The Bechdel Cast - Parasite with Grace Jung

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

Caitlin and Jamie descend into a secret basement with special guest Grace Jung to discuss Parasite.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @aechjay on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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who on October 16, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere. us. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. on the Bechdel 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's effing vast start changing it with the Bechdel cast hey Caitlin yes Jamie uh starting to think capitalism might be dot dot dot not so great wait what um well that was what i got for an opening i loved it i you know i just i feel like i've really like my open my opening game has really diminished lately and i don't know if it's just because like my it's nine trillion degrees and my brain is just boiling inside of my skull or or if it's all finally getting to me i've i you know personal apologies for that real lukewarm opening i could have done better and i will strive to do better no jamie don't apologize

i mean this is a this is a difficult time well welcome to the bechdel cast my name is jamie loftus my name is caitlinus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is 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 test, often known as the Bechdel-Wallace test, as a way to just inspire a larger conversation. And that is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel. And it requires that, for our purposes, our 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 some movies do. But sometimes it happens.

That's just the nature. It's kind of a pass-fail test. There's not really a middling. Although sometimes there's those fun ones, like the one we just had. Sometimes we have to have a whole conversation about it. Sometimes two women with names are just apologizing over nothing like I was doing, you know, just two minutes ago. So, you know, there are shades of gray there as well. But I'm really, really, really excited to talk about today's movie. Popular request and one of my faves. 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 jung hello 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're covering yeah we were like um popular request but leave you guessing as to what movie i know i was like why am i here who are these people yeah good yeah i i love this movie parasite um i've been i've been following the filmmaker bong joon-ho's career for a long time and i would say say 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. Interesting side note on Bong Joon-ho, he studied sociology in college. So he actually did not study filmmaking per se but yeah i 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 yeah 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 at can is a big deal yeah and then um i went to see it in theaters uh with a friend another korean-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 i you know i work in film i 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 it. And I was like, you have to stop talking right now. I just, I just need to go

home and process this alone. Right? So I just, I just went home, processed it. And then I texted like, like two other Korean American friends of mine. And I was just like, Parasite, you have to see it. We have to see it together. And like they went to see it by themselves. And then we went as a group together to go and see it again. And yeah, it's like a film that I could keep returning to. I think it's really well done. For sure.

Jamie, 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 different times in theaters. And this was kind of embarrassingly my first movie 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 I haven't seen um I think two of his films but um yeah I

just kind of uh swiveled into a Stan. 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. Yeah, but I really love it. Caitlin, what is your experience with this movie? Pretty similar. I had seen a few of his films in the past. 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. I'd also seen Snowpiercer. And I was like, okay, it's more aligned thematically withbing at the end of like the kind of sobbing where you're, you can't breathe because you're crying so hard. Anyways. Caitlin, did you need an outlet? I mean, it's very sad. But the animals, the super piglets. Anyway, I was traumatized in any case i i do really enjoy his filmography and i loved 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 for that feminist icon hulu owned by fox Feminist icon Hulu. Owned by Fox. Yes. Feminist icon Fox. Owned by Disney. Famously. Eee! Capitalism!

Don't get me started on, have you seen those Disney reboots? For sure they're feminist. It's not a cash grab at all. Okay, so, should I just dive into the recap and we'll go from there? Yeah, let's do it. I like how I ask that question every single episode. Okay. Thank you for asking for consent before starting the recap.

Well, you know, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page. All right. 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 20s. Not entirely sure. Early 20s. Yeah, because at the end you find out how old the daughter was because it says she was born in 1996.

So she's 23. Okay, got it. I missed that detail. Good to know. In any case, they come from a low socioeconomic background. They live in this like semi-basement level apartment. Their phones have been shut off. They don't have access to Wi-Fi 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 Ki-woo, the son, 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 that when the stone comes in you're like oh it's a metaphor stone i wonder what the metaphor will be but you 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 hmm 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 Ki-woo says like, this is metaphorical. Just making fun of people watching the movie in real time. It's great. So anyway, so Min is leaving to study abroad, and he wants to recommend Ki-woo for his old job tutoring a girl from a rich family. Ki-woo's sister helps him forge a college degree, I think, or some kind of official academic document, and he goes in for an interview, and he meets Mrs. Park 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 i 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 uh her son dasun 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 ki jung and jessica ill. 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. You pronounce them just fine so far. Okay. Oh, 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. 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 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 sequences in the movie. That whole sequence is just so fucking funny. It's great. Like when they're like shaving the little peach fuzz off of the peaches and collecting it in like a tiny little vial. The hot sauce at the end.

