We grew up playing games.
Are childhood games similar in different parts of the world? I’m sure every kid is familiar with the game “Red Light, Green Light”: when a girl in a yellow T-shirt and orange pinafore turns her back, we move. When she counts to three and turns back to face us, we freeze. It’s a simple and fun game. If we moved when the girl turned around, we would lose and do a forfeit.
When I was a kid, the forfeit was an ear flick from a “ghost hunter”. It was actually not painful, but we would always pretend that it hurt a lot. Hwang Dong-hyuk, director and writer of the global hit TV series Squid Game, changed the ear flick to a gunshot. If the girl turned around and you moved, she would shoot you on the spot.
Is this a mere coincidence or was it intentionally designed that way? We have involuntarily stepped into a carefully arranged game of horror.
A fun game has suddenly become a horrifying one.
I played with toy guns when I was a kid. I delighted in aiming my toy rifle at my playmates and spraying them with “bullets” as I yelled “bang, bang, bang”. If these “bangs” were real gunshots and my “playmate” fell flat on the ground, lying in a pool of blood with a broken face and limbs, would that still be a “game”?
Squid Game made me ponder many things. Who sets the rules of a game? What do we learn from playing games? A withered tree, a terrifying scene. Why did she wear a yellow T-shirt and an orange pinafore? What do the colours yellow and orange signify?
Yellow is very bright while red is highly saturated. They are both vivid colours. Incidentally, the logo of the world’s largest fast food restaurant chain is yellow and red. Is this a mere coincidence or was it intentionally designed that way? We have involuntarily stepped into a carefully arranged game of horror.
Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in the mid-19th century. The biological discourse of “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” has evolved into a real-life “big fish eat little fish” scenario in 20th century human society. And we are all in this wretched game. The unemployed man, the North Korean refugee, the Pakistani migrant worker, the middle-aged woman who runs a stall at a market, the diabetic mother who has no money to treat her foot ulcer and the many other characters in Squid Game are all “little fish”.
If you stopped watching Squid Game halfway, you would not see the powerful people who were really controlling the game...
But who are the “big fish”? Gun-toting human organ traffickers? Do arms dealers who sell guns and weaponry hope that the world is at war? Without war, who would they sell their arms to?
If you stopped watching Squid Game halfway, you would not see the powerful people who were really controlling the game — those who wore golden animal masks, drank red wine and watched contestants kill each other in the game.
Hwang Dong-hyuk, who are the powerful people that you are referring to? The powerful have money and know that people want money. They know that people will kill for money and are willing to be slapped at a subway station for 10,000 won.
We continue to play the game because of our dreams. We do so willingly, until we die.
If a powerful person announces at Zhongshan Station that he is giving away US$10,000 for a slap, how many people would sign up? That’s US$20,000 for two slaps and US$30,000 for three slaps — how many people would fight to get more slaps because they are calculating the cost of their burdensome home loans and thinking about how they can give their parents, spouse and children a better life?
Is Squid Game a slap in the face of the modern person?
As the game gets increasingly brutal, you are forced to pick a side. You pick one and duel to the death with the other player. Yet, only one player out of the 456 of them gets out alive. And we all think that the one who lives will be us. Just like the person who dreams about striking the lottery every time s/he buys a ticket.
We continue to play the game because of our dreams. We do so willingly, until we die.
Related: Chinese youths are falling for the 'Squid Game trap' with Chinese characteristics | Does China need its own Squid Game? | In the digital age, how is humanity to save its own heart?
