Squid Game is the top-rated show on Netflix, and a network exec calls it the ‘biggest show ever’. What’s the appeal to American audiences of this brutal, bloody, Korean-language (with subtitles) series where virtually everybody dies?
Right Angle — with Scott Ott, Stephen Green, and Bill Whittle — analyzes news and culture in the context of timeless conservative principles. It’s a Member-supported enterprise you can join for as little as $9.95/month. Members unlock access to backstage video content, comments, forums and become authors on the Member-written blog.
Video below hosted at Rumble.
24 replies on “Everybody Dies: Why is Brutal, Bloody, Korean, ‘Squid Game’ the ‘Biggest Show Ever’ on Netflix?”
Oh, man. The book of Metropolis was what gave the film and its frame all its meaning. It set so many standards and types.
Try “Train to Busan” if you haven’t already.
Why was this episode (and several others) pulled down from YouTube? Did BW get a strike?
In my opinion, the show attracts a public deeply in debt and asks if they are willing to exchange a monetary debt for a moral debt in order to gain their freedom along with the self-absolution that whatever they did to incur the debt was worth the cost, the same relief and achievement we feel when any debt is paid. For those who believe they are judged by God, this is a tougher choice than for those who define their own morality.
😂https://babylonbee.com/news/new-season-of-squid-game-will-have-giant-fauci-robot-detect-if-youre-not-wearing-a-mask-so-you-can-be-shot
Brings to mind a sort of everyman’s lower standard of the Gladiatorial Games!?!?!
I’ve seen Battle Royale. Don’t need to see Squid Game. Or Hunger Games.
I’m three episodes in so far (I started tonight), and I was about to say I’m enjoying it, but that’s not the right word. I’m certainly engaged by it and will watch more, but it’s no barrel of laughs. There is violence, a good deal in terms of sheer numbers, but it’s certainly not violence porn. Lots of folk are shot, but Game of Thrones has more varied and inventive deaths, and they’re more lovingly realised for the screen. The offhand nature of the killing in Squid Game is rather the point.
So far I’d say Bill’s idea of the show is the most accurate. It seems to be much more about a controlling and infantilised society than a rich vs poor thing. It’s visually rich, the candy coloured Escher staircase set is creepy as anything, very reminiscent of The Prisoner. The bright, basic colour palette and the childish but deadly games add to the sense of dread more than grim, dark dungeons ever could.
I’m watching with subtitles and I’d say the biggest thing that could be improved is the translation. I don’t speak Korean, but I’m pretty sure the original dialogue isn’t as clunky and awkward as the English version is. Translation’s no easy thing, especially dialogue, and having seen Train to Busan and its sequel, I think there’s an opening for folk who know both languages and cultures to provide a more subtle, less “google translate” service.
All in all, yup, it’s violent, but the violence is far from relentless and is very much integral to the story. I’m pretty gripped by it, by the story, by the look of it, and by a desire to see where they go with it.
Having written this I’m watching one more episode before bed. It’s fine, I can stop anytime I want, honest…one last thing, if you do watch Squid Game, you may never feel the same way about the Blue Danube Waltz again.
I’m a little surprised that they would have so much to say about the show, when NONE of them have watched it. I understand choosing not to see it; nothing can be ‘unseen’. But it seemed like something the other side does more than us. I did see the show, and I’m not exactly sure their opinions fit with the actual show.
I haven’t watched it and I’m not likely to. I don’t need to experience the full thing, any full thing, to have an opinion about it and just because I didn’t experience the thing does not necessarily make my opinion invalid.
I don’t need to shoot myself in the foot to know that’s something I won’t like. I don’t even need to see someone else shoot their own foot to know that I wouldn’t like that either. In fact there’s very little experience or a need to know a lot about such a thing to know I’m not going to like it. Pretty much just; foot, high velocity projectile, nope, not a good combination.
