, this was another thing I hadn't really considered super carefully because the scene is pretty funny, how grossed out Mr and Mrs park are by finding underwear in the car and she touches her face with the gloves and then it's like, oh no, like like you just touched those underwears. This movie is very funny. But but the subtext to that scene is they jump from finding a parent like a pair of underwear in the back of a car to our driver, who has far less money than us, is probably addicted to drugs and it is probably doing this and and the Kims are, I mean, they know that these rich people have all these preconceptions of what poor people are like, and if you just give them the smallest scrap of anything, they're going to catastrophize it into this completely false narrative and and fire someone instead of just instead of I mean that whole thing is, yeah, asking one thing, it's like they don't want it to it with any kind of discomfort, including an uncomfortable conversation right at the end. The fucked up thing is they don't give them a chance to explain or possibly improve. It's like you suck up once you're out, and they don't tell you why they're out in you. That's the That's a constant thing that comes up with every single person that's fired. They never they never, they They're always like, you know, I'm not going to say like that I found, you know, a bloody tissue and the thing, I'll just you know, make up something and ask her to leave some vague excuse. With the With the driver too, it's like some something big I'm not going to talk to him about, like whether or not yet sex with a you know, a hooker who's on drugs in the backseat of my car. I'm not going to ask that. I'm just gonna maybe, you know, just make some make up, some excuse and fire, and that again comes you know, it ties into this motive of social mobility being impossible. Right, It's like if somebody fires you without cause, without explaining to you why, without having a conversation, it's an injustice, you know. And they can't. I mean, this couple can't even be straight with each other. Like they can't. How they can't. Yeah, like she she does not tell Mr Park why she's fired the housekeeper, Like, there's just and he doesn't ask either. Yeah, he's just my wife won't explain, You won't tell me. But it's fine. They're simply living a lie. They really are every convenient lie. Yeah. So I wanted to about Mr Kim and Queues relationship, even though I mean we we kind of reference often, like how father son relationships are usually given more narrative weight in movies in general than mother son, mother daughter whatever it is. But even though that is true of this movie, I really really appreciate how emotionally open this father son relationship is. I feel like that's usually the friction in a father son relationship is like, but we just can't talk to each other. Men can't express themselves. But I mean from the jump, Mr Kim is so effusive with his praise and how proud he is of both of his kids. Um where I didn't when when Ki jung Um forges the document, he's like, Wow, you're a genius. You did it. You're amazing. And when k discusses his first plan at the beginning of the movie, when he's going off to the Park's house and he's like, I'm going to go to college and you know this is temporary, and then I'm going to do this, this and this, and Mr Kim is like thrilled. He's like, I'm so proud of you. That's amazing. Good job. And I really appreciated seeing a father son relationship where the conflict is not that they are being dishonest or not emotionally open with each other. I feel like you don't see that very much. Yeah, they're they are very open as a family. I noticed that too, Like the children kind of like cursing a lot in front of their parents, like they swear a lot, Like they say she boy, like over and over again, like very casually. And I was just like WHOA, Like what does that mean? She by means like fuck, It's like it's a swear word. They say she by all the time, and I was just like wow, like I couldn't speak that way in front of my parents, like I curse but in English, like I couldn't this curson Korean in front of them, you know, Like that's just like another level of I don't know, like rebellion and trust that I just simply don't have in me, I guess, uh. But yeah, they're they're quite open, and it's like they they're very tightly knit because they're co dependent on one another, you know, And it's like you see a lot of that among lower income communities and families, like you have to depend on one another, Like a farm will not function without you having twelve children, you know what I mean, you need to have those twelve kids in order for the farm to really work. So yeah, it's definitely visible, especially where the parks, I mean with their children as well. There's just there's only walls and kind of seeing how those walls are kind of a privilege in even though you can tell, I mean, the park's daughter is kind of suffering from the lack of communication and attention that her parents will give her. They clearly think that their son is hot shit and is a favoritism here definitely, And I mean I think Mrs Park goes kind of out of her way to be like, I don't think my daughter is very smart, but we'll just kind of miss that part. She mentions that, like she's she's struggling in school, where she's kind of saying like, oh, my son made a drawing and he's a genius. And then she's like my daughter, like it just her. Yeah, she says something like um, regardless of her grades, implying that she doesn't get good grades despite her having this intensive tutoring, which kind of transitions into talking about Q and their daughter as well. But I mean it's like she's she's she definitely has some emotional suffering going that. I mean, the movie doesn't really have full She's neglected by her family. The son absorbs