Parasite, the film
After two weeks of Summer School by zoom I needed to return to ‘everyday life’. I have written previously that zoom can deceive my brain causing it to think it is where the host is. It’s complicated I am there for I am interacting but I am interacting through a second body that being zoom.
It can take the same amount of time to go from here to zoom as it does to go from being awake to sleep. Maybe that is a way to bring myself back to my present place.
I decided I would go to my local cinema. I had gone to the listing and read that Parasite was about the class division in Seoul, South Korea. That was enough to satisfy me. The cinema is a place I can reflect not only on what is before me but what has also gone before me.
The Kim family (the poor ones) reminded me of a family I once knew whereby the parents acted more like an older brother and sister than parents. Indeed the son Ki-wo takes on the role of the father. On the recommendation of a friend, he becomes a tutor to the daughter of the Parks family (the rich ones). In time he succeeds in getting his family jobs working for the Parks. The notion that wealth makes you naive comes into play as the mother of the Parks family is easily convinced to depart with her cash to have the best for her family. We see this constantly with people ‘paying over the nose’ for such things as cars based on a sales pitch and culture that says, “ This is the best and you deserve the best and with all that money you have no excuse but to have it.”
The charade of the relationship between the Kims and the Parks begins to unravel when a former employee who has been dispensed with to give a job to one of the Kims, returns. She has played her own charade and she and the Kims expose each other. The remainder of the film is about their attempts to keep the Parks from knowing each other’s charade.
Several moments that did not concur with earlier scenes reminded me of a question I asked Michael Kagan earlier in the week during the summer school. He did not wish to answer as it was not important to the message he wanted to share. I could see in his answer that it would have distracted from it. These moments in the film reminded me that often the story is more important than the detail. You see how film helps me process what has been.
I noticed the soundtrack to this film which is not something I normally do at least not in the way that I later check it out on Spotify.
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