It's just great. Yeah. So then Mrs. Kim gets hired 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. 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. Okay. 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 it's 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, they like tumble down the stairs 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'll be there in eight minutes. So everyone has to scramble. The Kims drag the housekeeper and her husband back down into the basement. There's violence. And then the Park family arrives back home.

A meal is made. It looked so good. The Kim family hides in the living room under the coffee table. 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, which is just never not disturbing to watch. I'm like, I know you're like, I don't know. Do your thing. But in matching pajamas.

It's the realist portrayal of a married couple's sex life. Yeah. Matching gray pajamas. Jerking each other off. Joylessly jerking each other off joylessly each other off like their son is in a tent mere yards away all right 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 Parks throw an impromptu birthday party for the son, 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 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 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 that 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! The end! It's a very uplifting film. Just brings joy. So that's the story. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now.

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Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back um something that i wasn't totally aware of before i started researching for this episode was uh 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. 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 knew 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, here are a couple of quick facts. This is from literally socialist.net, if you can believe. Feminist icon socialist.net.

Just a little website called socialist.net. But just to contextualize the class disparity in South Korea. So this is from a piece by Andy Southwark about Parasite. Quote, Korea had barely developed under the yoke of Japanese imperialism. At the end of the Korean War in 1953, the South remained a largely rural economy with a very low standard of living. In a period immediately following the war, the South was totally dependent on the U.S. 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 saying this correctly, chaebols, C-H-A-E-B-O-L-S, which came to totally dominate the economy. The chaebols were run by the country's elite families who use corruption and their state contacts to amass 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 1997 Asia financial crisis several Shea 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. Jaebol is the word, not chaebol. But, yeah, chaebol is a huge problem in South Korea. Like, for instance, Samsung is a chaebol 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 screen you know typical but it folds my god oh i've yeah i've like heard about these or like no 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 uh embedded marketing and when i saw that i was just like i want that phone so badly you know fuck apple i don't care anymore uh samsung you have outdone yourself but yeah jaybothers are a huge problem for instance um this film was executive produced by mickey lee mickey lee is the daughter of a samsung corporate conglomerate because Samsung is associated with CJ.

And CJ, well, it's actually a food conglomerate. But CJ has a subdivision called CJ 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 god damn yeah um so yeah these chibas are a problem and they're 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

table establishment and yet she's the one that's executive producing a film that has a very sharp social critique right 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 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 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 exactly 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 as no ethical consumption argument right 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 be successful as an artist, if you want to pay off your three credit cards that you maxed out in order to make that film, you're going to say yes. And yeah, i don't blame pung junu at all for for doing that you know it it is like i mean 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 to that. We're still bound to that, whether we like it or not.

I mean, we're on iHeartRadio right now. Exactly, I noticed. There is quite honestly no escaping it. Right, and without that funding, it would have been as difficult to make as it would have been for Kiwoo to to like earn enough money to buy the that park house and like rescue his dad like it's just exactly it's not in the socio-economic structures that many countries operate under it's simply not possible social mobile like upward 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 can we do, you know? And then what you just said about social mobility, 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 it. 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 it when people cross a line, but that odor crosses the line. And that's a very, very 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 cross this so-called line. Yeah. They lose 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 mobility. Right. People with power do not want the poor to be socially mobile. Yeah, because then they don't have anyone left to exploit. Exactly.

The smell works on so many levels on like, I don't know. When I first saw that movie, I was like, 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 is 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 all so 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 smell offends,