This idea that you cannot have a valid, informed opinion about something unless you have actually experienced it is way oversold. By your logic a woman has to have an abortion to know if she thinks killing a baby is a good idea or not. A country has to actually try out Leftist socialism to see if it will work well for them or not. I have to actually watch a chick flick to see if I might like chick flicks or not (BTW, never have and don’t).
You can watch this show if you want. Your view of it will be completely different than mine. As I said in a previous comment, I’ll willing to allow that my assessment might be wrong, after a couple seasons have aired I might revisit my choice to watch it or not.
But the idea that you have to stick your hand in a meat grinder so that you can have first hand experience in just how much that hurts is a bit ludicrous. So is the idea that I have to stick my eyeballs on a show that by all indications I won’t like just so I know how much I don’t like it.
Oh, one more thing …
The Left doesn’t “do this more than us”, the Left lies a lot more than us. They tell you things like “my body, my choice” until they want you to do something with your body. Like get a vaccine. It’s not a matter so much of “doing this more than us” as it is they manipulate people to their own gain more than we do. Because I didn’t see Bill, Scott or Steve doing that at all in this video.
I agree and may add that there’s no entertainment value in any of these kind of shows. Some say these shows are for de-sensitizing people, mostly the young.
I agree, @JeffGray … it was clear to me also that they were making opinions on something that they hadn’t watched. Missed major themes and even obvious points:
For example, the trailer was subtitled. The whole movie had a very quality English voice-overs. But they “didn’t want to have to read movies”. Dead giveaway that they never watched it.
First and only time I was disappointed in this normally quality crew.
Squid Game is about the need to feel urgency, danger and risk in a world so risk-averse that coffee cups carry warnings their contents are hot, work “fun” days begin with health and safety warnings and park signs ask children not to climb trees. In a world where real risk is so foreign and to be feared that almost the whole Western world went mad in March 2020 over a cold virus variant which on average kills people older than those who die from almost all other causes, the show represents an attraction to a sense of danger.
Luciferians are in a death cult.
…and they love telegraphing to each other.
Nah, hard pass on this show for me. I could be wrong, I might change my mind but for now I have zero interest in this kind of thing done in a foreign language with only subtitles in English.
NetFlix has done other shows in foreign languages I don’t speak and dubbed in English audio. I can live with that, I just have to keep myself from trying to lipread.
There have been other TV shows I turned my nose up at and was wrong. I refused to watch “Breaking Bad” because I had no interest in seeing glorification of the intimate lives of drug dealers. Two seasons in I’d heard so much good about the show and the actors that I decided to try it out anyway. So I got the first season and watched it, and was hooked. It actually was a very good show with an interesting plot served well by decent acting.
Same here with Squid Games. The idea of people getting shot in the head all the time doesn’t appeal to me even a little bit. I’m not the type to savor fake bloodletting for the sake of drama. I’ve seen real bloodletting and it’s not at all fun. I have enough PTSD and nightmares as it is.
I have to agree that judging a show before having watched it is a bit like judging a book by its cover. I, too, didn’t want to watch “Breaking Bad” for the same reason. As an ex-druggie, I didn’t want to have anything to do with glorifying drug dealing. However, what I found to be the principle message of the show (I’ve watched all five seasons), was how easily a good person with originally good motives can be completely corrupted by greed, shame, and pride, and how devastating and life destroying the drug industry is. In MHO, “Breaking Bad” does exactly the OPPOSITE of glorifying the drug industry. Could be that Squid Game has the same effect on people, awakening them to how evil, insensitive, hopeless, manipulable, and corrupt humans can be. I probably won’t watch it though, as NetFlix has become much more politically involved with furthering the narrative of the progressive left since “Breaking Bad” and I have better things to do with my time.
Meh, I always thought that the old saw “You can’t judge a book by it’s cover” was one of the rare bits of conventional wisdom that doesn’t hold up. Too, that saying originates from a time before cover art and jacket blurbs so it’s probably something that held true in its day but isn’t so any longer.