everything, not only because of this past trauma that he has, but also because of this potential genius whatever he has, Like the father obviously favors. When he comes home, he shouts, you know, passon, he like calls the son that's like all the daughter. You know, it's very obvious, like who is the center? Like the centerpiece of this household, and it's definitely the son. And yeah, she's neglected. And when she gets some attention from her male tutor, who is she is under age and he is in his twenties, it's completely inappropriate. She does it. And it's like, of course she did it with the other guy, right, with mini help the friend. Right, It's like, and we want to be really careful about how this is framed, because you know, she's a child. She is not to blame here. It's the adult. It's key who is seeing how she's neglected, you know, seeing her vulnerability ease, And even if his intentions aren't nefarious, doesn't matter. It's still very wrong. It's still predatory. Exactly. It's exactly what Crystallia did to all those girls. Yeah, God damn, I knew Crystallya was gonna weasel his way into the podcast. And then and then Neil Brennan's like, Krystalia good, he's good. He's a good boy. I mean that relationship, that's like I think one of the It's it's interesting though, because it's grace. If you mentioned this a bit ago, the kind of traditional lifting yourself out of poverty, narrative in movies tends to be, you know, like an attractive person from a higher class pays you mind, and all of a sudden you're lifted and everything is so easy, which is kind of becomes over time. Qu'es original plan is he does seem to like her. We think it's not like a complete falsehood, even though it is deeply I mean, he should not be pursuing this child, right, but but it does seem like that as a part of the original plan of like, oh, this girl likes me, so I'm gonna I mean, similar to he kind of just co ops men's original plan, which is to wait it out until she leading university, right, so she goes to college and then marry into this family and be set for life in the way that exactly. I mean, it's I guess it's it's a bit of a It is this subversion in that not only is it kind of gender swapped, uh, it also doesn't work, uh and shouldn't work. But you do, I mean, you do feel for her because it's like she the kids are like not they're not necessarily doing anything wrong. They're yeah, they're just children. Oh, he shouldn't have pursued a fifteen year old, you know, just right. And I don't know like what the movie is trying to say exactly with this predatory relationship. I don't know if it's like again, like the desperation of poverty and like here's what you might stoop to to try to get out of poverty, you know, like being a predator or being a murderer. And I don't think this movie is saying that, like, if you're poor, you're going to be driven to murder and predatory behavior. And that's a blanket statement across the board. No, the movie isn't saying that. It's it's an explanation of the motives. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen a few the few mis misinterpretation or not misinterpreting, I mean, no interpretations wrong, but basically just saying like, uh there. There was an article in The Guardian that basically makes the argument of like, well, doesn't this movie just say that if poor people have access to a rich person's lifestyle that they will then murder and prey on people. But I don't think that that's what this movie is really saying at all. And I mean even the criticism that I've seen, I've this is a piece. I don't know, I just disagree with this writer's uh statement. Her name's Hannah yun Uh and this was a piece that was in the Guardian in February of this year. But her argument, which I understand, but she's she's basically like kind of dumping on the Kims uh for the second the parks leave, they start drinking and like having fun, which, first of all, this family does not get to fucking have fun. And I don't know what bothers me about that read of their behavior is it completely lines up with the no plan mentality that this family you know, generally has to thrive on of Like if not, now, when are they going to get the chance to drink all this overpriced, like ridiculous alcohol and like eat and have fun and talk with each other and like yeah, yeah, like the rich families on vacation, why shouldn't the the poor family also go on vacation? Right, And they're just restributing to themselves, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does anyone have any final thoughts about the film? I mean, we haven't necessarily discussed the representation of gender that much, but also like I didn't even know what else what to say about it, aside from just like there's gender parity in the cast of characters between men and women. The female characters are all actively participating in the story in meaningful ways. There's a few kind of like slightly gendered things that I notice where it's like, oh, well, like, of three of the four major female characters in the movie, one of the main things we know about them is how good or bad they are at domestic housework. But I mean that, like it's like kind of the men that are discussing that, and it's like, well, what do they care about these female characters? And then it's the first thing they think to discuss, So I write, I'm like, I'm gonna give him the benefit of the data that one. Yeah, it didn't like bump me too much. Um yeah, Puma, he's a like of the Korean like Oh tours, the male O tours that are heralded by can and all these other top tier one film festivals around the world. I would say Punino was like of the tamer you know, because a lot of these other filmmakers Koreano tours are very misogynistic, you know, Puck ton of being one of them, you know, with Old Boy and all that ship but I have a lot of admiration and respect