Amid some clichéd band-of-brothers tropes lie subtle points about consent, cooperation, and power that make 'Squid Game' more complex than it might seem at first blush, ZeeshanAleem writes.
For starters, it is highly memeable: It features memorable visuals, a catchy score and simple children’s games played by indebted adult contestants who fight each other to the death for a life-changing sum of cash. The show at turns enchants and horrifies the viewer, and it lends itself naturally to social media banter.
“Squid Game” is the latest entrant into a growing collection of films and shows — including “The Hunt,” “The Platform,” “The Hunger Games” series and “Black Mirror” — that use dystopian games with life-or-death stakes to dramatize the cutthroat ethics of pitting desperate masses against each other in a fight for unequally distributed resources.
In this scenario, the operators of the game are an analogue to predatory loan sharks — ostensibly offering a lifeline to desperate people who have no other choice, if they wish to remain housed and fed. Can an action be called voluntary if a gun is pointed at your head from every direction? “Squid Game” forces us to meditate on this question.
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