If I see a book with cover art of a beautiful dark haired woman dressed in blue satin with ruffles, bustles, frills and crinoline titled “Loves Hope Lost” … I can be pretty damn sure it’s not a book I’m interested in. I don’t need to read the whole book to be certain of that. It might be the best thing since “Gone With the Wind” but the odds are very good it’s not.
Same goes for the Obama Special and the Fauci movie. I already know I’m not going to be interested in those either. I don’t have to watch them to be certain how much I’m not interested.
I’m not an ex-Druggie BTW. I did make a mistake with “Breaking Bad” and that’s why I used it as an example. It’s a rare example of deciding I don’t like something before I actually check it out and then finding I was wrong.
Most of the time, in my experience, the opposite is true. Most of the time I think “Well, I might like this so I’ll check it out” and then find out it’s a stinker. I.E. I always liked Bruce Willis movies and I’m a Sci-Fi fan. I loved “The Fifth Element” so when two Bruce Willis movies that also happened to be Sci-Fi were released this year I dutifully sat through them and then wondered why I wasted those hours of my life on such garbage.
Ol’ Bruce was really phoning in those performances and the movies were utter crap.
I’m not saying everything is stinker, I’m saying that if I have the least interest I’ll probably read the book or watch the show anyway. More often than not I’m rewarded rather than penalized for doing so. Last weekend I watched a movie titled “Predestination” and it was an excellent Sci-Fi time travel flick. I didn’t know until the credits rolled that it was based on a Robert Heinlein story or I probably would have watched it a lot sooner. I’m a Heinlein fan big-time.
I don’t have the least interest in “The Squid Game”. It’s a stupid title, it’s in a foreign language without dubbed English dialog, it’s about people getting shot in the head for losing at a trivial contest in an incongruous competition and it’s just not something I think I’ll be interested in.
It sounds salacious and venal to me. It sounds like snuff porn toned down to something that can be streamed by NetFlix. I might be wrong but I’m not wasting the minutes of my life on something that doesn’t interest me until I get some indication that it might.
I absolutely judge books by their covers and jacket blurbs. This serves me well more often than not and by a wide margin. On those very rare occasions where that’s a mistake I can rectify it after I receive more information. There is no need to read every book in the world hoping to find a gem here and there. If authors, publishers and show producers want my interest they can do a better job on book covers, titles and trailers.
I have a friend in the film business who says that movies are ‘of their time’. I think one can see that what we fear during a certain period of history is what often shows up in movies. Right now, we have the malevolent nihilist left rejecting values as such and so trying to destroy our society and murder or enslave us. While everyone can watch what they wish, I don’t plan on watching what sounds to me like a concretization of vicious nihilist junk.
An object lesson in jumping to conclusions based on incomplete knowledge. Bill, I’m afraid you’ve missed the entire point. Squid Game is not about government control, it’s about free will and the limits an individual will exert in order to achieve security in an insecure world. If you could reduce the lottery odds from 1 in 350 million to 1 in 187, but the ticket might cost the ultimate price, would you do it? In Squid Game, 187 of the first round survivors, even after voting to leave the game, decided the risk was worth the reward and returned to play. They all determined that the living death of the outside world, full of hopelessness and despair, was the worse choice. The introduction of the corrupt, hedonistic voyeuristic boogeymen of faceless oligarchy is, I think, a bit over-the-top, But, as Steve said, not every movie has a good villain.
Korean production?
It turns out it is not fiction, rather a North Korean reality show. After all, everyone gets shot in the head for the amusement of the wealthy power elites.
Steve, I’m completely with you in not going to the movies to read. My workaround is to watch them when I work out, as it’s the one time my attention is pretty much focused in one direction
I’ve long wondered about this. Some people are just obsessed with the morbid. My long-time best friend is one of them. He writes horror fiction. I don’t get it but I do get that people do. I’m with Scott. Why so many people are fascinated by it now … you may be on to something.
The whole blowing people away for losing Red Rover … yeah, not something I want to watch. Don’t think desensitization is good for you. Or society.
Addicted to outrage ~Glen Beck