for Puno. He's not necessarily my favorite Korean filmmaker, but um, I think he tries to strike a balance in his movies and he casts really good people, like just a quick think. He did have another like underage teenage girl having sex with an older man in his two thousand nine film Mother, So this is like, this is a thing that comes up, and I just wish he wouldn't fetishize that too much. Yeah, he had. He has two short films that really excellent. One is called Influenza and it's again that's like another class commentary of crazy society. And Shaking Tokyo, which is part of an Omnibus, is a really really good um short film that's set in Japan and it's got pizza boxes with this Hiko Morty character, which is really interesting. So um, I would recommend those two short films by him. Good. Yeah, I'll check this out. Yeah, check them out. One thing that I thought was kind of funny that I didn't notice that. I thought it was funny that the only like heralded rich person above criticism in this movie the Architect and Architect, which I was just like okay, you know, but he does have a taint, like a smudge of you know, because he built these He built this home with this bunker that was made for rich people to survive if there was an attack from North Korea or to escape creditors like debt collectors, you know what I mean. So this was a haven that he created for the elite class to get away, and he never told the parks about it because he was ashamed of it. And this is what the housekeeper mentions, right, So I thought that was fascinating. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's I. I thought that that that character was playing and it does seem like his father was um. He was a graphic and industrial designer, so it means like that might be him discussing his father a little bit. Who knows, um. And then the last thing I wanted to bring up, just because it's like a very it also connects to something that's going on a lot in the States right now, is kind of the the WiFi motif. I guess you could call it, but it's just reference. It's the first time I've seen WiFi access treated seriously in terms of like it being a real problem if you don't have access to WiFi where it seems like, I mean, I've just heard that problem is dismissed so many times off like you don't need a computer, like you know, that's a privilege, not a but at this point that is absolutely not true there, I mean right now where there are so many students that are attending school digitally. There was a whole story the day we recorded this about students having like sitting outside of taco bells to have access to WiFi in order to free WiFi go to school, right, didn't to have a quiet room so that they can have classes live digitally to study WiFi access. Even the strength of your WiFi um not only the laptop and tablets, but the strength and then this other undergird of like where does all this e waste go? You know, like us having WiFi? Who does that hurt? In what country? All of that is is Actually Toby Miller is a really good scholar you guys can look into if you want to learn more about the waste and global inequality. Cool. Thanks for that. Well, does parasite pass the Bechtel test? That's the real question. That's the most important class commentary. Who cares? But Bachtel test? Uh? It does, it does, it does just barely. Yeah, there are some discussions where it's I mean, we can pick it apart all day. I don't think it's super relevant to this specific movie, but there are some conversations between women where a man isn't explicitly mentioned, but he is kind of like the underlying theme. Either way, it passes and even but like you know, it's like when it comes to that sex scene when he's like fingering her nipple and she's like, oh clockwise, I'm like, honestly, a guy fingering my nipple does nothing for me because you know, it's like I understand, I understand sexuality is complex, but come on, Mrs Park, like really, you know, like you want him down in between your legs, you know, in your bush, like his face in your bush, man, Like, don't lie. Stop lying to him that clockwise counter. It doesn't matter. It's ever been a directional nipple issue. Yeah, that was never the problem. It was just like stop it, you know, just like can be like yeah yeah yeah with that, like I was just just barely passes. It's like that doesn't know female sexuality. I don't know, right, I mean, and it would pass more handily if he had given more significant to the mother daughter relationship in the Kim family or in the Park family, which he really doesn't, and whether or not this is a deliberate decision made or whether he's just kind of not equipped as a writer to be able to write those relationships. It would have been nice to see a little more between, especially in the Kim family. Yeah, but like with all the women, they were all about like their men. You know, the housekeeper was everything was about like, you know, taking care of that husband in the basement with um, you know, the Mrs Park was all about taking care of her quote unquote six son, you know, and her and her husband, not her daughter, not her daughter. And with Ms Kim and Kei Jong, it was again it was about like he was planned. Yeah. So yeah, I think in that sense it's somewhat problematic, but yeah, it just barely passes. Yeah for sure. Well that brings us to our our nipple scale, the pectel Cast nipple scale, which is speaking of clockwise counterclockwise nipple today it's today it's clock clockwise nipple scale, yes, in which we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples. Um, just examining it from an intersectional feminist lens. I don't and I don't know what to do with this movie really, because again, there wasn't much of a conversation to be had necessarily specific to gender. I mean, obviously the class component is the far bigger conversation surrounding