For the past two weeks, it has been a time for my language partner and I to destress right before the start of spring break during the midterm season. We have been watching Parasite together and this is actually my second time watching it. I think it gets better each time you watch, mostly because you see little details that you had missed before. It’s also a movie that really makes you think. The plot is relatively easy to understand but there are resulting underlying messages that are important to the movie as a whole.
I think Parasite is the perfect movie to watch in every aspect. In regards to social, culture, and education, it hits in all three of these categories. With the social aspect, you can really see the divide and inequality between the rich and the poor classes in the movie. Parasite is a movie about a family of four that is really poor and soon cons their way into a rich family. The poor family lives in a basement apartment in conditions that almost seem unliveable. They have a window that looks into the alley where sometimes people come to pee. Their apartment even flooded at one point when it poured outside. There was no way anything in the apartment survived.
The movie highlights a term, Hell Chosun, which describes the socioeconomic conditions that make it a nightmare to get a job even after receiving a degree. This is common in Korea where the unemployment rates of college graduates are high. Another interesting part of this movie was greed. The poor Kim family was able to get a tutoring job with the rich Park family. This wasn’t enough so they had to introduce their daughter as an art therapist. Even that wasn’t enough, they had to have their mother work as the housekeeper and their father work as the driver. If the Kim family was able to stop themselves at the beginning and wasn’t greedy for more, maybe the tragedy would not have happened. Interestingly, it is also a story about greed. The most interesting part about the movie that makes you think is the title. It’s called parasite and I think it’s really up to your interpretation but the title really highlights the way the rich live. The rich rely and depend on the lower class to live comfortably. They aren’t able to do things like cook, clean, and drive without hiring the lower class which makes them the parasites of the population. Some people might think that the lower class are the parasites because they rely on the rich to provide them their money but I think that the lower class doesn’t specifically rely on the rich to provide them money but really they can get money from other sources as well.
I was not able to watch the movie without english subtitles but I felt like it was still an important learning aid for me especially for listening and learning more about Korean culture. This is my second time watching the movie and it amazes me every time. I think it’s a movie that everybody should watch. It deserves the awards and recognition it has gotten.
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