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 i thought this use of the odor was really clever i thought it was a really clever device in the film yeah and like yeah i was reading this piece by laura marks she writes it's like a very it's a it's an academic piece a 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 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 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, we'll take care of North Korea, U.S., you take South Korea and we'll 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 colonization, which lasted from 1910 to 1945, South Korea was like, okay, well, I mean, I guess we're technically free, but no, 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 shit out of Japan and destroyed the country and, you know, lost World War II. 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, it was a rural economy. South Korea is full of mountains and fields, a lot of farming. And they were like, they don't know sanitation. And the Japanese didn't like the smells of South Koreans because of whatever their lifestyle was like. And so not only do you have that, but you also have the cuisine of South Korea where there's a lot of fermentation. So you have doenjang, which is a fermented soybean paste, and then you have kimchi, as everybody now knows. Back in 1992, when I first emigrated to the United States and I brought my Korean food lunch to my PS12 Brooklyn public school. Okay. The horror, right? The trauma that it left

on everybody because I brought a roll of kimbap to class. I mean, it was just unbelievable, right? The smell of sesame oil, the smell of fermented kimchi, the smell. And this lunch story is like universal. You could ask, you could literally grab any Asian off the street 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're gonna be like yes yes i do i've heard 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 offends the fermented cabbage smell that offends yeah but today you have the smell that offends, the fermented cabbage smell that offends. Yeah.

But today you have white people eating kimchi 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 90s this president and kim young-sam was like i want south korea to be just as globally branded and successful as japan right because by the 90s like japan was kicking ass like sony was global you know japan had a huge stake in hollywood through sony um you know you know they had walkman okay walkmans you know, that came from Japan and Hello Kitty everywhere. Right. Japanese fashion. Sushi was a huge thing. Right. Yeah. And, you know, everybody was getting down with Japanese products and Korea was like, we need to get there. Right. Because, you know, Korea doesn't have a lot of natural resources.

They don't have a lot to export and they needed to make it economically. And so they started, you know know doing this global branding process and kimchi was a big part of that so it's it's no accident that 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 right kpop being global that's also not an accident Korean dramas being on Netflix is not an accident. Korean films, winning a Cannes Palme d'Or 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, yeah, globalization is a big part of this. And I will also say, you know, US neocolonialism 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 acquired stench, it's an acquired odor, acquired taste, and you can get down with it stink. It's an acquired stench. It's an acquired odor, acquired taste. And you can get down with it. And it's like the branding thing tricks you. It gets people on board.

And South Korea has been doing it for 30 years, and they finally did it. Yeah. Damn. Wow. Yeah, that's such helpful context. Thank you for all of that. Yeah, truly. 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 preview in my previous reads of the movie where i mean they are very responsive to western culture i think that there is 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. Right. 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, just having read through more interviews with the director is the fact that the parks aren't necessarily they're not made out to at the end. He has it coming. It is cathartic to see him go down for treating poor people so dismissively. But there is a quote from Bong Joon-ho 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 perks 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

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 yeah and they find mr kim as the driver appealing because he was working for this wealthy family of and like the the the forgery of the college degree document you know you had like and and the and the two kids uh kijung and q jessica and kevin they actually presented themselves as fellow equals, like

fellow socioeconomic 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, right, the way that Mrs. Park, like speckles in English, whenever she yeah 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 that's why I say that U.S. neocolonial 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. And this concept of, I mean, I really like that Pung mentioned that because in the context of like, I don't know, this might get too too heady 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 yeah like a young girl an orphan girl working class work so works so hard, so honest, you know, so beautiful, so caring, right? But she just can't get out of the shits, right? So what does she do? She has to meet a hot, rich guy. And she does. And the hot, rich guy likes her because she's so honest and hardworking. 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 right you know nobody ever names the

villain everybody always names the victimhood like my victim and my plight. And that's just a very clever way to present that is to say that, yeah, like in capitalism, maybe there is no villain after all. You know, to say like all these people are evildoers is, you know, perhaps not realistic. Right. To vilify these people would make it the the characters would be caricatures they wouldn't be relatable at all and that's something we talk 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 them being so cartoonishly evil that no one would ever be able to see themselves in someone so cartoonishly evil and they're like oh well i can't i'm not a predator like that so i'm not a predator right but like exactly not all

men exactly 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 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 then assaults you or rapes you but yeah 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.

Right. But it's 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 is that guy. But more often than not, it is. It is that guy. He's it is that guy more often than not it is yeah it is that guy yeah he'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 cathartic 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 we see to push a second family into the basement so that you can live upstairs. Right. Get other people fired so you could take their place.

