Parasite
When this came out I was a junior in high school who worked at dine-in theater and was taking a college film class. I remember this damn near changing my life to be honest. Truly, I believed this was my favorite movie ever made. Didn’t take me long to do a binge of Bong Joon-ho’s filmography. The Host ended up being what I chose as his stand out film; what I would tell people my favorite BJH film was. Truthfully, it was kinda just the niche pick in my seventeen year old brain. I mean, Parasite was doing fuckin ROUNDS, and I couldn’t stand to be like all the other people who were claiming it was their favorite movie.
I’m old enough to look back and acknowledge that this is one of my favorite movies ever. Hopefully it’s not just because the amount of people who have it in their top 4 has gone down since back then.
Yea, it’s heavy-handed, but not at all to its detriment. Some of you niggas need to be hit over the head with the point to really accept it. You could say it’s just uncompromising and unwilling to be misinterpreted. Which ironically enough, I think I appreciate a lot more because of this book I’ve been reading.
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman insists that we’re in a Huxleyan dystopia where television and visual entertainment as a whole has begun to sedate us. I’m not gonna sit here and do an entire breakdown of the book, but the part that’s been sticking with me is the idea that we have to start using these mediums truly to our advantage, and to do that you have acknowledge the state of our collective literacy and comprehension skills.
This movie refuses to let the audience miss the point. Yet, even in the details you’ll be satisfied to see that the message runs deep. It’s not just surface level commentary, it’s a passionate takedown of capitalism. And honestly, it’s arguably a critique on how the American Dream has become an imperialist force all its own.