At first sight, Squid Game has a lot against it on the road to global popularity. It is unabashedly violent, refers to some idiosyncrasies of modern-day South Korea that many people around the world may not be familiar with, and does not stack its cast with the young, beautiful, and famous. Yet, what has been termed as the South Korean version of The Hunger Games, speaking directly out against the evils of social stratification by taking class schisms to its extremely violent logic end, has somehow become the biggest original series in the entire history of Netflix.
What is interesting is Squid Game succeeded despite there being other series like it. As well-illustrated by The Hunger Games, the genre of violence in the name of alluding to social and class divisions is not particularly new. Even beyond a good chunk of Hollywood's best science fiction works, the idea of using extreme and absurd violence to illustrate the lack of fairness in the distribution of economic and other resources is well-explored around the world. Just here in Japan, teens forced to fight one another from Battle Royale to Alice in Borderland do not shy away from the prospects of a dystopian future based on fundamental social inequalities.
Given that the genre is so saturated, why does Squid Game, of all possible contenders, became the one that went global? Perhaps it does have to do with the rise of Korean popular culture as a global pursuit, but the fact that Squid Game did, without the usual need for catchy music, well-drilled dance moves, beautiful people, and sweet romance also means this series' success has hit brand-new territory for Korean popular culture around the world (even more so than the Oscar-winning Parasite, a story that also looks at social divisions but does so with more mainstream humor and storytelling styles).
Timing does matter. As Squid Game was released to the public, the world has featured more prominent discussions about growing inequality, not just across different countries, but much more importantly, within each country and even individual towns and cities. The talks of redistributing the wealth of billionaires and multinational corporations they control are being heard among top-level politicians in China, Japan, and the US while feeding into growing protests from places as diverse as South Africa, South America, and the Middle East.
In the meantime, more information about the rich's excesses at the expense of everyone else has become ever-more apparent. Whistleblowers from Facebook declare the company to consistently neglect ethical issues in pursuit of profits. A massive leak of financial documents called the Panama Papers exposed politicians around the world enriching themselves and skimping on paying taxes by routing their wealth through shell companies in offshore tax havens. A global tax regime is in the works, with the goal to cap corporations skimping on paying taxes by disincentivizing the use of said tax havens.
As COVID continues to upend the livelihoods of some workers, especially in the travel and hospitality industries, while enriching those involved in IT and logistics that benefited from the continued shift to online services, economic inequality is no longer something people just hear about in the news. It is no longer something that only happens to other people far away. Inequality increasingly becomes something people can easily see and feel through personal experiences that they have a hard time easily escaping from, much less resolve.
In this environment, the absurd violence of Squid Game is no longer so absurd. As members of the audience get to know the backstories of the "losers" risking their very lives to be the only winner of the massive pot of gold, the audience members somehow begin to relate at a personal level to the characters in the show. In their own ways, each viewer is dealing with their own struggle with being labeled a loser in real-life inequality. The life-and-death struggles of the participants in the Squid Game play out, in only a mildly less mortal way, in the daily lives of people around the world.
The way Squid Game encapsulated those sentiments, through stories about the characters as well as the simple and easy-to-understand games themselves, made the series so relatable to the current batch of media consumers. Perhaps in a more equitable world where people are less worried about how others' economic success translates to their own personal failures, this violent Korean series would not have resonated so much globally. But the world we live in today is a merciless one, psychologically in the same way as Squid Game is physically so.
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