Yes, exactly. 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 pull 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 kiwu 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 where are the ones who need help? Worry about us. Okay. And that line had never really jumped out to me before, but that is so much of what it seems like is 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, Grace, what you 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 going to do the right thing. 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'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 how much mutual aid is going on and how people are. 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 yeah the more money you have the less in touch you are with humanity and compassion and all of that no matter how many um you know tax deductible charity donations that person makes all right but uh so you have this sense of guilt this this conscience that Mr. Kim and Q both kind of share. And then Ki-jung 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, they're so everybody in the family is so sweet and kind. They have no wrinkles. Because if you're wealthy, you 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 and it's like yeah it's kind of true you know when you come from the shits you're gonna have some of the the shit marks the odors and you know you're gonna have more wrinkles you're gonna seem a little more rough around the edges you know right yeah i loved that exchange yeah that 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 ki jung and mrs kim that point these things out. Because they're, I mean, in general, and this is, there's not even a criticism of the movie. I think it's just kind of like something that shows up in male auteur movies all the time is like, at the end of the day, it's about fathers and sons. And that's so many movies. And that is, I mean, it's not Bong Joon-ho's fault. It's just the fact that men make most movies and

so this is a theme we see a lot so I 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 Ki-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 oh she's so great yeah 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 wish that you saw a little more of her I like I just really like that actress yeah she's yeah the actress's name is um Jang Hyejin and she's actually in a very very popular Korean drama right now on Netflix called Crash Landing on T.O.P. 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? Yeah, like she was like, she was an athlete. She was a silver medal winning athlete. Right? And like sports is such a big deal for Koreans. 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 went wrong for her?

I'm so curious, you know, like a silver medalist. Like the father, it's like he's done a bunch of odd jobs. Maybe he's the person who brought her to ruin. You know, she married the wrong piece of shit and you know and oh and another interesting parallel was that um the kim family they were also like they also faced financial ruin with the cake shop they say like a castella taiwanese cake shop yeah and like castella is like this this sponge cake pastry that like Koreans loved, you know, like in the 80s and 90s 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 guy says the same thing. He's like, oh, my Castella bakery went bust. And then the wife is 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 who will come and break your legs, you know, destroy your house, destroy your business, kill people, whatever, in order to collect debt. And the interest rate is ridiculously high.

It's beyond credit cards. And it's impossible to get out of debt when you get stuck with loan sharks. And so, yeah, that's also this interesting parallel. And how the Kim family was in the same circumstances as 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 oust them, right? Until the family fell from the stairs and ruined everything. And I would also say that, I wouldn't say Ki Jung is the mastermind in all of it i would say it's it's a it was a collective effort between kijung 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 kijung was kind of like the facilitator she was good with the documents

this and that i would say q was more of the the facilitator. She was good with the documents, this and that. I would say Kyu was more of the mastermind, the one that was making all these plans, right? These so-called plans. Right. Yeah. Just kind of calling back to what you were just talking about, Grace, where it's kind of like the Kims seem resistant to seeing themselves in this other family, even though, like you were saying, they had a very similar financial problem and were taken advantage of in a similar way. And another example of where, again, it was just not something that had jumped out to me on previous viewings, where 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 asks basically, like, how disgusted by the basement and is asks 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's saying 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 the same 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 son's out in his tent and cares and blah, blah, blah. They're like fingering each other. And then people's homes's homes are being destroyed you know it's like there's a frontline community that the kims are a part of and their whole life is being destroyed and then you got

these rich people fingering each other on a hill and exactly yeah and it was so that i mean that scene of the rainstorm and the the father daughter and son walking you know all the way home through the rain and then coming down that huge you know that was metaphorical right i mean yeah like you have this rock shaped like mountains you know and it's like how do you get there but you know all it 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 live in a basement you know and all that rain and shit goes down there all the rich people's shit 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 and try to meet with people in society you know i think the house structure that that that big scene with the 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 yeah 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 i it's like as if i got married here 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 the 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 basement so they could eat and survive. You know, it's like, what else can they do?

