Squid Game is a new Netflix series that has taken the world by storm. The series was released September 17th 2021 and has been record breaking. The series has had over 110 million viewers and continues to add to its own record. The show depicts the big disparities that take place in Korean life. The authors goal in the show is to show the socioeconomic separation and how the rich can control the poor. The basis of the show is a group of rich people going around the city recruiting people who are in severe “debt”. The person who was in charge of the game recruited 500 players who were in debt bribing them with a cash prize. The winner of the games would receive all the money and every person who was poor and in debt could not turn it down. What the participants did not know was that this competition would be a fight to the death, with only the winner surviving and no ability to back out. This depicts not only the rich controlling the poor, but how their lives are not valued as equal through using the poor only for their enjoyment. The players didn’t even goby their own names they were just given a number and that was it. This show perfectly depicts the current issues in the wealth gap in the Korean countries and the control that people with money have over the normal individual. This is reminiscent of Spivak’s subaltern and the silencing of marginalized people by those with more power, which in this case is money. Overall, I believe the author does a good job at getting the message across. When the show first premiered fans were skeptically due to the violence factor in the show but then realized the message that the author was trying to get across. I believe it gives an inside on the wealth gaps and current economic issues with the citizens in the Korean countries.