this movie. UM So, I guess I would I would give it like a three or three and a half. Again, I think different female characters could have had more agency or could have been given more focus. I think that the relationship between Q and the young daughter was why is it They're not really sure what the function of that is, or there's like there was another way to make that point that was right. Yeah, so I guess I'll give it a three. As much as I love this movie and as much as like looking at it from a screenwriting point of view, I'm just like loss Chef's Kiss, and I think it is an effective class commentary that explores a lot of really interesting themes in a way that we haven't necessarily seen explored in that way before of a lot of class commentary movies. UM So, I appreciated that, but I guess from a more gender perspective, I'm like it could do better. So three nipples, um, three clockwise nipples, and I'll give one to each of the little dogs whose names I forget. I think one was like Foo food. One I don't remember, that was definitely j Yeah, so each dog, because I'll go for a three as well. Yeah. Again, it's like, in terms of how much I enjoy and appreciate this movie, it's a million nipples. In terms of class commentary, it's a million nipples. But yeah, from a from a gender perspective, Um, I'll also go at three. And I also think on top of what we're talking about in terms of the predatory relationship and how um, the Park's daughter is kind of sideline and ignored and mistreated in a way that you see but isn't really examined in any meaningful way. When I feel like there is space for that, and just as much as there was space for a relationship between the Kim women, like there there was space for that that would have uplifted the rest of the movie. And I also, uh, well, I don't know, maybe this is like but I was thinking a little bit. I'm like, I feel like it is so devastating to lose Key Jung at the end of this movie. Yes, yes, yeah, but I think that impact would have hit even harder if we had had more time with her, and if we had gotten to know her more outside of her relationship with her father and her brother, which is what we see more of and we don't I mean, but again, it's like that we we do know things about her. We know that she is very talented, we know that she's really smart, she's a queer icon now she gay men love her. Yeah, hell yeah, she's she's fucking awesome. But I do. Yeah, I think that if we had had more time with her, especially her and her mother. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I'm like, I I understand why. You know, our rich had to die a pole or had to die and the ending completely works and makes sense. But yeah, I was sorry to see her go to Yeah, of the of the four as well, it's like she had I don't know, she was just awesome. Yeah. Yeah, So I'll go with three for Parasite and let's see. I guess I will give two to Keijung rest in power, and I will give one to the housekeeper who didn't do anything wrong. I felt so bad for her. I know she's and that actress is amazing, She's so many things. Um yeah, I would give it a two out of five in terms of gender because again, like I saw like a lot of the focus was, you know, the women's focus was on men oftentimes more so than anything else. And yeah, I think you still can do a little bit more when it comes to exhibiting gender equality or giving women a little bit more substance in in his screenplays. Yeah, his first film Barking Dogs Never Bite with Pidna, Like, she has a very interesting role, Like she's very much a strong role in there, and I feel I would like to see him kind of go back to more of that. Yeah. Cool, I'll have to check that one out too. Yeah. Well, Grace, thank you so much for being here. This was incredible for having me. I hope that our Korean pronunciations did not uh ruined. You girls have to stop that like that put so much burden on us. We're just like we kind of don't care. It's like you guys care more than we do, and putting that on us is like it can get annoying sometimes. It's like within this frame, you did too much of that. It's like you could just start with it and then stop saying it for the rest of the things, you know what I mean, I don't have to apologize every single time. You know, it's like it's it's fine. It's like I said, it's no big deal. Yeah cool. Yeah, thank you for saying that. That's a good learning moment for us, and I'm sure some of our listeners will find that helpful as well. And thank you so much for for joining us, for being here. Where can people check out your stuff, check out your writing? Follow you online? Yeah? So my handle is h J. It's a E C h J A y. You could find that on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. It's also my website. Uh yeah, and you know I post show updates there. Um sometimes I do videos, but yeah, please follow me. I would really appreciate it. Thank you, This is really fun. Thank you come back anytime. I would love to come back. Thanks. Of course, we'll have you back soon, y um. And you can follow us on social media at becketel Cast. You can subscribe to our Patreon ak Matreon It's patreon dot com slash becktel cast yep uh and it gets you to bonus episodes every month, plus access to the entire back catalog. Just like it's like seventy eight episodes at this point, some seventy ish. Yeah, this show has been on for seventy five million year. Still going strong. It's still going just still so many movies left to cover. And then our t public store where you can get all of our merch t public dot com slash. The Bechtel Cast just had to end on a little bit of capitalism for you at the end of our parents that were like also by our merge, yeah, but by our stuff, give us money, subscribe to our Patreon. But yeah, I mean, do what you can to help out your fellow human being. That's what will end on. Bye bye bye