Yeah. Yeah. 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 as 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. Kim about his wife or his children or like bother to learn anything about them yeah because they're far too self-absorbed exactly yeah like when Mr. Kim like as he's driving Mr. Park around whenever he turns around to say something you know and they almost get into an accident at one point like Mr. Park says just keep your eye on the road like turn around right like you're supposed to face that way not back towards me right 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 uh there's this there's a short story that's very famous in Korea called Wings. It's written by a modernist called Lee Sang. 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 is 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 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 And it's like when you're colonized, right? 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? Right. And I thought that was very much a theme in that. Yeah, especially because... Yeah, I didn't know about that story. I don't think anybody does. like what happens right right and i thought that was very much a theme in that yeah especially because i didn't know about that story i don't think anybody does that was just my reading of it i need to write about it before some asshole 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 fuck are you right they don't know i don't like you exactly yeah it's like do you know me right yeah 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 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 kamikaze 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 80 countries with US military presence. Yeah. And yeah, I think I think a lot of that is is in there yeah 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 his picture all the time. 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. Right, right, right. Yeah.

We got to take another quick break, but then we'll come right back for more discussion. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session.

24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out?

I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing they're just dreams dream sequence is a new horror thriller from blumhouse television iheart radio and realm listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever podcasts. I felt too seen, um, dragged. I'm NK and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what

back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of

conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I wanted to bring up something that I thought was funny and didn't really know how to fully articulate until I read the interview with Bong Joon-ho where he says

there's no heroes and there's no villains intentionally. I think it does make it a really challenging read for rich people and people who are inclined to be like but the rich people were nice um and i want i wanted to shout out three dogs i want it right i wanted to shout out in a negative way uh 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 of this year he tweeted is it too early to say the central metaphor and parasite didn't actually work who is

the parasite the rich or the poor with in mind, explain the third act to me. Like, he just... It was really stunning. Listen to this podcast, Neil Brennan. He would never. He's very problematic, yeah. He's the worst. I don't like his general outlook on gender.

Yeah, his outlook, I've yet to see a take. And yet he is such a victim, right? As we've seen in Three Mics. I thought it was so interesting how nobody gave Neil Brennan any shit for doing Three Mics, which was like, a third of it was just 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 right cultural pastime 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 nanette and then question hannah gadsby if you

want to be fair new york times right i think his most recent fuck up was uh immediately defending chris delia but oh my god i don't see what's wrong with y'all which really swept his not understanding parasite even one percent 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 problem let's like well exactly and that's kind of the brilliance of this movie is like they're the problem is looming over them, but it's not personified. Grace and Jamie, too. People have mentioned the idea of like the plan and the master plan that the Kim family kind of have crafted and are trying to follow. And this is a huge motif and theme throughout the movie. 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 characters 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 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 shit hits the fan even like when the former

housekeeper shows up on the doorstep like kiu is like this isn't part of the plan we don't know what to do this isn't this 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, 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 simply don't have the resources and the privilege to form and execute plans that actually ever work. And then the movie ends with Kyu 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 gonna make a bunch of money. And then I'm gonna buy this house. And then, you know, dad, you're gonna come out of hiding and we're all gonna reunite. But it all plays out again as a flash forward. It's like a dream sequence more than anything, because then it cuts 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 gonna get out of that basement no way he suffered a huge brain injury you know yeah 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 in korea is also like a huge has a record you know he has a criminal record and i mean having a criminal record in korea is also like a huge damning thing you know right um being a disabled person is huge

damning thing he actually uh pong junho does play with themes like that like criminality and disability in his other films um i would really strongly recommend memories of murder by the way i would say yeah of all of his films that's his best work okay 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 somehow it's not available anywhere yeah it's such a good movie song gang-ho the man who plays mr kim is also in that but yeah anyway uh yeah there's always somebody with a disability in like a lot of his movies and i think that's there intentionally he is like bong junho 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 a read of the plan theme that I really liked was from that same uh vulture profile it was for I guess from a follow-up of that profile uh by a writer named E. Alex Jung. Oh, he's a great writer. Yes, we've quoted him before. Incredible. Yeah, we quote him constantly. E. Alex Jung. Yeah.

Same as my last name. Oh, okay. So E. 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 writer. But he argues in the follow-up to the profile that hope

is the emotional parent 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? Neil Brennan was like, but they didn't tell me who the parasite was in the third act. People are so basic, huh? Yeah.

