Parasite

Parasite, as an Asian film, won the oscar best picture. I watched the movie and wanted to understand why.

After watching it, I don’t understand why the film won the oscar. But in retrospect, of course, I couldn’t possibly know the reason behind the award. For, I don’t know how the film is won and based on what criteria. I don’t know the past films that have won the award, and I don’t follow the oscar or care. But from what I see, the movie itself is not an entertainment, but a cry out for help. It is a cry out for help that screams “there is a serious problem in our society, please help us”. It is easy to label the problem as income inequality, but there is more to it than the simple label.

Parasite is about a family in a poor condition and earning littble wages. The son of the family, with the recommendation by a friend of hi, starts to work as a tutor in a rich family. The son does not have a convincing credential to work, and his sister helped to forge a fake document. The son acts as an experienced tutor full of confidence that helps him to secure the tutor job. As things go well, the son and his whole family begin to fake it into the rich family. The father becomes the driver for the rich family. The daughter becomes a tutor for the little son of the rich family.

The rich family is despicable in many different ways. The family is in a state of decline. Education is failing, the wife is failing, children are failing and the husband is failing. There are several problems

1. Being attached to meaningless words. Words like art, psychology, therapy, and so on. The wife is a woman that has no brain. She does not know anything, but knows superficial words to follow. “Oh, my son is an art genius”, “therapy is good” so she thinks. She is vulnerable to having words to confuse what is really important and she is not able to see through a fake and real. She cannot decide and she has no judgement.
2. Failure husband. The husband does not care about the children’s wellbeing and education whatsoever. There is no father to son and daughter bonding in the rich family. Children don’t care about the parents either, and they don’t know what a father is. Dogs are on the other hand, ironically closer to the father than the children are.
3. Spoiled child. The son of the rich family is spoiled. With the weak and undecided woman as the mother, the kid is hopelessly spoiled. He is lost, but who would blame the small kid for being lost in the lost family.

There are problems with the poor too. The blame of the problem is on therich, society, education, and politics. Forced to live in poor condition, how can we blame them for being wicked and dishonest? When there is not enough food on the table to get by, people are vulnerable to be evil and destructive. Imagine a group of pople stuck on an island without basic needs like food and decend housing, wouldn’t they turn out to be ugly regardless of socially labelled rich or not? Undeniably, there are great people who would hold on the highest virtue or morality in difficult situations. But who among us have the enough character and faith to be such an idealist? The blame is not on the poor, as the director of the movie also would agree. The rich are failing to take care the poor and be rich in spirit. The rich, ironically, are poor in spirit, but they hold on to the wealth. The wealth makes them stink and they become poor in spirit by living the easy. The poor on the other hand are strong in spirit. The “vigor”, “confident” the son of the poor family wants to fake. No, they don’t need to fake it, they have the vigor. . The poor are wicked and they are destined to dominate the weak rich. The domination is tragic to the society.