I mean, it's even, it's like, I mean, this is a very different example. They like it when things are spoon fed to them they want somebody to say i and i am the parasite oh that's why the title's parasite i am the devil wears prada i am the parasite everyone wants that spartacus moment like that sp exactly poison people's brains i am a demon prince i'm quoting i frankenstein now i am i frankenstein uh he does say that though uh yeah that's what i'm saying he basically does uh but but i do i mean that is i think the most succinct 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 fuck 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 it's 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 right like that's the true definition everybody in a capitalist society that's literally everybody you know but yeah i mean with the plant thing though i i think alex is reading so beautiful it's like an inverse shawshank redemption right morgan freeman is like hope kills a man right like or hope drives a man crazy and then like the the guy

he's like you know he writes morgan freeman letters like hope is a beautiful thing or blah blah blah yeah yeah and it's like punggyeo is like no it does it it makes you it will destroy you it 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 i feel like hopes like that even though in your heart of heart of heart of hearts you're like this is not gonna fucking happen but but like i 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 the mr kim's monologue which i love that monologue yeah um and And 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 sell your country. He says those things. Yeah. I think that's very important. Because, you know, again, like Korea as a colony, had to do those very things, you know, like, like Korea 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 mean, that's where Samsung comes from. Um, yeah, you have a lot of that, a lot of murdering, especially, you know, during the Korean war when, when, you War, when it's like you couldn't tell who is a communist, who is not. 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, comes from the US.

It's a constructed paranoia that was injected into other countries right this paranoia over the commie and a lot of innocent people lost their lives and there's actually a movie that was set on Jeju Island which is like an island just off the coast of South Korea it belongs to South Korea but it's like they're an island so their language is like their their dialect is also very unique to in Jeju. 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 shit 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 speak, military language, because you have to create an enemy. Right. And you have to make them enemy, right? And you have to make them consciously, you have to lower them in your brain, right? You have to dehumanize them in order to kill them. To justify killing them, right? 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 rationalizing is done in capitalist systems

this happens a lot it's like oh like i will lose 35 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 hyper rationalizing.

We're all under that, including the Kim family, including the Park family, everybody. Well, even yet in the way that the Kim family needs to lower a family, very similar to themselves in order to rationalize killing them. Like, yeah, even like when they first encounter the housekeeper and her husband in the basement and the housekeeper is like pleading with the Kim.

I mean, like, sis, come on, sister. We have a sisterhood. We're in. We're of the same ilk. We are in the same class. And and and Mrs. Kim is like, no, we're 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 yeah everybody's replaceable in our capitalist machine yeah

and on the other end of that where the 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 involve 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 kijung scene where she's the art therapist and she's just like spewing bullshit and she says later like i googled art therapy and like ad-libbed the rest but she just uses the word schizophrenia yeah the schizophrenia zone i'm like well that's not good yeah she just made that up not a doctor she just made it up and again i think it's because she uses english you know like these english words you know make it

sound like he jung 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 yeah she's really interested i i had never i guess that this is the closest i'd ever looked at her character specifically because i was curious 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 like 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 yet but we'll get there oh yeah 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 if 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 kims anything about themselves which is part of the reason they're able to get away 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 right stop talking to me yeah yeah that's such a good point like when mr kim gives mr park the care card and then mrs park calls the cares phone number yeah and then kijung picks up the phone and pretends to be that gatekeeper the manager at the care yeah she's like asking for all these documents i need the deed to your house. I need your social security number. 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. Makes sense to me. And she's like so desperate. You could see, I mean, theen-scene is like she's pulling out the dishwasher that's over packed like you should never load a dishwasher like that yeah you know

and that 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 um she just desperate to stop doing that like she wants to sit out on on her in her garden on her patio and take a nap. That's how we first encounter her, right? And, you know, just to not do those things. She'll give away the house, all that information. No problemo. Yeah, she thinks housework is beneath her.

She never got good at it because she's never had to do it yeah why it's been spoon fed silver spoon like what do you mean i have to do these things just make the lady do it yeah and in the same way mr and mrs park are 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 when she touches her face with the gloves and then it's like, oh no, like you just touched those

underwears. This movie is very funny. But the subtext to that scene is they jump from finding a pair 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 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 gonna catastrophize it into this completely false narrative and and fire someone instead of just instead of i mean that whole thing is asking yeah instead of asking instead of asking one thing it's like they don't want to

deal 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 fuck up once you're out and they don't tell you why they're outing you that's the that's a constant thing that comes up with every single person that's fired. They never, they never, 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 politely. Some vague excuse. With the, with the driver too, it's like some, something vague. I'm not going to talk to him about like whether or not he had sex with a, you know, a hooker who's on drugs in the backseat of my car. I'm not going that i'm just gonna maybe you know just make some make up some excuse and

fire and that again comes you know ties into this motif 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 yeah and they can't i mean this couple can't even be straight with each other like they can't how they they can't she harbors a lot of secrets yeah 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 no yeah he's just like content with her being oh my wife won't explain she won't tell me but it's fine they're simply living a lie uh they really are everyone a convenient lie yeah so i i wanted to about mr kim and q's 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 don't when ki jung um forges the document he's like wow you're a genius you did it you're amazing and when uh kiwoo 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 yeah and mr kim is like thrilled he's like i'm so proud of you that's amazing good job and i 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 swear a lot like they say shiba like over and over again like very casually and I was just like whoa like wait what does that mean shiba means like

fuck it's like a swear word they say shiba 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 curse in 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. But yeah, they're, they're quite open. And it's like, they they're very tightly knit, because they're codependent on one another, you know? Yeah. 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 12 children. You know what I mean? You need to have those 12 kids in order for the farm to really work.

So yeah, it was definitely visible. Yeah. 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 themselves 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 yeah 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 see oh she says that i missed 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, implying that she doesn't get good grades, despite her having this like 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 he like calls the son doesn't call the daughter you know it's very obvious like who is the the scent 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 underage and he is in his 20s yeah right it's completely inappropriate yeah she does it and it's like of course she did it with the 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 kiyu who is seeing how she's neglected you know seeing her vulnerabilities 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 chris d'alia did to all those girls yeah yeah oh god damn it i knew chris d'alia was gonna weasel his way into the podcast and then and then neil brennan's like ch Chris D'Elia, good. He's good. He's a good boy. I mean, that relationship, that's like, I think one of the, it's interesting though, because it, Grace, you mentioned this a bit ago, that 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 kiwu's 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 is 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 min's original plan which is to wait it out until she is in university right so she goes to yeah college yep yep 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 sub it is a subversion in that not only is it kind of gender swapped uh it also doesn't work uh and shouldn't work yeah right 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. Yeah, they're just children. Oh, he shouldn't have pursued a 15-year-old, you know? Right. And I don't know 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 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 yeah yeah i've seen a few the few uh misinterpretation or not misinterpret i mean no interpretation is 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 uh this is a piece i don't know i just disagree with this writer's uh statement her name is hana yoon 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 it's like the rich families on vacation why shouldn't the the poor family also go on vacation right and it's like they're just redistributing to themselves yeah yeah yeah um 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 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 overall, I mean, 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. Right. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one. Yeah, it didn't like bump me too much. Yeah, Bong Joon-ho, he's like of the Korean like auteurs, the male auteurs that are heralded by Cannes and all these other tier one film festivals around the world. I would say Bong Joon-ho is like of the tamer, you know,

because a lot of these other filmmakers, Korean auteurs, are very misogynistic, you know, Park Chan-wook being one of them, you know, with lot of these other filmmakers korean auteurs are very misogynistic you know pak chanuk being one of them you know with old boy and all that shit but um i i i have a lot of admiration and respect for pojono 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 quick thing he did have another like underage teenage girl having sex with an older man in his 2009 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 yeah uh he had he has two short films that are really excellent. One's called Influenza.

And it's, again, that's like another class commentary of Korean society. And Shaking Tokyo, which is part of an omnibus, is a really, really good short film that's set in Japan. And it's got pizza boxes with this Hikikomori character, which is really interesting. So I would recommend those two short films by him but yeah check those out yeah check them out uh one thing that i thought was kind of funny that i didn't notice that i i thought it was funny that the only like heralded rich person above uh criticism in this movie the architect and architect which I was just like, OK, you know. Yeah. 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 character was funny and it does seem like his father was um he was a graphic and industrial designer so it means like it might that might be him discussing his father was, he was a graphic and industrial designer. So it means like that might be him discussing his father a little bit. Who knows?

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 Wi-Fi motif, I guess you could call it. But it's just reference. It's the first time I've seen Wi-Fi access treated seriously in terms of like it being a real problem if you don't have access to Wi-Fi where it seems like it. I mean, I've just heard that problems dismissed so many times of 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's 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 Wi-Fi in order to go to school. Right. To have a quiet room so that they can have classes live you know digitally to study wi-fi access even the the strength of your wi-fi 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 wi-fi who does that hurt in what country? Sure. All of that is actually Toby Miller is a really good scholar. You guys can look into if you want to learn more about e-waste and global inequality. Cool.

Thanks for that. Well, does Parasite pass the Bechdel test? That's the real question. Yeah, that's the most important question. Class commentary commentary who cares but bechdel does it's uh it does it does yeah 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 uh there are some conversations between women where a man isn't explicitly mentioned but

he is kind of like the underlying theme either way yep it passes uh yeah 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 you know I was 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 never been a directional nipple issue yeah that was never the problem it was just like stop it you know just stop yeah like can we like yeah yeah yeah with that like i was just barely passes the test it's like punch you know doesn't know female sexuality i don't know right i mean yeah and it would pass

more handily if he had given more significance to the mother-daughter relationship in the Kim family yes or in the Park family uh 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 yeah it would have been nice to see a little more between yeah especially in the Kim family yeah but like with all the women they were all about like their men you know the housekeeper it 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 sick son you know and her husband not her daughter right not her daughter and with Mrs. Kim and Ki

Jung it was again it was about like Kiwoo's plan you know right 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 bechdel cast nipple scale which is speaking of clockwise and counterclockwise n Yeah, today it's clockwise nipple scale. Yes. In which we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples, just examining it from an intersectional feminist lens. 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.

So I guess 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 the relationship between Kiwoo and the young daughter was why is it there 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 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 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. 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 them was definitely Junie, Barry. Junie and Barry, yeah. So each dog gets a nipple. I'll go for a three as well. Again, 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 gender perspective, I'll also go a three. And I also think on top of what we're talking about in terms of the predatory relationship and how the Park's daughter is kind of sidelined 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 i was thinking a little bit i'm like i i feel like it is so

devastating to lose ki jung at the end of this movie. Yes. Yeah. Ki-jung was great. Yeah. But I think that 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 is very talented. We know that she's really smart. She's a queer icon now. Is she?

Gay men love her. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, that character. 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 know. I'm like, like i i understand why you know a rich had to die a poor had to die and it the ending completely works and makes sense but yeah i was sorry to see her go too yeah of the of the four as well it's see i guess i will give uh two to

kijung rest in power and i will give one to the housekeeper who didn't do anything wrong oh i felt so bad for her i know she's and that actress is amazing. She's in so many things. Yeah, I would give it a two out of five in terms of gender. Because again, I felt 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 Bong Joon-ho still can do a little bit more when it comes to exhibiting gender equality or giving women a little bit more substance in his screenplays. Yeah. His first film, Barking Dogs Never Bite with Bae Doona, 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.

Thank you for having me. I hope that our Korean pronunciations did not ruin. You girls have to stop that. Like that puts 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 okay good to know 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 thing you know what i mean you don't have to apologize every single time you You know, it's like, 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. Yeah. And I'm sure some of our listeners will find that helpful as well.

And thank you so much for joining us, for being here. Thank you 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. Yeah, and I post show updates there. Sometimes I do videos.

But yeah, please follow me. I would really appreciate it awesome thank you this is really fun thank you yeah come back anytime i would love to come back thanks of course we'll have you back soon yeah um and you can follow us on social media at bechtel cast you can can subscribe to our Patreon, AKA Matreon. It's patreon.com slash Bechtel cast. Yep. And it gets you two bonus episodes every month, plus access to the entire back catalog. Just like what it's like 70, 80 episodes at this point.

Some 70 ish. Yeah. This show has been on for 75. Millions. Yeah. We're still going strong. Still going. Just still so many movies left to cover.

Yeah. And then our T public store where you can get all of our merch, T public.com slash the Bechtel cast. Just had to end on a little bit of capitalism for you at the end of our parasite episode. We're like also buy our merch. Right. Yeah.

Buy our stuff. Give us money. Subscribe to our Patreon. Right. Yeah. Buy our stuff. Give us money. Subscribe to our Patreon. We're all in it, baby. But yeah, I mean, do what you can to help out your fellow human being. That's what we'll end on. Bye. Bye.

I'm NK. And this is Basket Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology. Swaps of different meds. But by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane,

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